decisive. The country here was broken into precipices, irregular acclivities, and quebradas, among which, on the side of a mountain, the Indians had encamped. The impediments, which they threw in the way of an attack, were enough to appal the stoutest hearts. Scarcely had the Spaniards begun the ascent, when, as in other similar engagements, of some of which we have already given an account, showers of stones, mingled with great masses of rock broken off by levers, and rolled down the sides of the mountain, filled the assailants with consternation. In spite of all this, by almost superhuman exertion, climbing from cliff to cliff, they succeeded in driving the Indians from their seemingly impregnable post. The Indians were struck with superstitious dread. They thought the Spaniards fought by enchantment. No longer making any systematic resistance, they were hunted like wild beasts by the Spaniards from mountain to mountain, among the fastnesses of this rugged region.

Everything now conspired to put an end to the insurrection. Leaders were no more, except Diego Cristobal Tupac Amaru, and he, although he submitted under the formal guarantee of an amnesty, and continued to live tranquilly in his family, was afterwards, through a base and insidious policy, arrested under the pretext of a new conspiracy, and executed in the same cruel way with his brother and Tupa Catari. The great body of the Indian population quietly returned to vassalage, and resumed the yoke of slavery. Such was the issue of an insurrection, which filled Peru with bloodshed and misery for the space of two years, and of a war, in which, if we may believe the authority of Don Vincente Pazos, himself a native of La Paz, one third of the whole population of Peru perished by the hand of violence. Twenty years after these events happened, this enlightened and patriotic South American saw the plains of Sicasica and Calamarca, for an extent of fourteen leagues, covered with numberless heaps of unburied human bones, lying in the very places where the wretched Indians fell, to bleach beneath the tropical dews. Their unfortunate attempt produced no permanent or important change in their condition. None of their grievances were abolished, except the repartos. They were rigidly prohibited the use of arms. The tribute pressed more heavily afterwards, because it was more strictly levied; the mita was

the more unmercifully apportioned, because all risk of opposition was removed; and they were treated the more contemptuously, in revenge of their unsuccessful and disastrous rebellion.

What permanent effect the recent revolution may have upon the condition of the Indians, cannot as yet be satisfactorily ascertained. Thus far, the tendency of it has been highly favorable to them, and there is every cause to believe it will continue so hereafter. The independence of a part of Peru is not yet sufficiently confirined to have allowed the temporary governments, which have succeeded one another there, to do much for the internal improvement of the country; but in the districts formerly dependent on Buenos Ayres, something is already accomplished. The revolution has swept away at once the old distinctions, which the colonial system created and maintained. At the cry of liberty, the degraded castes rose simultaneously to vindicate their title to the rights of men and of freemen, all equally inspired with enthusiasm in the cause of independence, and admitted on equal terms to unite with the patriotic Spanish Americans in establishing a free representative government. The creoles are all natives of the country, in common with the Indians, and common tenants of the soil. It is their home. They do not come there across the ocean, for the purpose of realising a sudden fortune by rapacious exactions, and then returning to pour out their ill gotten gold into the lap of Spain. Their interest, on the contrary, is inseparably united to their native soil, and it will be their anxious endeavor to free South America from the infamy of its barbarous laws against the Indians; laws as fatal to the future prosperity of Peru, as they have been derogatory to the honor and humanity of its Spanish rulers.

ART. IV.-1. Fundamenta Astronomia pro anno MDCCLV, deducta ex observationibus viri incomparabilis James Bradley in Specula Astronomica Grenovicensi per annos 1750-1762 institutis. Auctore FRIDERICO WILHELMO BESSEL, Acad. Berol. Atque Petrop. Sodali, Instituti Gallici Corresp. Regiomonti, 1818. T. 1. pp. 328. 2. Tables Astronomiques publiées par le Bureau des Longitudes de France, viz.

Tables de La Lune. Par M. BURCKHARDT, Membre de l' Institut, etc. Paris. 1812.

Nouvelles Tables de Jupiter et de Saturne, calculées d'apres la théorie de M. Laplace, et suivant la division décimale de l'angle droit. Par M. BOUVARD. Paris. 1808.

Tables écliptiques des Satellites de Jupiter, d'apres la théorie de M. le Marquis de Laplace, et la totalité des Observations faites depuis 1662 jusqu'à l'an 1802. Par M. DELAMBRE. Paris. 1817.

3. Tables. By B. DE LINDENEAU, viz.

Tabula Veneris nova et correctæ, etc. Gothæ. 1810. Tabule Martis novæ et correctæ, etc. Eisenberg. 1811. Investigatio nova orbita a Mercurio circa solem descriptæ accedunt Tabula Planeta, etc.

