OF INFINITE SPACE. 73 



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persed trains of comets, or the remains of a ruined world, is 

 a point beyond the power of the human understanding to 

 reach. 



COMETS. Of all the celestial objects which have arrested 

 the attention of mankind, none have excited such general 

 and lively apprehension as that of comets. A volume of no 

 inconsiderable dimensions might be compiled, and not with- 

 out interest, from the accounts of old chronicles respecting 

 their appearances, registering the quaintly expressed opin- 

 ions of the chroniclers concerning them, the terrestrial 

 events they have tacked to them as effects to a cause, and 

 the deportment to which men have been moved by the ap- 

 parition of 



" the blazing star 



Tbreat'ning the world with famine, plague, and war ; 

 To princes, death ; to kingdoms, many crosses ; 

 To all estates, inevitable losses ; 

 To herdsmen, rot ; to ploughmen, hapless seasons ; 

 To sailors, storms ; to cities, civil treasons." 



We have the word comet from the Greek xofiij, or hair, 

 a title which had its origin in the hairy appearance often 

 exhibited, a nebulosity, haze, or kind of luminous vapor, 

 being one of the characteristics of these bodies. Their 

 general features are a definite point or nucleus, a nebulous 

 light surrounding the nucleus, the hair, called by the French 

 chevelure, and a luminous train preceding or following the 

 nucleus. Milton refers to one of these attributes in a pas- 

 sage which countenances the popular superstition : 



" Satan stood 



Unterrified, and like a comet burned, 

 That fires the length of Ophiucus huge, ' 

 In th' arctic sky, and from its horrid hair, 

 Shakes, pestilence and war." 



Anciently, when the train preceded the nucleus, as is the 

 case when a comet has passed its perihelion, and recedes 



