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It was not till 240 years after these verses had been written that Copernicus propounded his system of the motion of the earth and the other planets round the sun; and that system only gradually won its way to acceptance, even in scientific minds, and with the aid of the demonstrations of Galileo. Till the end of the seventeenth century the Aristotelian system—further elaborated by the Alexandrian Ptolemy and by King Alphonso X. of Castile (1252-1284 )—maintained its influence, and filled the literature of all Europe with a particular train of associations. Shakespeare lived and died in the faith of the older system. Milton had been bred in it as a boy, and the plan of his universe in the 'Paradise Lost' was drawn accord-