May see, before thou growest gray, And there are dim and hollow eyes, And there's a malady of mind, A sickness of the soul, A blight that comes o'er human-kind Oh! some will break that fearful chain And thou'lt give back to many a friend, And thou wilt bid love's sorrows end, And bind, no more to part, And thou wilt bring to me-to all Then welcome, youngest child of time, Welcome, new-born year! The merry bells with tuneful chime Have rung thy welcome here; And the minstrel's harp, unheard so long, 1st Jan. 1835. BETA. WHAT ARE COMETS? No. 1. THE solution of this problem has long occupied popular curiosity as well as philosophical research, but hitherto without any satisfactory result. As the question derives at the present time an additional interest from the expected re-appearance of the Halleian comet of 1759, it may be hoped that there are many classes of readers, to whom a discussion of it will not be unacceptable. The following paper was originally read in the year 1812 to the Philosophical Society, then existing in this city, since which time the views of the writer have been confirmed and extended by further enquiry. It is unnecessary to review the many strange and contradictory opinions, which at different periods have been entertained with respect to comets. Many of them are idle and puerile, and the best are not worthy of the minds in which they were conceived; none of them have connected these wandering bodies with the general system of the universe upon any rational and intelligible principle, except the theory, which considers them to be planets, revolving in very eccentric orbits, and visible to us only at the time of their perihelion passage through the solar regions. This hypothesis, being thus far in apparent harmony with the existing order of things, and emanating from the highest and most respected authorities, is the only one which has been admitted to a permanent place in our views of astronomy; and this it still holds, notwithstanding its obvious and manifold imperfections. It offers no explanation of the striking points of difference, that exist between these bodies, and those with which they are classed; but overlooking these, it ranks them together from the ill-attested and problematical circumstance of their all performing periodical revolutions. The very nature of the motion thus ascribed to comets, cannot fail however to excite a strong suspicion, that it does not accord with the harmonious and wellregulated plan of the universe. If, like planets, they are revolving in fixed orbits, like them too they must be regarded as completing the purpose for which they were framed, and serving as the habitations of sentient and rational beings. But what description of beings can we imagine, so organized as to live and to enjoy life, in the circumstances, which the inhabitants of comets must necessarily endure? What frame can we conceive capable of sustaining, not merely the extreme cold and dim twilight to which they must be inured during the greater part of their existence, and the intense heat and vivid blaze, through which they must pass during the short remainder-but the rapid transition from one to the other of these opposite extremes? The comet of 1680 is computed to have experienced at its perihelion a heat 28,000 times greater than that of our summer sun; it was only four months visible to us; and if the prevailing notion be correct, this was the only portion of 575 years, which was not passed in regions so remote, that they appear to be the seats of cheerless winter and ever-during night. Surely the idea must have been borrowed from the pictures drawn by kind-hearted theologians or amusing poets of the scenes in which condemned spirits suffer eternal torment—of that gulf profound, "Whither by harpy-footed furies hal'd, "At cerain revolutions, all the damned "Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change "Of fierce extremes-extremes by change more fierce "From beds of raging fire to starve in ice "Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine "Immoveable, infixed, and frozen round "Periods of time-thence hurried back to fire." The discoveries of modern chemistry have rendered doubtful has been supposed to attend a Be this fact however as it may, the high degree of heat, which near approach towards the sun. the important influence exercised by that glorious luminary upon the well-being of all animated nature, cannot be disputed; and it is impossible but that the beneficial tendency of that influence must greatly depend upon the regularity of the distance at which it acts. If in the course of a nearly circular revolution, changes like those of our seasons can be produced by such slight variations in the exposure of different portions of our earth to the solar beams-the extent of similar changes must be inconceivable in orbits so eccentric and dilated, as those in which comets are supposed to move. The regularity of their recurrence with respect to us, has established an uniform succession of temperatures, gradually and softly melting into each other, and so working together as to make the most benevolent provision for the health, the nourishment and the comfort of man. But in the other case, we can discover no traces of an arrangement, favourable to such results, or indicative of such designs. The period assigned for the return of the comet of 1769 is no less than 2,100 years!