The last touch is as fine in its way as Sydney Smith's remark that, if London were destroyed by an earthquake, the surviving citizens would celebrate the event by a public dinner among the ruins. Voltaire's prediction was not fulfilled exactly to the letter, but what actually happened was even funnier than what his lively imagination had suggested. It was stated by a Parisian Professor in 1832 (as a reason why the Academy of Sciences should refute an assertion then rife to the effect that Biela's comet would encounter the earth that year) that during the cometic panic of 1773 'there were not wanting people who knew too well the art of turning to their advantage the alarm inspired by the approaching comet, and places in Paradise were sold at a very high rate.[44] The announcement of the comet of 1832 may produce similar effects,' he said, 'unless the authority of the Academy apply a prompt remedy; and this salutary intervention is at this moment implored by many benevolent persons.'
In recent years the effects produced on the minds of men by comets have been less marked than of yore, and appear to have depended a good deal on circumstances. The comet of the year 1858 (called Donati's), for example, occasioned no special fears, at least until Napoleon III. made his famous New-Year's day speech, after which many began to think the comet had meant mischief. But the comet of 1861, though less conspicuous, occasioned more serious fears. It was held by many in Italy to presage a very great misfortune indeed, viz. the restoration of Francis II. to the throne of the Two Sicilies. Others thought that the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy and the death of Pope Pius IX. were signified. I have not heard that any very serious consequences were expected to follow the appearance of Coggia's comet in 1874. The great heat which prevailed during parts of the summer of 1876 was held by many to be connected in some way with a comet which some very unskilful telescopist constructed in his imagination out of the glare of Jupiter in the object-glass of his telescope. Another benighted person, seeing the Pleiades low down through a fog, turned them into a comet, about the same time. Possibly the idea was, that since comets are supposed to cause great heats, great heats may be supposed to indicate a comet somewhere; and with minds thus prepared, it was not wonderful, perhaps, that telescopic glare, or an imperfect view of our old friends the Pleiades, should have been mistaken for a 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.
Then he gave them an account of the famous moon hoax, which came out in 1835. It was full of the most barefaced absurdities, yet people swallowed it all; and even Arago is said to have treated it seriously as a thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would have certainly notified him of these marvellous discoveries. The writer of it had not troubled himself to invent probabilities, but had borrowed his scenery from the 'Arabian Nights' and his lunar inhabitants from 'Peter Wilkins.'—Oliver Wendell Holmes (in The Poet at the Breakfast-Table).
In one of the earliest numbers of 'Macmillan's Magazine, the late Professor De Morgan, in an article on Scientific Hoaxing, gave a brief account of the so-called 'lunar hoax'—an instance of scientific trickery frequently mentioned, though probably few are familiar with the real facts. De Morgan himself possessed a copy of the second English edition of the pamphlet, published in London in 1836. But the original pamphlet edition, published in America in September 1835, is not easily to be obtained. The proprietors of the New York 'Sun,' in which the fictitious narrative first appeared, published an edition of 60,000 copies, and every copy was sold in less than a month. Lately a single copy of that edition was sold for three dollars seventy-five cents.[45]