"I consider a comet, or in the language of the vulgar, a blazing star, as a skyrocket, discharged by an hand that is Almighty".

Addison's Guardian.

"Lo! from the dread immensity of space, Returning with accelerated course, The rushing comet to the Sun descends; And as he sinks below the shading earth, With awful train projected o'er the heavens, The guilty nations tremble".

Thomson.

On the appearance of a remarkable comet, a short time before the death of the celebrated emperor Charlemagne, that monarch became extremely anxious upon the sight of this terrific messenger, and interrogated his Astronomers as to what it foretold ? - Eginardus, his secretary, a profound philosopher, with whom he then held a conference, answered him from the scriptures - " Be not dismayed at the signs of heaven". To which the emperor replied, that" he was not dismayed at such signs, hut feared and reverenced the powerful cause, and Divine fra-mer of them, who being incensed with anger against a people or a prince, is wont by these, to admonish them of his wrath, and to call them to repentance that they may avoid it.

Modern philosophers have been at infinite pains to persuade us, that every part of the sacred volume, which is replete with intimation relative to the importance of the " heavenly signs", is a mere jumble of words devoid of meaning; nay, they will not even allow that the most terrific, or blazing comet, has any thing to do with portending national calamities, or the fall of the mighty and tyrannical, in which light our ancestors invariably viewed them. - How far they have succeeded, and how far they have reaped the fruit of their labours, let the monstrous growth of atheism, sophistry, irreligion, crimes and immoralities, with the shocking contempt of " all that is sacred on earth, or holy in heaven", bear awful witness! - Our forefathers were pious, were brave, were religious; they fought, bled, and conquered for the land " of their altars", as well as their homes; but they believed in Astrology, they reverenced the " signs of heaven;" in a word, they were what is now called " superstitious", although, except in the dark ages of popery, (when the mitre and the crosier at times bore cruel sway,) we could challenge the whole of our modern sophists to affix aught like "superstition" or credulity to the memory of our heroic ancestors.

It is fortunate for the celestial science, and proves the connection between its truth, and the truth of the sacred volume, that in the minds of the great majority of mankind, there is, and for ever will be, an innate evidence in favour of the ancient and vulgar opinion; for that opinion, whatever the pomposity of modern scepticism may say on the subject, is certainly the most pious. - Daniel (in his 6th chapter) says, that " He (God) worketh signs and wonders in heaven, and in the earth;" and Christ, speaking of the calamities which were to come upon Judea, declared, that " nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences, and fearful sights; and great signs shall there be from heaven". - The history of Josephus (the Jewish historian) proves that all these things were fully accomplished.

Neither did these things escape the attention of the greatest and wisest men of ancient times. Cicero* writes", that in the civil war between Octavius Augustus and Mark Antony, it was observed that comets were the harbingers of the miseries that then befel them". He was of opinion", that such appearances were prenunciations of great events;" and which, he says, " were confirmed by various instances from all antiquity", Of the same opinion was Pliny,* who writes, " a fearful star this comet is, and not easily expiated; as it appeared by the late civil troubles when Octavius was consul; as also a second time by the intestine war of Pompey and Caesar; and in our days, about the time that Claudius Caesar was poisoned, and left the empire to Domitius Nero, in the time of whose feign and government there was a blazing comet, in a manner continually seen". - Another writer, no less celebrated among the ancient worthies, Seneca, exclaims, "Some comets are very cruel, and threaten us with the Worst of mischiefs; they bring with them, and leave behind them, the Seeds of blood and slaughter" - Socrates, the historian, records this passage† upon Gainas' be-sieging of Constantinople", So great was the danger which hung over the city, that it was presignified and portended by a huge blazing comet that reached from heaven to the earth, the like to which no man ever saw before", - Cedrenus, ‡ another historian, states, that a comet appeared before the death of Johannes Tzimicas, the emperor of the East. He says, " It foreshewed the death of the emperor, and those immediate calamities which were to befal the Roman dominions, by reason of their civil wars/' In another part of his writings he likewise states, that " a wonderful comet was seen in the reign of Constantine, which portended calamities that were to befal the world soon after", Anna Commena, the daughter of Alexius, the Greek emperor, (whose life she wrote) speaking of a most remarkable comet that appeared before the irruption of the Gau1s, § remarks, " This happened by the usual administration of Providence in such cases,for it is not fit that so great and strange an alteration of things as was brought to pass by that coming of theirs, should be without some previous denunciation and admonishment from heaven". She further remarks, that all the enquiry of spectators, was, " What evils doth this new light in the heavens come to warn us of? What strange tidings doth this messenger from above arrive with ?"

Cicero (de not. deer. I. 2.)

• Pliny (/. 2. c. 25.) † Socrates, b. 6. c. 6.

‡ Cedrenus, " vide his Compendium of History", § Alexiad l. 12.