* In this instance we are to suppose an inhabited globe, hurried with immense velocity in a few weeks through the brightness of the solar regions-then receding for more than a thousand years into the dim, cold solitudes of distant space, and having reached its utmost goal, wearing away again the same long succession of ages, in its slow return to the genial fountain of light and heat. Such, according to this theory is the permanent course of a planetary body, and such the provision made for the support and happiness of numberless generations, busily swarming on its teeming surface. It is not certainly for us to bind nature arbitrarily down to the standard of those operations, which prepare the bountiful supply of our daily enjoyments; but from all our experience we have a right to infer, that she is always in harmony with herself —that the same union of cause and effect universally exists—and that the consequences, which arise to us from a particular combination of circumstances, must in a like situation equally befal other beings of the same nature, and inhabiting a similarly constituted globe. Nor in estimating the probable results of this supposed order of things, are we left to form our conclusions from mere hypothesis and doubtful inference; for the same irregular influence of the solar beams, which is the most striking feature in the progress ascribed to comets, acting in a far inferior degree upon the polar extremities of our earth, has not only extinguished there the principle of vegetation, and benumbed the quickening energy of animal life-but by an unyielding barrier of eternal ice, has rendered these dismal regions inaccessible even to the most enterprising and undaunted adventurers. Here then we have a well-known fact, the unquestionable cause of which bears an evident analogy to those operations, which are supposed to connect comets with our sun; and as in one instance the effect produced is, that portions of our earth are uninhabitable, we cannot but conclude, that where whole globes are subjected to Lalande. Histoire de l'Astronomie Magazin Encyclopédique, Fev. 1807. M. Bessel a fait de longues recherches sur la cométe de 1769; il a trouvé la période d'environ 2,100 ans; cela resulte de la totalité des observations de M. Messier et de M. Maskelyne, qu'il a reduites avec la plus scrupuleuse exactitude. similar circumstances, in a far greater degree, and through much longer periods, they must over the whole extent of their surfaces, be equally unfitted for the only purpose, for which we can believe them to have been formed. Or if we admit that nature universally adapting her powers of organization to the scenes in which they are to be exerted-has provided for these savage climes a population, endued with corresponding faculties-a race of Esquimaux, hardy as their frost-bound rocks, and taught to extract from perennial snows the means of their subsistence, and the scanty materials of their rude but needful arts-if we admit the existence of such a race, the structure of whose bodies is thus expressly conformed to the utmost rigors of an intense and protracted cold-by what sudden change in this structure, or by what newly acquired habits are we to suppose them capacitated for supporting their periodical passage through the very day-spring of light, and encountering the fervors of a consuming heat, equal at the lowest estimate to that, which parches the sandy deserts of our torrid zone? By what intuitive foresight are they to adopt the precautions necessary for their self-preservation amidst the universal havoc, the sweeping desolation, that spreads over the whole face of their globe-converting their solid mountains of ice into flowing oceans, and engulphing in the horrors of an unknown element, all the provisions hitherto adapted to the wants of their nature and the sustenance of their lives? Such sudden, awful, and overwhelming changes-such periodical destructions of her works-form no part of the settled plan of nature; they may be employed in the early stages of her operations, to exhaust the effervescence of discordant materials and deduce from their strife the principles of future order; but, that order once established, she provides for its durability; and if partial irregularities be found necessary for its maintenance-if floods and hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes, be wanted to carry off occasional remnants of noxious matter if one part of her creation be cased in impenetrable ice, while wastes of burning sand overspread another-still from these limited inconveniences and transient evils, she has afforded her offspring a retreat in that larger and fairer portion of her works-those genial climes—which by these means she has fitted for their habitation and adapted to their improvement. As subjects of distant speculation, the supposed eccentric |