DEDICATION

of mind and a bridesmaid-like sympathy, it finally happened that you brought me before you as if I were present, even from the most remote corner of the American World original: "Orbis Americani", attracted by that powerful magnetism of similar natures homoeotropia: a Greek-derived term used by Kircher to describe the natural attraction between things of a similar character or quality. I wondered, and I myself discovered in you, a native of the New World, a universal learning polypaedia: a vast, all-encompassing education in many arts and sciences and a devotion to all the fine arts. Indeed, in those foreign regions of America and in parts of the sky unknown to us, I found a man equipped with so many resources of virtue and endowed by God with so many prerogatives of spiritual gifts.