164. | 
Yet here thy courage could outbrave. 
All the slight horrors of the grave 5 
Pale death’s arrest 
Ne’er shockt thy breast 5 
That ugly skeleton mey guilty spirits 
daunt, 
Whom the dire ghosts of crimes departed 
haunt 5 
Arm'd with bold innocence thou could’st the 
mormo dare, 
And on the bare-fac’d king of terrors stare ; 
As free from ali efiect as from the cause of 
fear.- _ 
- 
Proceedings of Learned Socteties. 
(March 1 
Go, happy sul, ascend the joyful sky 
Prepar’d to shine with your bright company $ 
Go, mount the spangled sphere 
And make it brighter by another star ; 
Yet stop not, “till thou art swallow’d quite 
In the vast unexhausted ocean of delight ; 
Delight, which there alone in its true essence 
is § 
Where saints keep an eternal carnival of bliss; 
And spread regales of joy, 
Which fill but never cloy 5 
Where pleasures spring for ever new, 
Immortal as thyself and boundless too. 
PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 
ee 
ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, 
N the second part of the Philosophical 
L: ransactions for 1808, Dr. HrEr- 
scHELL has published Observations on a 
kite Comet, made with a View to investi- 
chte its Magnitude, and the Nature of its 
illumination. 
‘The comet, which we have lately ob- 
served, says Dr. Herschell, was pointed 
out to me by Mr. Piggot, pas discovered 
it at Bath the 28th of September; and 
the first time I bad an opportunity of ex- 
aimining it was the 4th of October, when 
its brightness to the naked eye gave me 
great hopes to find it of a different con- 
siruction from many I have seen before, 
fn which no solid body could be discover- 
ed with any of my telescopes. 
In the following obser vations, my atten- 
tion bas been directed to such ‘phenomena 
only, as were likely to give us some infor- 
mation relating to the physical condition 
of the comet: it will therefore not be ex- 
pected that I should give an account of its 
motion, which I was well assured would 
be’ most accurately ascertained at the 
Royal Observatory at Greenwich. 
’ The different parts ot acomet have been 
generally expressed by terms that may be 
liable to misap prehension, such as the 
head, the tail, the coma, and the nucleus; 
for in reading what some authors say of 
the head, when they speak of the size of 
the comet, it is evident that they take it 
for what is often called the nucleus. The 
truth is,.that inferior telescopes, which ' 
cannot show the real nucleus, will give a \ 
certain megnitude of the comet, which 
‘may be ca'led its head; it includes all the 
_very bright surrounding light; nor is the 
“name of the head badly applied, if we 
keep it to this meaning; and since, with 
proper restriction, the terms which have 
-. been used may be retained, I shall give a 
short account of my observations of the 
comet, as they relate to the above-men- 
tioned particulars, namely, the nucleus, 
the head, the coma, and the tail, without 
regarding the order of the time when they 
were made. The dateof each observation, 
however will be added, that any person 
who may hereafter be in possession of 
more accurate elements of the comet’s 
orbit, than those which [ have at present, 
may repeatithe calculations in order to 
obtain a more accurate result. 
Of the Nucleus. 
From what has already been said, it. 
will easily be understood, that, by the nu- 
cleus of the comet, I mean that part of 
the head which appears to be a condensed 
or solid body, and in which none of the 
very bright coma is included, It shoald be 
remar ked, that from this definition it fol~ 
lows, that when the nucleus is very small, 
no telescope, but what has light ad pow- 
er in an eminent degree, will show it dis- ° 
tinctly. 
Observations. 
Oct. 4. 1807.. Ten-feet reflector. The 
comet has a nucleus, the disk of which i is 
plainly to be seen. 
Oct. 6. I examined the disk of the 
comet with a proper s-t of diaphragms, in 
order to see whether any part of it were 
spurious; but when the exterior light was 
excluded, so far from. appearing larg ger, as 
would have been the case with a spurious 
disk, it appeared rather diminished for 
want of light; nor was its diameter lessen 
ej when [I wsed only the outside rays of 
tae mirror. The visible disk of the comet 
therefore is a real one. 
Oct. 4. Lviewed the comet with dife 
ferent magnifying powers, buc found that 
its light was not sufficiently imtense to 
bear very high ones. As far as 200 and 
300, my ten-feet reflector acted very well, 
but ‘with 400 and 500 there was ee 
i gaine 
