92 ON COMETS. 



is a great deal more about which our theories are quite 

 at fault; and, in short, that it is a subject rather cal- 

 culated to show us the extent of our ignorance than to 

 make us vain of our knowledge, and to cause us to ex- 

 claim with Hamlet, " There are more things in heaven 

 and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philo- 

 sophy." This ; the sublimity of the spectacle they 

 afford ; and the universal interest they inspire, make the 

 appearance of a great comet an occasion for the ima- 

 ginations of men to break loose from all restraint of 

 reason, and luxuriate in the strangest conceptions. I 

 have received letters about the comets of the last few 

 years, enough to make one's hair stand on end at the 

 absurdity of the theories they propose, and at the 

 ignorance of the commonest laws of optics, of motion, of 

 heat, and of general physics they betray in their writers. 

 This is always the case whenever a great comet appears, 

 only that in the later instances one feature of the general 

 commotion of mind they inspire has been wanting. 

 Thanks to the prevalence of juster notions of the con- 

 stitution of the universe, and of the relation in which 

 man stands to its Author; countries calling them- 

 selves civilized appear not to have been disgraced by 

 any of those panic terrors, or thought it necessary to 

 propitiate Heaven by any of those superstitious ex- 

 travagances, about which we read on several former 

 occasions. Even at Naples, which seems to be almost 

 the lowest point of Europe in the scale of intellec- 

 tual and social progress, I have not heard that it was 

 thought necessary to liquefy the blood of St Januarius, 



