point in space! Another, which made a grand
appearance in the western sky in March 1843, would have involved us in
its tail, if we had been only a _fortnight_ earlier at a particular
place! Rather fine shaving that in the celestial economics. Now, if we
consider that as many as eight comets have been observed
telescopically in a single year (1846), we must see that the chance of
a collision of this kind is not quite so small as to be unworthy of
regard. If it be true that there are thousands of comets, all of which
make periodical visits to the near neighbourhood of the sun, it must
be evident that the earth, being itself not far, comparatively
speaking, from that luminary, must be rather liable as otherwise to a
brush from one of these wanderers; and, indeed, the wonder is, that
several thousand years should have passed without, so far as we know,
any one such collision having taken place.

Seeing what a highly-organised system is formed by the physical and
organic arrangements upon our planet, one is apt to think that the
scheme of Providence must have been framed with a provision for the
complete exclusion of such accidents. To allow of the sudden undoing
of all this fair scene, which it has taken thousands of years to bring
out in its full proportions, seems like a wanton destruction of
valuable property, and we are not disposed to believe that such a
thing could be permitted. But we must at the same time remember, that
our sense of what is important and consequential has a regard to the
earth alone, which is but a trifling atom in the universe. Who can
tell what are the limits which the Master of worlds has set to mundane
calamity? And assuredly, even though a whole solar system were here
and there, now and then, to be remodelled in respect of all such
arrangements as have been spoken of, it could not be supposed to be a
very great event in the progress of the entire scheme, seeing that
astronomy has taught us to regard such systems as no more than
particles in the dust-cloud or grains of sand on the sea-shore. It
must, then, in sober reasoning be admitted, that our mere abhorrence
of so much destruction is no guidance to our judgment on this point;
and that for anything we can see of the plans of Providence, an
entanglement of our globe with a comet may take place any day, with
consequences incalculably damaging for the meantime, though not
conclusively destructive, and perhaps necessary as a step towards an
impr