-ii. 706-11.

This passage is eminently descriptive of the appearance of a great
comet, and the occasion on which it is introduced adds to the intensity
of the lurid imaginings and feelings of terror and dismay with which
these objects have always been regarded. The comparison of the enraged
Prince of Hell with one of those mysterious and fiery looking visitors
to our skies was a grand conception of the poet's, and one worthy of the
mighty combatant. Ophiuchus (the Serpent-bearer) is a large
constellation which occupies a rather barren region of the heavens to
the south of Hercules. It has a length of about forty degrees, and is
represented by the figure of a man bearing a serpent in both hands. It
is not easy to imagine why Milton should have assigned the comet to
this uninteresting constellation; he may possibly have seen one in this
part of the sky, or his poetical ear may have perceived that the
expression 'Ophiuchus huge,' which has about it a ponderous rhythm, was
well adapted for the poetic description of a comet.

The only other allusion in the poem to a comet is near its conclusion,
when the Cherubim descend to take possession of the Garden, prior to the
removal of Adam and Eve--

High in front advanced,
The brandished sword of God before them blazed,
Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat,
And vapour as the Lybian air adust
Began to parch that temperate clime.--xii. 632-36.

FALLING STARS

On any clear night an observer can, by attentively watching the heavens,
perceive a few of those objects which become visible for a moment as a
streak of light and then vanish. They are the result of the combustion
of small meteoric masses having a celestial origin, and travelling with
cosmical velocity, and which, in their headlong flight, become so heated
by contact with the Earth's atmosphere that they are converted into
glowing vapour. This vapour when it cools condenses into fine powder or
dust, and gradually descends upon the Earth's surface, where it can be
detected.

Shooting stars become visible at a height varying between twenty and one
hundred and thirty miles, and their average velocity has been estimated
at about thirty miles a second. Though casual falling stars can be seen
at all times in every part of the heavens, yet there are certain periods
at which they appear in large numbers, and have been observed to radiate
from certain well-defined parts of t