bterranean fire. There are numberless
extinct volcanoes in both Britain and France; there are some on the
banks of the Rhine; indeed, they are thick-sown everywhere. Now, an
extinct volcano is not quite so safe a neighbour as many may suppose.
Vesuvius was an extinct volcano from time immemorial till the year 63,
when it suddenly broke out again, and soon after destroyed Pompeii and
Herculaneum; since which time it has never again subsided into entire
inactivity. Suppose Arthur's Seat, which is 'within a mile of
Edinburgh town,' were to recommence business in like manner, we should
like to know at how many years' purchase house property in that
beautiful New Town would be selling next day. Yet what is there about
an old volcano here more than an old volcano in Italy, to give
assurance that its means of annoyance and destruction are absolutely
extinguished?

There is, however, in the showings of science, a more serious danger
than any of these. Comets were once regarded as most terrific objects,
but only in a superstitious way, perplexing nations with fear of
change, and shaking pestilence from their horrid hair. During an
intermediate enlightened time, these notions passed away; and we have
even come to think, that such a visitant of our skies may exercise a
beneficial influence. We at least recollect when old gentlemen, after
dinner, brightened up at the mention of 'claret 1811,' merrily
attributing the extraordinary merits of the liquor to the comet of
that year. But comets, in the cool eye of modern science, are not
without their terrors. Crossing as they often do the paths of the
planets in their progress to and from their perihelia, it cannot but
be that they should now and then come in contact with one of these
spheres. One, called Lexell's, did come athwart the satellites of
Jupiter in 1769, and once again in 1779, so as to be deranged in its
own course. It made, indeed, no observable change in the movements of
the Jovian train, being of too light a consistence for that; but can
we doubt, that it might nevertheless seriously affect the condition of
their surfaces, and especially any animal life existing thereon? This
very comet, on the 28th of June 1770, passed the earth at a distance
only six times that of the moon. There is another called Biela's,
which revisits the sun every six years, or a little more; and this
busy traveller actually crossed our orbit in 1832, only a month before
we passed through the same