THE COMETS
Shooting Stars, Bolides, Uranoliths or Meteoric Stones
What marvels have been reviewed by our dazzled eyes since the outset of these discussions! We first surveyed the magnificent host of stars that people the vast firmament of Heaven; next we admired and wondered at suns very differently constituted from our own; then returning from the depths of space, crossing at a bound the abyss that separates us from these mysterious luminaries, the distant torches of our somber night, terrible suns of infinity, we landed on our own beloved orb, the superb and brilliant day-star. Thence we visited his celestial family, his system, in which our Earth is a floating island. But the journey would be incomplete if we omitted certain more or less vagabond orbs, that occasionally approach the Sun and Earth, some of which may even collide with us upon their celestial path. These are in the first place the comets, then the shooting stars, the fire-balls, and meteorites.
Glittering, swift-footed heralds of Immensity, these comets with golden wings glide lightly through Space, shedding a momentary illumination by their presence. Whence come they? Whither are they bound?
What problems they propound to us, when, as in some beautiful display of pyrotechnics, the arch of Heaven is illuminated with their fantastic light!
But first of all—what is a Comet?
If instead of living in these days of the telescope, of spectrum analysis, and of astral photography, we were anterior to Galileo, and to the liberation of the human spirit by Astronomy, we should reply that the comet is an object of terror, a dangerous menace that appears to mortals in the purity of the immaculate Heavens, to announce the most fatal misfortunes to the inhabitants of our planet. Is a comet visible in the Heavens? The reigning prince may make his testament and prepare to die. Another apparition in the firmament bodes war, famine, the advent of grievous pestilence. The astrologers had an open field, and their fertile imagination might hazard every possible conjecture, seeing that misfortunes, great or small, are not altogether rare in this sublunar world.
How many intellects, and those not the most vulgar, from antiquity to the middle of the last century cursed the apparition of these hirsute stars, which brought desolation to the heart of man, and poured their fatal effluvia upon the head of poor Humanity. The history of the superstitions and fears that they inspired of old would furnish matter for the most thrilling of romances. But, on the other hand, the volume would be little flattering to the common-sense of our ancestors. Despite the respect we owe our forefathers, let us recall for a moment the prejudices attaching to the most famous comets whose passage, as observed from the Earth, has been preserved to us in history.
Fig. 49.—Great Comet of 1858.