An inquiry into the Copernican system ... wherein it is proved, in the clearest manner, that the earth has only her diurnal motion ... with an attempt to point out the only true way whereby mankind can receive any real benefit from the study of the heavenly bodies. By John Cunningham.[[384]] London, 1789, 8vo.
The "true way" appears to be the treatment of heaven and earth as emblematical of the Trinity.
Cosmology. An inquiry into the cause of what is called gravitation or attraction, in which the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the preservation and operations of all nature, are deduced from an universal principle of efflux and reflux. By T. Vivian,[[385]] vicar of Cornwood, Devon. Bath, 1792, 12mo.
Attraction, an influx of matter to the sun; centrifugal force, the solar rays; cohesion, the pressure of the atmosphere. The confusion about centrifugal force, so called, as demanding an external agent, is very common.
THOMAS PAINE'S RIGHTS OF MAN.
The rights of Man, being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French Revolution.[[386]] By Thomas Paine.[[387]] In two parts. 1791-1792. 8vo. (Various editions.)[[388]]
A vindication of the rights of Woman, with strictures on political and moral subjects. By Mary Wollstonecraft.[[389]] 1792. 8vo.
A sketch of the rights of Boys and Girls. By Launcelot Light, of Westminster School; and Lætitia Lookabout, of Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. [By the Rev. Samuel Parr,[[390]] LL.D.] 1792. 8vo. (pp.64).
When did we three meet before? The first work has sunk into oblivion: had it merited its title, it might have
lived. It is what the French call a pièce de circonstance; it belongs in time to the French Revolution, and in matter to Burke's opinion of that movement. Those who only know its name think it was really an attempt to write a philosophical treatise on what we now call socialism. Silly government prosecutions gave it what it never could have got for itself.
Mary Wollstonecraft seldom has her name spelled right. I suppose the O! O! character she got made her Woolstonecraft. Watt gives double insinuation, for his cross-reference sends us to Goodwin.[[391]] No doubt the title of the book was an act of discipleship to Paine's Rights of Man; but this title is very badly chosen. The book was marred by it, especially when the authoress and her husband assumed the right of dispensing with legal sanction until the approach of offspring brought them to a sense of their child's interest.[[392]] Not a hint of such a claim is found in the book, which is mostly about female education. The right claimed for woman is to have the education of a rational human being, and not to be considered as nothing but woman throughout youthful training. The maxims of Mary Wollstonecraft are now, though not derived from her, largely followed in the education of girls, especially in home education: just as many of the political principles of Tom Paine, again not derived from him, are the guides of our actual legislation. I remember, forty years ago, an old lady used to declare that she disliked girls from the age of sixteen to five-and-twenty. "They are full," said she, "of femalities." She spoke of their behavior to women as well as to men. She