contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard
it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced
against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a
detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that
the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly
flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in
anecdotes."

Why? "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad statement
--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping statement,
coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly
extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of social life,
"almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He
has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes--
mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature,"
furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did he mean not in
literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not
able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have