d it went on waning
until the 26th of June, when it ceased to be discernible except
through the medium of the telescope. This was a remarkable,
though certainly not an unprecedented proceeding on the part of a
star; but one singular circumstance in its behavior was that,
after the lapse of nearly two months, it began to blaze up again,
though not with equal ardor, and after maintaining its glow for a
few weeks, and passing through sundry phases of color, it
gradually paled its fires, and returned to its former
insignificance. How many years had elapsed since this awful
conflagration actually took place, it would be presumptuous to
guess; but it must be remembered that news from the heavens,
though carried by the fleetest of messengers, light, reaches us
long after the event has transpired, and that the same celestial
carrier is still dropping the tidings at each station it reaches
in space, until it sinks exhausted by the length of its flight.

As the star had suddenly flamed up, was it not a natural
supposition that it had become inwrapped in burning hydrogen,
which in consequence of some great convulsion had been liberated
in prodigious quantities, and then combining with other elements,
had set this hapless world on fire? In such a fierce
conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be consumed, and
the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in this
case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst
of light on the 20th of August.

By such a catastrophe, it is not wholly impossible that our own
globe may some time be ravaged; for if a word from the Almighty
were to unloose for a few moments the bonds of affinity which
unite the elements of water, a single spark would bring them
together with a fury that would kindle the funeral pyre of the
human race, and be fatal to the planet and all the works that are
thereon.

"Your argument," he then instantly added, "is by no means a good one.
What do we know of the Supreme Architect of the Universe, or of his
designs? He builds up worlds, and he pulls them down; he kindles suns
and he extinguishes them. He inflames the comet, in one portion of its
orbit, with a heat that no human imagination can conceive of; and in
another, subjects the same blazing orb to a cold intenser than that
which invests forever the antarctic pole. All that we know of Him we
gat