MINISTER OF KIRKBY LONSDALE, KIRKBY KENDAL.—LUNE BRIDGE.
To the Editor.
Sir,—The Tenth Part of your interesting publication, the Table Book, has been lent to me by one of your constant readers; who, aware of the interest which I take in every thing connected with Westmoreland, pointed out the Notes of T. Q. M. on a Pedestrian Tour from Skipton to Keswick.[368]
It is not my intention to review those notes, or to point out the whole of his inaccuracies; but I shall select one, which, in my humble judgment, is quite inexcusable. After stating that the Rev. Mr. Hunt was once the curate of Kirkby (not Kirby, as your correspondent spells it) Lonsdale, he adds, “I believe the well-known Carus Wilson is the officiating minister at present.” What your narrator means by the appellation “well known,” he alone can determine—and to which of the family he would affix the term, I cannot possibly imagine. The eldest son is rector of Whittington, an adjoining parish; the second son of the same family is vicar of Preston, in Lancashire; the third is the curate of Tunstal, in the same county. These are all the gentlemen of that family who are, or ever were, “officiating ministers:” and I can safely assure your correspondent, that not one of them ever was the officiating minister of Kirkby Lonsdale. The vicar is the Rev. Mr. Sharp; who the curate is I forget, but an inquirer could have easily ascertained it; and an inquiry would have furnished him with some very curious details respecting the actual incumbent.
By the way, let me mention the curious fact of this town retaining its ancient name, while Kendal, a neighbouring town, has lost, in common parlance, a moiety of its name. In all legal documents Kendal is described as Kirkby Kendal, as the former is Kirkby Lons-dale; and the orthography is important, as it shows at once the derivation of these names. Kirk-by-Lon’s-dale, and Kirk-by-Ken or Kent-dale, evidently show, that the prominent object, the churches of those towns on the banks of their respective river, the Lune, Loyne, or Lon, as it is variously written, and the Kent or Ken, and their dales, or vallies, furnished the cognomen.
I should be much obliged to T. Q. M. if he would point out the house where my friend Barnabee
———————— viewed
An hall, which like a taverne shewed
Neate gates, white walls, nought was sparing,
Pots brimful, no thought of caring.
If a very curious tradition respecting the very fine and remarkable bridge over the river Lune, together with a painting of it done for me by a cobbler at Lancaster, would be at all interesting to you, I shall be happy to send them to your publishers. The picture is very creditable to the artist; and after seeing it, I am sure you will say, that however (if ever) just, in former days, the moderns furnish exceptions to the well-known maxim—
Ne sutor ultra crepidam.
I am, sir,
your obedient servant,
Bob Short.
London, Sept. 25, 1827.
[368] [Col. 271], &c.
Discoveries
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. X.
The Copernican System that of the Ancients.
Copernicus places the sun in the centre of our system, the fixed stars at the circumference, and the earth and other planets in the intervening space; and he ascribes to the earth not only a diurnal motion around its axis, but an annual motion round the sun. This simple system, which explains all the appearances of the planets and their situations, whether processional, stationary, or retrograde, was so fully and distinctly inculcated by the ancients, that it is matter of surprise it should derive its name from a modern philosopher.
Pythagoras thought that the earth was a movable body, and, so far from being the centre of the world, performed its revolutions around the region of fire, that is the sun, and thereby formed day and night. He is said to have obtained this knowledge among the Egyptians, who represented the sun emblematically by a beetle, because that insect keeps itself six months under ground, and six above; or, rather, because having formed its dung into a ball, it afterwards lays itself on its back, and by means of its feet whirls that ball round in a circle.
Philolaüs, the disciple of Pythagoras, was the first publisher of that and several other opinions belonging to the Pythagorean school. He added, that the earth moved in an oblique circle, by which, no doubt, he meant the zodiac.
Plutarch intimates, that Timæus Locrensis, another disciple of Pythagoras, held the same opinion; and that when he said the planets were animated, and called them the different measures of time, he meant no other than that they served by their revolutions to render time commensurable; and that the earth was not fixed to a spot, but was carried about by a circular motion, as Aristarchus of Samos, and Seleucus afterwards taught.