4. Mémoire sur la figure de la Terre.

Gothæ. 1813.

Par M. DE LA

PLACE, Mem. Acad. Sciences. Paris. 1817, 1818.

Co

THE science of Astronomy offers to our contemplation some of the most powerful efforts of the human mind. pernicus, by the discovery of the motion of the planets about the sun; Kepler, by his elliptical theory, and the laws regulating the motions and distances of the planets, with the times of their periodical revolution; finally, Newton, by the discovery of the theory of gravity, opened the way for all the improvements, which have lately been made in this science. In the Principia, published in 1687, Newton pointed out the origin of the inequalities of the motions of the heavenly bodies, which had then been discovered by observation, and deduced others from the theory of gravity. No material alteration was made in his methods for more than half a century. Then began a new epoch in Astronomy, and the history of that science, for the last hundred years, will be forever memoVOL. XX.-NO. 47.

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rable for the unexampled activity and great discoveries, which have been made. So important have been the labors of the practical astronomers, that a complete system of the planetary motions might be deduced from the observations made during this time; and if all the previous observations, even to the most remote antiquity, were lost, the effect on the tables of the sun, planets, and satellites, would hardly be perceived, since the great accuracy of modern observations more than compensates for the shortness of the interval. It is proposed in this article to give a short account of some of the most noted discoveries during this period, to take a slight view of the latest and most correct tables of the motions of the planets and satellites, and to make such remarks on the labors of astronomers and mathematicians, as may be necessary in the notices of the works proposed to be reviewed.

The career of modern improvement was begun by Dr Bradley, one of the most indefatigable astronomers of the last century. He was remarkable for his skill and accuracy, in tracing those minute changes in the places of the heavenly bodies, which had so much perplexed the astronomers who preceded him, and his labors were crowned with the most brilliant success, by the discovery of the Aberration of light and the Nutation of the earth's axis. His observations were so numerous, accurate, and important, that he may justly be placed in the same rank with Hipparchus and Tycho, the greatest and most accurate observers of ancient and modern times. He published an account of the aberration and nutation. His observations of the moon were also made public, and used by himself and others, in comparing and improving the lunar tables. A table of the places of 389 fixed stars was likewise deduced from his observations, and published by Dr Hornsby, but the great body of his observations, made at Greenwich while he was astronomer royal, were taken from the observatory by his executors, under the pretence that they were his private property, with the expectation of being paid for them by the government. A suit having been commenced for their recovery, the executors, in order to avoid it, presented them to Lord North, (so well known in the history of the American Revolution,) who gave them, in the year 1776, to the University of Oxford, of which he was Chancellor, upon the express condition, that they should immediately be

printed and published. But to the great disgrace of the University, and of Professor Hornsby, who had charge of the papers, they were withheld many years, notwithstanding the repeated solicitations and remonstrances of the Board of Longitude, who, in 1796, published several spirited resolutions, under the form of an appeal to the public, upon this very improper conduct. These observations were made between the years 1750 and 1762, but it was not till the year 1798 that the first volume was published, and the whole was not completed till the year 1805, almost half a century after the observations had been made; and during the whole of this time, while unexampled progress was making in all branches of astronomy, these invaluable observations, which would have facilitated very much the calculations of astronomers, were lying almost useless.

But it may well be questioned whether this delay will, on the whole, be any disadvantage to the future progress of astronomy. For if these observations of the stars had been published soon after Bradley's death, they could not then have been reduced so accurately, as at the present moment, because the precise values of the small reductions to be made to the observations for precession, nutation, aberration, and refraction, were not so well known, and it was not then usual to take such pains in computing and combining together many observations. Moreover, if the. great labor of reducing the observations had been once gone through, even in a somewhat imperfect manner, it is probable that no one would have undertaken a new revision, as is the case with Flamsteed's observations. But, at the time of the publication of the observations, a considerable degree of interest had been excited, from the difficulties attending them, and this, with the well known accuracy of Bradley, was sufficient to procure an early and careful examination. Fortunately, at that time Bessel, the present astronomer royal at the observatory of Konigsberg, had just relinquished his mercantile pursuits, and with great success had devoted himself to astronomy. ing been furnished with a copy of Bradley's observations by Dr Olbers, he voluntarily undertook the task of reducing them, and no one was better qualified to do it, since he possessed, what is rarely united in the same individual, mathematical talents of the very first order, with great accuracy in

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