Ill 
THE GREAT COMET OF 1861. 
BY JAMES BREEN. 
O N the night of June 30th, astronomers and the public in 
general were astonished by the appearance of a large and 
bright comet in the northern heavens. Those who saw it on 
that and the following few days, and who remembered and com- 
pared it with the other great comets of the present century, 
confessed that they had never seen anything so brilliant. Sir 
John Her sell el, the Nestor of modern astronomers, writes, that 
“ it far exceeded in brightness any I have before observed, those 
of 1811 and the recent splendid one of 1858 not excepted. It 
preserved the same magnificent appearance up to the 5th of 
July ; but after this date it diminished greatly in size and lustre, 
although still a conspicuous object in the heavens. Even as 
late as the 17th of August I was able to see it with the 
naked eye. 
No sooner had a sufficiency of observations been taken of the 
stranger, than astronomers set to work to discuss whether it 
was the great expected comet of 1264 and 1556, of which we 
had been promised a view for some years past. These bodies, 
as every one is aware, are supposed to have been one and the 
same ; and not only are they celebrated on this account, 
but likewise for the historical events connected with their 
appearance. If we are to believe the ancient chroniclers in 
respect to the comet of 1264, it wordd seem that Pope Urban 
fell sick the very day the comet was first noticed, and died 
exactly on the day it disappeared ! One old chronicler, bearing 
the somewhat appropriate name of Funckins, indeed mentions 
a quantity of supplementary mischief which it did on this occa- 
sion, in the shape of wars, plagues, drying up of springs, &c. ; 
but the death of the pontiff was considered as the principal 
purpose of its mission to the earth. In 1556 it is said to have 
caused the abdication of Charles V., who, on seeing it, repeated 
the well-known sentence, “ His indiciis vie viea fata vocant,” 
and retired to a monastery. 
The new-comer turned out, however, to be quite a different 
object from the mysterious body which exerted such a baneful 
influence on crowned heads. The comets of 1264 and 1556 
cut the ecliptic at 175° of longitude; whilst the longitude of 
their least distance from the sun was about 280°. The inclina- 
tion of their orbit to the ecliptic was only 30°, their least 
