130 



SCENERY OF THE HEAVENS. 



terror with which they were identified in ages past, when regarded as the heralds of 

 political misfortune, or portending fatal physical events. When tidings came across the 

 seas, brought by merchant and monk, that William the Norman was preparing to contest 

 the possession of his territories with Harold, a comet, flaring in the heavens, raised 

 misgivings in the Saxon mind as to the issue of the event, and unnerved him for the 

 struggle when all his vigour was most required. An after chronicle relates how a star 

 with three long tails appeared in the sky, how the learned declared that such stars 

 appeared only when a kingdom wanted a new king, and how the said star was called a 

 " comette." So, in 1618, a similar object was believed, in France, to foreshow another 

 Bartholomew massacre ; in Holland, to predict the death of Barneveldt ; at Vienna its 

 fiery aspect was viewed as symbolic of destruction to the Bohemian heretics ; while, in 

 England, it was connected with coming wars, and the death of James's queen. It is no 

 slight advantage to the moderns, that they can gaze upon such objects without antici- 

 pating disaster, and regard them as controlled by those laws to which their own world 

 is obedient. 



CHAPTER VI. 



AEROLITES. 



ROM every region of the globe, and in all ages of time within 

 the range of history, exhibitions of apparent instability in the 

 heavens have been observed, when the curtains of the evening 

 have been drawn. Suddenly, a line of light arrests the eye, 

 darting like an arrow through a varying extent of space, and 

 in a moment the firmament is as sombre as before. The 

 appearance is exac% that of a star falling from its sphere, 

 and hence the popular title of shooting star applied to it. The 

 apparent magnitudes of these meteorites are widely different, 

 and also their brilliancy. Occasionally, they are far more 

 resplendent than the brightest of the planets, and throw a very 

 perceptible illumination upon the path of the observer. A 

 second or two commonly suffices for the individual display, but in some instances it has 

 lasted several minutes. In every climate it is witnessed, and at all times of the year, 

 but most frequently in the autumnal months. As far back as records go, we meet with 

 allusions to these swift and evanescent luminous travellers. Minerva's hasty flight from 

 the peaks of Olympus to break the truce between the Greeks and Trojans, is compared 

 by Homer to the emission of a brilliant star. Virgil, in the first book of the Georgics, 

 mentions the shooting stars as prognosticating weather changes : 

 " And oft, before tempestuous winds arise, 



The seeming stars fall headlong from the skies, 

 And, shooting through the darkness, gild the night 

 With sweeping glories and long trains of light." 



Various hypotheses have been framed to explain the nature and origin of these remark- 

 able appearances. When electricity began to be understood, this was thought to afford 

 a satisfactory explanation, and the shooting stars were regarded by Beccaria and Vassali 

 as merely electrical sparks. When the inflammable nature of the gases became known, 

 Lavoisier and Volta supposed an accumulation of hydrogen in the higher regions of 

 the atmosphere, because of its inferior density, giving rise by ignition to the meteoric 



