April 5, 1883 | 
NATURE 
533 
articulation, but simply a vowel sound first whispered 
and then pronounced aloud. Accent has for its object 
to make one syllable or several more prominent than 
those around. The English language tends to throw 
it as far back in a word as is practicable. A long word 
may have one strong, and one or even two weaker accents 
in it. 
Inflexion is either rising, falling, or a compoun1 of 
these. As a rule, rising tones appeal, falling tones assert, 
compound tones suggest ; a complete balance of the two 
is the antithesis, which can be heard in such a remark as 
“Tt was not so much what you said—as your manner of 
saying it, which struck me.’’ The contrasted effect of 
the two accents may be reproduced by reading this sen- 
tence aloud and intelligently. 
When inflexion is applied in this way to sentences, 
three cases occur: the sentence either asserts, asks, or 
orders, and the nature of the inflexion depends on the 
relative circumstances of the speaker and listener. 
Delivery and modulation are combinations of pausing 
and of pitch. The conversational pitch being taken as 
a medium, all below this denotes sadness or solemnity ; 
all above it joy or levity. Force, expression, and senti- 
ment, thus developed, are infinite in their variety. 
Emphasis can only be attained and regulated by a full 
perception of the point to be brought out; as a rule it 
marks the predicate of a logical expression. False 
emphasis is the foundation of many quaint stories in 
common currency. Speaking generally, new, contrasted, 
or antithetical ideas are marxed by emphasis. 
In conclusion, the lecturer gave three general rules by 
which any one can speak. The first, in the words of 
Horace : “ Dicendi recté principium est sapere, et fons ;” 
that is, “ Know exactly what you are going to say.” The 
second, “ Endeavour to forget yourself.” This frame of 
mind had been formulated by old elocutionists as ‘* Have 
a contempt for your audience.” He preferred to state it 
ina less obnoxious way as “ Consider yourself one of your 
audience.’ The third, ‘Be natural and unaffected.” 
By bearing in mind these simple injunctions any man 
free of congenital or acquired defects, though he might 
not be a brilliant, could hardly fail in being an agreeable 
and sympathetic speaker. 
PROFESSOR SCHIAPARELLI ON THE 
GREAT COMET OF 1882 
EADERS of Nature will be glad to have a full 
report of the interesting popular lecture which Prof. 
Schiaparelli, the well-known Italian astronomer, gave in | 
Milan on February 4, on the great comet of 1882. Re- 
ferring to the national misfortune which had given origin 
to his and other lectures, he began by showing that while a 
connection between the comet and the inundations which 
wasted, in October. 1882, many Venetian provinces, was | 
not absolutely impossible, it was at least very improbable, 
both because the comet was yet a great distance from 
the earth when the floods rose, and from the difficulty of 
understanding why the supposed influence of the comet 
should have acted only on that little part of the globe. 
After this preamble M. Schiaparelli gave the public a 
rapid and elementary account of our planetary system, 
and of the comet's trajectory during its passage near the 
sun and planets. The orbit of the comet, in the position 
which could be subjected to astronomical measurement, 
is parabolic, in a plane inclined 30° or 40° to planes of 
the solar system. The greater portion of the orbit is in 
the southern regions ; for in the austral hemisphere the 
comet was sooner and better observed than in the boreal, 
where it never was very high above the horizon. The 
vertex of the parabola is very near the sun, and only when 
the comet was approaching to this position with an extra- 
ordinary rapidity, astronomers could perceive it,—at 
Auckland (September 2), at the Cape of Good Hope, in 
Australia, the Argentine Republic, and Brazil. The direc- 
tion of its movement was perhaps towards the sun; but the 
inconceivable rate which the comet acquired in its falling 
towards the sun (480 km. in a second, sixteen times the 
mean velocity of the earth in its orbit), and the lateral 
rush coming fron it, were enough at that time to overcome 
the attractive power of the sun, and to hinder the great 
luminary from swallowing it. The attraction of the sun 
failed not to produce its effect, slackening successively 
its flight ; but being animated by this great velocity, the 
comet could escape in security to where the sun’s action 
is very feeble, and whence it will not return for many 
years. 
The Cape astronomer had the opportunity of wit- 
nessing this rare spectacle of a heavenly body which, 
rushing headlong from extraplanetary depths, went 
directly on the sun, as if it would fall in, and notwith- 
standing, in a few hours delivered itself, changing com- 
pletely its direction of motion. At that time the earth 
was placed very obliquely in respect to the arc described 
by the comet about the sun, so that astronomers observed 
it with a great foreshortening of perspective. In those 
hours the comet, being exposed to an extraordinary heat, 
swelled and became so luminous, that the Cape astro- 
nomers, and afterwards some in Europe, could see it 
near the sun. They could make the absolutely new 
observation of a comet's transit before the solar disk, 
thus satisfying an ancient desire of astronomers, who 
have wished to know if in those bodies’ head, which often 
appears as a very bright star, is bidden an obscure 
perceptible nucleus, and to judge of the density of the 
shining atmosphere whose splendour produces the star’s 
appearance. In this case it was not possible to be 
deceived by an illusion, as happened in 1819. Messrs. 
Finlay and Elkin, at the Cape, saw the comet gradually 
ap} roach the sun’s limb, touch it, and disappear ; so that 
their searches to find the comet in the place where it 
obviously was were vain. The comet then was so thin 
and clear, that the most slender cloud would more 
obscure the sun: its solid nucleus (if it had a nucleus, as 
was very likely) was so small that the observer’s telescope 
could not perceive any spot or shade. After it left the 
neighbourhood of the sun, the effects of the enormous 
heat began to appear in the development of that splendid 
tail, which everybody could see in the morning hours of 
October and November. 
The orbit of the comet (continued the Professor) is not 
easily deducible from the very little portion which we 
know. Both becau e to assign a trajectory observed in a 
small branch is very difficult, and sometimes impossible, 
and because exact and definitive calculations will not be 
undertaken before the vanishing of the comet ; the notes 
which at present can be given are only approximative. 
On observations of last September, October, and Novem- 
ber, it was stated that the period of the comet is included 
between eight and nine centuries, and the aphelion is 
nearly six times farther than Neptune from the sun (175 
times the earth's mean vector radius), the rate of velocity 
in aphelion and perihelion being as I to 23,000. 
On the brightness of the comet, M. Schiaparelli ob- 
served that it could be attributed to three causes: the 
strong illumination of the sun, its own light, and electrical 
discharges, which take place continually in similar bodies, 
in the opinion of expert physicists. Those causes united 
to make that very splendid appearance of a matter clearer 
and less dense than the rarefied air of our best pneumatic 
engines. The density of the tail was so small that an 
astronomer estimated it at no more than a few kilo- 
grammes, while its dimensions were larger than were 
ever before observed in comets. It is true that other 
comets (that of 1861, for example) showed an apparently 
longer tail, their position in respect to the earth being 
more favourable to observation; but in the annals of 
