nishes a numerous catalogue, with their magnitudes, latitudes, and longitudes *. 66 66 46 It has been truly said, that "Ptolemy's order, false as it was, enabled observers to give a plausible ac I count of the motions of the Sun and Moon, to foretell eclipses and to improve geography t;" or, in other words, that it represented the actual phenomena of the heavens as they really appear to a spectator on the earth. It is, therefore, clear that Ptolemy's astrology is just as applicable to modern and improved astronomy as it was to his own. * In France, about the beginning of the 16th century, Oronce Finé, the Royal Reader, attempted, under the patronage of Francis I., to produce an astronomical clock, in which everything moved according to-the principles of Ptolemy. It was kept, about fifty years ago, in the monastery of St. Geneviève, at Paris. In Lilly's Catalogue of Astrological Authors, Orontius Finæus is mentioned as the writer of a work on the twelve houses of heaven, printed in Paris, 1553. + Spectacle de la Nature. The objection which has been urged against astrology, that the signs are continually moving from their positions, cannot invalidate this conclusion. That objection has, in fact, no real existence; for Ptolemy seems to have been aware of this motion of the signs, and has fully provided for it in the 25th Chapter of the 1st Book of the Tetrabiblos. From that chapter it is clear that the respective inflences he ascribes to the twelve signs (or divisions of the zodiac) were considered by him as appurtenant to the places they occupied, and not to the stars of which they were composed. He has expressly and repeatedly declared that the point of the vernal equinox is ever the beginning of the zodiac, and that the 30 degrees following it ever retain the same virtue as that which he has in this work attributed to Aries, although the stars forming Aries may have quitted those degrees the next 30 degrees are still to be accounted as Taurus, and so of the rest. There is abundant proof throughout the Tetrabiblos, that Ptolemy considered the virtues of the constellations of the zodiac distinctly from those of the spaces they occupied. year In the 827* the "Great Construction" was translated by the Arabians into their own language, and by them communicated to Europe. It is through them that it has been usually known by the name of the Almagest. In the 13th century, the Emperor Frederic II. caused it to be translated from the Arabic into Latin, and Sacroboscot was consequently enabled to write his famous work upon the sphere. It was not, however, until about the end of the 15th century that the "Great Construc"tion" was translated into Latin from the original text; and this important service was rendered to science by Purbach, a professor of philosophy at Vienna, who learned the Greek tongue at the instigation of Cardinal Bessarion. By means of this translation, the Ephemerides of George Müller, surnamed Regiomontanus, a disciple of Purbach's, were first composed. The Greek text of the Almagest, or Great Construction, was first published at Basle, by Simon Grynæus, in 1538; and it was again printed at the same place in 1551, with certain other works of Ptolemy. The rest of Ptolemy's works connected with astronomy, and now extant, are the Tetrabiblos, or Four Books of the Influence of the Stars § (now translated); the Centiloquy, or Fruit of his The French say 813, but 827 is the date given by English chronologists. + This scientific man was a Mathurine Friar, and a professor in the University of Paris: he died in 1256. It is pointed out in the Edinburgh Review, No. 68, that he was a native of Yorkshire, and his real name John Holywood, euphonized, in Paris, into Sacrobosco. ‡ Chalmers.-The Tetrabiblos was among these works. § To such readers as may be curious to know in what manner this book was promulgated in Europe, after the revival of letters, the fol |