vision of the
heat-producing comet.

It should be a noteworthy circumstance to those who still continue to
look on comets as signs of great catastrophes, that a war more
remarkable in many respects than any which has ever yet been waged
between two great nations--a war swift in its operations and decisive in
its effects--a war in which three armies, each larger than all the
forces commanded by Napoleon I. during the campaign of 1813, were
captured bodily--should have been begun and carried on to its
termination without the appearance of any great comet. The civil war in
America, a still more terrible calamity to that great nation than the
success of Moltke's operations to the French, may be regarded by
believers as presignified by the great comet of 1861. But it so chances
that the war between France and Germany occurred near the middle of one
of the longest intervals recorded in astronomical annals as unmarked by
a single conspicuous comet--the interval between the years 1862 and
1874.

If the progress of just ideas respecting comets has been slow, it must
nevertheless be regarded as on the whole satisfactory. When we remember
that it was not a mere idle fancy which had to be opposed, not mere
terrors which had to be calmed, but that the idea of the significance of
changes in the heavens had come to be regarded by mankind as a part of
their religion, it cannot but be thought a hopeful sign that all
reasoning men in our time have abandoned the idea that comets are sent
to warn the inhabitants of this small earth. Obeying in their movements
the same law of gravitation which guides the planets in their courses,
the comets are tracked by the skilful mathematician along those remote
parts of their course where even the telescope fails to keep them in
view. Not only are they no longer regarded as presaging the fortunes of
men on this earth, but men on this earth are able to predict the
fortunes of comets. Not only is it seen that they cannot influence the
fates of the earth or other planets, but we perceive that the earth and
planets by their attractive energies influence, and in no unimportant
degree, the fates of these visitants from outer space. Encouraging,
truly, is the lesson taught us by the success of earnest study and
careful inquiry in determining some at least among the laws which govern
bodies once thought the wildest and most erratic creatures in the whole
of God's universe.

IX.

_THE LUNAR HOAX._