HALLEY’S COMET—CAMPBELL. 259 
All sorts of fantastic and fearsome ideas have attached to comets, 
from early historical times to near the close of the nineteenth century. 
The writer remembers clearly that his neighbors of thirty years ago 
considered comets to be messengers of disaster. The greatest comet 
of the nineteenth century, Donati’s, of 1858, was the accredited fore- 
runner of our civil war. Menieral Rone cenr tine of comets as 
flaming swords were common. (See fig. 2.) 
In Homer’s [liad, XTX, 381, we read: 
Like the red star, that from his flaming hair 
Shakes down disease, pestilence, and war. 
Se 
S 
eS MHS 
I) NN ag 
iy, 
yy 
Si> Mi \ 
oF AW Y 
ae 
My iat Z 
ae SS 
iW) 
=e 
» 
3 
I'1G. 2.—Representation of comets as flaming swords. 
From Evelyn’s Diary of 1624: 
* * * the effect of that comet, 1618, still working in the prodigious revolu- 
tions now beginning in Europe, especially in Germany. 
From Milton’s Paradise Lost, IT, 708-711: 
* * * and like a comet burn’d, 
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 
In th’ Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 
Shakes pestilence and war. 
Not the least of the services of science to civilization has been the 
~ gradual emancipation of humanity from all fear of comets. 
Astronomers will welcome the coming of Halley’s comet, full ae 
hope that the photo-dry-plate, the spectroscope, and other ways and 
means of attack invented since its last visit in 1835 will enable them 
to remove something of the mystery of comets, the most mysterious 
of all celestial bodies. 
