108 SCENERY OF THE HEAVENS. 



and intelligent inhabitants ; and the inference is just, that a similar arrangement distin- 

 guishing other planets, points to the same destination. It is a possible conception, but 

 we should smile at the credulity of the man who believed it real, that a fleet of ships 

 navigating the ocean, with sails unfurled and pennons flying, did so without a cargo in the 

 hold, a crew on board, or an object in view. 



CHAPTER V. 



COMETS. 



F all the celestial objects which have arrested the attention of 

 mankind, none have excited such general and lively apprehen- 

 sion as those upon the consideration of which we now enter. 

 Undoubtedly their sudden appearance, rapid movements, and 

 occasionally extraordinary aspect, were calculated to awaken 

 terror in ages of ignorance and superstition, and to originate 

 the wild conjectures that are on record respecting their cha- 

 racter and office. The Romans regarded a comet which was 

 seen in the year 44 before our era as a celestial chariot conveying 

 the soul of Csesar, who had been assassinated a short time before 

 its advent, to the skies. Cometary bodies have been deemed the vehicles in which 

 departed spirits are shipped by their guardian angels for the realms of Paradise ; and on 

 the other hand, they have been viewed as the active agents of natural and moral evil 

 upon the surface of the earth, and been formally consigned to ecclesiastics for excommu- 

 nication and cursing. A volume of no inconsiderable dimensions might be compiled, 

 and not without interest, from the accounts of old chronicles respecting their appear- 

 ances, registering the quaintly expressed opinions 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 apparition of 



" the blazing star 



Threat'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 *o//j, or hair, a title which had its origin in the 

 hairy appearance often exhibited, a nebulosity, haze, or kind of luminous vapour, 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 cheve- 

 lure and a luminous train preceding or following the nucleus. Milton refers to one of 

 these attributes in a passage 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 from the sun, it was called the beard, being only termed the tail 



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