COMETS. 



117 



reform of the Old. The comet as then seen in Cancer was of a bright gold colour. In 

 1607, the ninth visit, the Copernican system had been broached, and Galileo and Keppler 

 were labouring to establish it. The course of the comet was observed through Ursa 

 Major, Bootes, Serpentis, and Ophiuchus. Its light was pale and watery. The tail is 

 described as long and thick, like a flaming lance or sword. The apparent magnitude of 

 the head was greater than that of any of the fixed stars, or Jupiter ; and, say the chronicles 

 of the age, of its direful effects "the Duke of Lorraine died" "a great war between 

 the Swedes and the Danes." " The comet does me much honour," was the remark of 

 Cardinal Mazarine on his death-bed, when informed by his servile attendants that 

 one had made its appearance. It is happily said in Shakspeare, in allusion to this 

 sycophancy, 



" When beggars die there are no comets seen." 



The tenth return brings us to the time of Newton and Halley. Cassini calls it then as 



clear and round as Jupiter, referring to the nucleus. At 

 the eleventh revolution in 1759, it was a pale and feeble 

 object. Messier was obliged to use a powerful reflecting 

 telescope. Palitzch, indeed, caught it with the naked eye 

 once, .but no one else appears to have done so. In 1835, 

 the twelfth advent, it was much more distinct, and was 

 frequently seen without a telescope presenting the annexed 

 appearance. 



Its thirteenth return will occur in 1911, when the present 

 generation shall have passed away, and the few remaining 

 infants of to-morrow be bending under the infirmities of age. 

 The later apparitions of Halley's comet have thus been 

 far less brilliant and conspicuous than its earlier exhibitions. 

 At its four last periodic returns, it bore no resemblance to 

 the comceta horrendce, magnitudinis of the year 1305. Arago conjectures that the comets, 

 in describing their immense orbits, disseminate in space at each revolution all the matter 

 which when near the perihelion is detached from the nucleus and forms the tail. It is 

 clearly possible, therefore, that some of them may in process of time completely waste 

 away, unless by travelling through similar detached trains, they recover a quantity of 

 matter sufficient to compensate for their own losses. We may believe, also, that dissi- 

 pation occurring, the same body that now presents an insignificant appearance, exhibited 

 a bolder front in days of yore, though the early annalists and artists have undoubtedly 

 borrowed largely from imagination in describing these bodies. In a celestial atlas published 



about the year 1680, several drawings of comets occur, from which the annexed are selected* 



I 3 



