July 27, 1861.]
THE COMET OF 1861.
139
supposed to carry, we must in fairness extract this arrow; and the other it will be safer to leave to the discretion and wisdom of the better sex, assured that on so intricate and knotty a point, they will shoot far nearer to the mark than we shall.
The Comet, as seen from Portsmouth Harbour.
Thus, in spite of sage old saws and wise traditions, we have unwillingly torn to shreds this interwoven garment of good and evil, and surely we ought, in its place, to find something less flimsy by which to cover the nakedness of our ignorance. Can we not at least hint at, imagine, or conjecture any feasible use a comet may have in the mighty machinery of creation? We are, or may be, quite certain that it
has a duty to perform, for the merest contemplation of the works of the Omniscient infallibly leads us to this knowledge, that nothing is created without a purpose, little as we finite creatures may be able to comprehend that purpose; and that all matter, whether organic or inorganic, possesses within itself, though separated often by vast stages of formations, the necessary power of restoration towards some specific end. The whole universe, as is well known, is a wondrous piece of mechanism, self-balanced and self-restoring, and the astounding discovery of Laplace, in which the worlds or planets, in their approach towards the sun, are provided in their mutual attraction one towards the other with the means for retarding the inward power of the great centre, and reversing the set of the spring towards its extreme outward limit, in the course of which slowly progressive operations mighty cycles of years are passed, set the seal to a fact which had been hazarded, believed, but never completely proved. We may see, on a smaller scale, the same law working in this our own unit among the other worlds. Here we find nothing lost, nothing wasted. The drops of water which apparently fall uselessly upon the ocean’s lap, are sucked again up in vapour towards the vault of the firmament, there to collect, and, condensing on the mountain’s side, to tumble back again in sparkling rills towards the parent sea, but bearing in their courses through the plains and valleys rich blessings both for man and beast. Matter is continually changing all round, nothing will for an instant remain
in statu quo; dust is frittering and dropping away, unperceived, but not the less surely working, and passing off to reaggregate and re-crystallise in some new form for the use of future generations many ages hence; gases revolving into one another perform the same round for the more immediate wants of living man, and prove to him the silent action ever going on around, and without the healing and self-restorative power of which he could no longer renew his own existence from day to day. Animal life, insect life, the works of man, are all contributing towards this great end,—the revolution and recombination of the matter of which this earth is composed; and what we call death is actually, in the simple alchemy of nature, but a dread and solemn phase of this universal law.
All then is change,
nothing is lost; and yet there is to this, apparently a remarkable exception. We say apparently, for if we believe the law to be true, we know, though we cannot prove, the exception to be erroneous. Ever since—what did we say?—long before this world was formed in its present aspect, floods of