Machiavel,* speaking concerning comets, remarks "however it cometh to pass, so it is, that we have it vouched by experience, that some great commotions are the consequences of such sighs as these". Milichius,† professor of mathematics in Mai-denburg, observes, " there is good grounds for the usual behaviour of men as to comets; for they have reason to gaze at them with so much terror and astonishment as they do, because it hath been proved, by a large induction of experience and observation, that they denounce great slaughter to the world, sacking of cities, subversion of kingdoms, and other public disasters", The learned Grotius‡ observes, that " Comets and fiery swords, and such like signs, are wont to be the forerunners of great changes in the world". Thus also Josephus, § who after commenting at large on the wonderful blindness and wilful obstinacy of his countrymen, (by which their ruin was preceded) remarks, that " when they were at any time premonisbed from the lips of truth itself, by prodigies, and other premonitory signs of their approaching ruin, they had neither eyes, ears, or understanding, to make a right use of them, but passed them over without heeding, or so much as thinking of them : as for example, what shall we say of the Comet, in the form of a sword, that hung over Jerusalem for a whole year together?

In addition to the foregoing, it may be mentioned that the most eminent mathematicians and philosophers of former times, held similar opinions of the prodigies portended by Comets. - Among whom may be named, as most conspicuous, Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, Longomontanus, Clavius, Piso, etc. etc.; and to deny their effects, even according to natural philosophy, is equally as absurd as to deny the known effects of the Son and Moon, or of any other celestial body. Their appearance may, on natural principles alone, be accounted as forerunning (and consequently presaging) evil, since their presence must certainly derange the system for a time; and as a clever Astrologer observes, " The ancients, who though not so learned as the moderns, were more acute in their observations, considered them as the cause of every calamity that could afflict mankind; and modern observations confirm this opinion". The great Comet in 1680, followed by another lesser one in 1682, was evidently the forerunner of all those remarkable and disastrous events that ended in the revolution in 1688. It also evidently presaged the revocation of the edict of Nantz; and the cruel persecution of the Protestants, by the French king Louis XIV., and which was afterwards followed by those terrible wars, which with little intermission, continued to ravage the finest parts of Europe for nearly twenty-four years.

* Machiavel, Disp. L i c. 56.

+ Vide his Commentary on the second book of Pliny.

‡ Grotius, is Prop. Joel, c ii. v. 30.

§ Josephus " Wart of the Jews" b. rii. c. 12.

Leybourn in his Mathematical Chariot,* gives a description of four Comets which appeared in 1618, the year before the commencement of the thirty years war in Germany, which evidently prognosticated the devastation, blood, and slaughter, that ensued; as one of them appears to have been particularly remarkable. Ricciolus, Hevelius, and Dr. Cotton Mather, have given a catalogue of all the remarkable Comets that had appeared before their time, with a list of the real occurrences which took place soon afterwards. Indeed it is almost superfluous to mention further examples of the kind, did we not bear in mind those recent instances, in which the appearances of these warning messengers have had ample verification, as to the events they foretold. Thus the Comet in 1807, which appeared towards the south in September, presaged the troubles in Spain, the dethroning of its king, and the subsequent usurpation of his son Ferdinand, with those remarkable events that almost immediately succeeded its appearance.

But the great Comet of 1811, which appeared near the constellation Ursa Major, and whose orbit crossed the ecliptic, in the sixteenth degree of Leo and Aquaries,was the most remarkable that has appeared in modern times, when about the time of its greatest northern declination, and when its appearance was in consequence most conspicuous, it daily passed over the midst of Europe. Neither were the nightly changes, of which it was the forerunner, less conspicuous in their quick and rapid succession. - A few months afterwards, the late French emperor, guided by his evil star, commenced his unfortunate march against Russia. - The burning of Moscow, the destruction of armies, and the stupendous events which almost immediately followed the appearance (of that celestial omen) are subjects of history, never to be forgotten ! - And he would deny the possibility of Comets, being sent as special tokens, to forewarn mankind, naturally considering after such facts as the above, offers a most pointed insult to the divine wisdom of the " Most High", the Almighty Ruler of the Universe.

• Leybourne, Cursus Mathem, p. 453.

Astrologers, in general, have supposed comets to be of a fiery nature; which seems likely to be the case, since their appearance is usually succeeded by an unseasonable warmth in our atmosphere. Providence seems also to have wisely ordered, that they should move in angles, that do not interfere with the planetary orbs that revolve in the zodiac. - To which it may be further adduced in evidence of their being sent for "signs", that the greatest of them, and the most remarkable, have uniformly appeared in the northern hemisphere; thus passing over those nations which have been the most convulsed by great political events.

" The hour arrived - and it became A wandering man of ahapeless flame, A pathless comet; and a curse. The menace of the universe".

BYRON.