This Aristarchus of Samos, who lived about three centuries before Jesus Christ, was one of the principal defenders of the doctrine of the earth’s motion. Archimedes informs us, “That Aristarchus, writing on this subject against some of the philosophers of his own age, placed the sun immovable in the centre of an orbit, described by the earth in its circuit.” Sextus Empiricus cites him, as one of the principal supporters of this opinion.
From a passage in Plutarch it appears, that Cleanthes accused Aristarchus of impiety and irreligion, by troubling the repose of Vesta and the Larian gods; when, in giving an account of the phenomena of the planets in their courses, he taught that heaven, or the firmament of the fixed stars, was immovable, and that the earth moved in an oblique circle, revolving at the same time around its own axis.
Theophrastus, as quoted by Plutarch, says in his History of Astronomy, which has not reached our times, that Plato, when advanced in years, gave up the error he had been in, of making the sun turn round the earth; and lamented that he had not placed it in the centre, as it deserved, instead of the earth, which he had put there contrary to the order of nature. Nor is it at all strange that Plato should reassume an opinion which he had early imbibed in the schools of the two celebrated Pythagoreans, Archytas of Tarentum, and Timæus the Locrian, as we see in St. Jerome’s Christian apology against Rufinus. In Cicero we find, that Heraclides of Pontus, who was a Pythagorean, taught the same doctrine. It may be added, that Tycho Brache’s system was known to Vitruvius, as well as were the motions of Venus and Mercury about the sun.
That the earth is round, and inhabited on all sides, and of course that there are Antipodes, or those whose feet are directly opposite to ours, is one of the most ancient doctrines inculcated by philosophy. Diogenes Laertius, in one part of his history, says, that Plato was the first who called the inhabitants of the earth opposite to us “Antipodes.” He does not mean that Plato was the first who taught this opinion, but only the first who made use of the term “Antipodes;” for, in another place, he mentions Pythagoras as the first who taught of When Plutarch wrote, it was a point in. controversy; and Lucretius and Pliny, were oppose this notion, as well as St. Augustine, serve as witnesses that it must have prevailed in their time.
The proofs which the ancients brought of the sphericalness of the earth, were the same that the moderns use. Pliny on this subject observes, that the land which retires out of sight to persons on the deck of a ship, appears still in view to those who are upon the mast. He thence concludes, that the earth is round. Aristotle drew this consequence not only from the circular shadow of the earth on the disk of the moon in eclipse, but also from this, that, in travelling south, we discover other stars, and that those which we saw before, whether in the zenith or elsewhere, change their situation with respect to us.
On whatever arguments the ancients founded their theory, it is certain they clearly apprehended that the planets revolved upon their own axis. Heraclides of Pontus, and Ecphantus, two celebrated Pythagoreans, said, that the earth turned from west to east, just as a wheel does upon its axis or centre. According to Atticus, the platonist, Plato extended this observation from the earth to the sun and other planets. “To that general motion which makes the planets describe a circular course, he added another, resulting from their spherical shape, which made each of them move about its own centre, whilst they performed the general revolution of their course.” Plotinus also ascribes this sentiment to Plato; for speaking of him he says, that besides the grand circular course observed by all the stars in general, Plato thought “they each performed another about their own centre.”
The same notion is ascribed to Nicetas of Syracuse by Cicero, who quotes Theophrastus to warrant what he advances. This Nicetas is he whom Diogenes Laertius names Hycetas, whose opinion, he says, was, that “the celerity of the earth’s motion about its own axis, and otherwise, was the only cause and reason of the apparent revolutions of the heavenly bodies.”
How useful the invention of telescopes has been to the astronomical observations of the moderns is particularly evident from their discovery, that the planets revolve on their axis, a discovery founded on the periodical revolution of the spots observed on their disks; so that every planet performs two revolutions, by one of which it is carried with others about a common centre; and, by the other, moves upon its axis round its own. Yet all that the moderns have advanced in this respect, serves only to confirm to the ancients the glory of being the first discoverers, by the aid of reason alone. The moderns in this are to the ancients, as the French philosophers to sir Isaac Newton; all whose labours and travail, in visiting the poles and equator to determine the figure of the earth, served only to confirm what sir Isaac had thought of it, without so much as stirring from his closet.