"Rapidly as comets run

To th' embraces of the sun;
Fleeter than the starry brands
Flung at night from angel hands,

At those dark and daring sprites

Who would climb the empyreal heights."

On the night of April 25, 1095, both in France and England, the stars were seen" falling like a shower of rain from heaven upon the earth." The Chronicle of Rheims describes them as driven like dust before the wind; and great commotions in Christendom were foreboded in consequence by the members of the council of Clermont. By the common people in England the event was deemed ominous to the king, William Rufus, "that God was not content with his lyvyng; but he was so wilful and proude of minde, that he regarded little their saying."

To come down to modern times, the last century was drawing to a close, when a grand meteoric shower was seen over a very considerable portion of the globe. It became conspicuous towards midnight on the 12th of November 1799, and rapidly waxed terrible, continuing for several hours. To the Moravian missionaries in Greenland, who witnessed the scene, the contrast was of the strangest description-a landscape of unvarying ice and snow around them, and the semblance of the heavens on fire above; for glowing points and masses, thick as hail, filled the firmament, as if some vast magazine of combustible materials had exploded in the far-off depths of space. Humboldt and Bonpland observed the spectacle on the coast of Mexico. The former remarks:- "Thousands of bolides and falling stars succeeded each other during four hours. Their direction was very regular from north to south. From the beginning of the phenomenon there was not a space in the firmament equal in extent

to three diameters of the moon which was not filled every instant with them. All the meteors left luminous traces, or phosphorescent bands, behind them, which lasted seven or eight seconds." Mr. Ellicott, at sea off Cape Florida, was another spectator. "I was called up," he states, "about three o'clock in the morning to see the shooting stars, as they are called. The phenomenon was grand and awful. The whole heavens appeared as if illuminated with sky-rockets, which disappeared only with the light of the sun towards daybreak. The meteors, which at any one instant of time appeared as numerous as the stars, flew in all possible directions, except from the earth, towards which they all inclined, more or less; and some of them descended perpendicularly over the vessel we were in, so that I was in constant expectation of their falling on us." The same appearances were seen on the same night by the Capuchin missionary at San Fernando, a village in the llanos of Venezuela; by the Franciscan monks stationed near the cataracts of the Orinoco; at Marca, on the banks of the Rio Negro; at Quito, Cumana, and Santa Fe de Bogota; in French Guiana and Western Brazil; at Nain and Hoffenthal in Labrador; and even at Weimar, Halle, and Carlsruhe in Germany, shooting stars were very numerous. The area of visibility embraced 64° of latitude and 94° of longitude.

Passing by several meteoric showers, more or less remarkable, we come to the most stupendous hitherto witnessed, that of the 13th of November 1833, which, being the third in successive years, all occurring in the same month, and on the same day of the month, seemed to intimate periodicity, and originated the name of the November meteors. The night of the 12th

was singularly fine: not a cloud obscured the sky. Towards midnight the spectacle commenced, and was at its height between four and six o'clock in the morning. It was seen all over the United States, from the Canadian lakes to the West Indies, and from about longitude 61° in the Atlantic Ocean to that of 100° in the centre of Mexico. It included the three classes of forms previously mentioned-phosphoric lines, large fire-balls, and luminous bodies of irregular shape. One of the latter, observed in the state of Ohio, resembled a brilliant pruning-hook, apparently about twenty feet long by eighteen inches broad. It was distinctly visible in the north-east more than an hour, and gradually declined towards the horizon till it disappeared. Another, of tabular shape, appeared near the zenith, over the Falls of Niagara, and remained stationary for a considerable time, emitting large streams of light. The roar of the cataract, the wild dash and incessant plunging of the waters below, with the fiery storm overhead, combined to form a scene of unequalled sublimity. Some persons died of fright. Many thought that the last great day had come.

In the slave states the terror of the negroes was extreme. "I was suddenly awakened," says a planter in South Carolina, "by the most distressing cries that ever fell on my ears. Shrieks of horror and cries for mercy I could hear from most of the negroes of three plantations, amounting to from six to eight hundred. While earnestly listening for the cause, I heard a faint voice near the door calling my name. I arose, and, taking my sword, stood at the door. At this moment I heard the same voice still beseeching me to rise, and saying, 'Oh! master, the world is on fire.' I then opened the door, and it is difficult to say which excited

me most, the awfulness of the scene, or the distressing shrieks of the negroes. Upwards of one hundred lay prostrate on the ground, some speechless, and some with the bitterest cries, but most with their hands raised, imploring God to save the world and them. The scene was truly awful; for never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell towards the earth. East, west, north, and south, it was the same." An observer at Boston compared them, when at the maximum, to half the number of flakes seen in the air during an ordinary snow-storm. When they became less dense, so as to admit of being individualized, he counted 650 in fifteen minutes, in a vertical zone which did not include a tenth part of the visible horizon; and this number, in his opinion, was not more than two-thirds of the whole. Thus there would be 866 in his circumscribed zone, which gives 8660 for the entire hemisphere every quarter of an hour, or 34,640 per hour; and as the phenomenon continued seven hours, the grand total of falling stars and meteors visible at Boston on this memorable night exceeded 240,000. The spectacle must have been of the sublimest order. The apostle John might have had it before him when he indited the passage referring to the opening of the sixth seal::- "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind."

Some leading conclusions relative to this magnificent display, deduced by scientific eye-witnesses, chiefly Professor Olmstead, may now be concisely stated. First: The meteors had their origin beyond the limits. of our atmosphere. They all, without a single exception, moved in lines which converged in one and the same point in the heavens, as indicated by the diagram.