played by persons poorer and less taught than any of those now present, when any transient opportunity presents itself for gathering even a crumb of that information, from feasting upon which their state precludes and has precluded them.

"And now," resumed Mr. Gubbins, "having left behind us the question of splitting the planets into pieces, by means of the shock of Comets, we may spend a hasty thought upon the other mischiefs which these bodies have been thought to inflict; either, as our young friends have heard it reported, the setting the world on fire, or else the drowning it with water. These latter conceits, like those previously mentioned, and, indeed, like most others, in all branches of human inquiry, begin in the schools of the philosophers, however low they may be found at last, among what are commonly held the 'untaught' people; but the people without doors only repeat, at second or at fiftieth hand, what has been first said within. Now, the philosophers, in imagining such powerful effects from the attractive forces, or from the comparative nearness of visible Comets, have made no proper account of even their own calculations of their velocities. Whatever might be the mass and density of matter contained in the body and tail of a Comet (in proportion to which, if at rest, or at comparative rest, should be its power of attraction), the immense velocity with which it is known to move is an answer to all the fears which may be conjured up from this part of a Comet's history. To give effect to the power of attraction, the attracting and attracted bodies must always remain for at least some minute space of time in the required contiguity with each other. Take, for example, a common loadstone and some steel-filings; and if you move the load

stone past the filings with extreme velocity, the former will exercise no part of its attractive influence upon the latter; for the velocity countervails the attraction. From the same cause, a Comet, to exercise an attractive power upon any point of the sea or earth which form the surface of our globe, it ought to hang over, or be poised above that point, with exact perpendicularity, like a hawk or a kingfisher over their prey, for some given space of time; for time, as well as matter, is essential, as we have seen, to the result. Now, a Comet, moving with the velocity or swiftness which is always observable in its progress, can never remain perpendicularly or vertically over any one point of the earth or sea for a single instant; and, with respect to all other points than that over which it is actually passing, its position is more or less oblique or slanting to those points, and its influence upon them, therefore, nearly, if not absolutely nothing."

66

I think we can understand that, my worthy friend," said Farmer Mowbray.

Dismissing, then, the question of attraction, to which belongs that, also, of a Comet's drowning the world, or any part of it, by raising the sea, in the manner in which the tides are caused by the moon-a planet, by the way, which, if it is inconceivably smaller than a Comet, is at the same time, so much nearer to us, and so much longer over every given point;—dismissing, I say, the question of attraction, as we had before dismissed the question of collision, let us next (and to make a finish), attack what we may call the question of ignition—that is, the possibility of a Comet's firing the earth, not by actual touch, but by simple communication of its heat. We will allow, then, to raise the argument, that the efflux of cometary heat, or heat

and natural cause. If a Comet, for example, or any other natural body, by influencing the meteorology of the earth, become the cause of a sickly or unfruitful season, such an event will have its ulterior effects upon the reasoning and temper of a people, and may thus become productive of various human acts, in respect of which, the only error of the superstitious will be, to mistake (as is very common) the cause for the effect, and the effect for cause. We spoke, a little while ago, of the Comet which appeared in the year of the death of Julius Cæsar. Now, that Comet was neither, as it has been described, the sign that Cæsar was to be assassinated, nor the publication of the event, nor the menace of divine revenge; but it is very possible, nevertheless, that the Comet was the cause of Cæsar's death, or that, but for the Comet, Cæsar would not have been assassinated! The year of Cæsar's death was distinguished, not only by the appearance of a Comet, but by a cold, wet summer; a faint sun; a watery or sickly sky; and, what was the natural end of those misfortunes,-a bad harvest, and, perhaps, an unhealthy season. But these things, upon the principles which we have admitted, may have had for their cause the Comet; and, these things, however caused, would be attended, as is so usual, by public discontent, and by public ill will toward those that had the administration of affairs;-so that, this supposed, the steel of Brutus, either lifted under a share of that public feeling, or emboldened by its existence, may have struck at the same Cæsar, who, but for the appearance of the Comet, might never have been assassinated. The Roman people, through the effect of the Comet, might be sufferers in food and health; and nothing is more common than for nations,

either to ascribe the evils under which they suffer from Nature, to the faults of their governors or governments; or, at the least, to be induced by their sufferings to look with peculiar severity upon all those faults, and to indulge in excesses, or at least in scrutiny, from that sole cause. But, what I chiefly flatter myself with is this; that by bringing before you the now acknowledged and established fact, that (small or great, and visible or invisible to the naked eye) two appearances of Comets, upon an average, occur in our heavens annually, and that, by analogy, there have been nearly four thousand since the commencement of the Christian era, and four thousand, also, in every previous two thousand years; what, I say, I chiefly flatter myself with, is this; that, from these facts you see sufficient reason to conclude, that the appearances of Comets, which are no more than ordinary events, neither forerun, nor have any other connexion with any of the moral events of the earth upon which we live. It is, indeed, in this tendency of the study of Nature, to deliver human life from the agonies and burdens of unfounded fears, that so much of the value of this study, and of its artificial helps consists; for, as the poet has it, knowledge, of the nature, either of men or things, is the great remover of all prodigies:

• Nature well known, no prodigies remain :
COMETS are regular, and Wharton plain!'

CHAP. XIII.

I have learned

To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth.

WORDSWORTH.

IT was no longer after this, than the very day that followed, when, much to my surprise, and a little, at the first, to my alarm, who should I spy, as a visitor at Burford Cottage, but my very familiar acquaintance, Mr. Gubbins; whose name, from one cause or other, thus appears in almost every chapter of my book! Happily, however, and as it very soon appeared, I had nothing to fear from him upon this occasion; while, upon the other hand, my vanity was indulged by hearing myself the subject of much discourse between the schoolmaster and his kind and polished neighbour.

The success of Mr. Gubbins's experiment, to see whether I could find my way home from Cobbler Dykes's, was still the wonder of the more curious part of the village; and when first I heard the voice that had become rather too familiar to me, it was employed in answering some questions from Mr. Paulett, as to the management of the affair.

Mr. Paulett observed, "that he should never have entertained a doubt concerning a Red-breast's returning to its native haunts over the space of a small number of miles; for, besides other reasons," said he, "though not a bird of passage, in the largest sense of the phrase