of the moon, and its virtue, as beyond dispute, though accurate observation has shewn that these changes influence the weather as little as the comet does the fate of nations or individuals.
It is curious to mark, how the superstitions of a dark age, when banished by the progress of science, take refuge under the wing of science itself. The incantation, magic, and witchcraft of other days have reappeared in our day under the forms of clairvoyance and spirit-rapping, and, with the sanction of the quasi science of mesmerism, intelligent people believe in and practise them. When science banished cometary superstitions, it still afforded a refuge for the love of the marvellous and dreadful. Halley and other astronomers, who were the first to indicate the true nature of comets, loved to describe the terrible consequences that might ensue from a collision with the earth. The comet played a most important part, too, in the rude geological theories of those days. Comets are in much disrepute among geologists at the present day, as accounting for the various convulsions and cataclysms indicated by the earth's crust. They find it more convenient to draw their hypothetical forces from the unknown interior of the earth. In the days, of Whiston, however, the tails of comets were all-important, as they could tilt up the axis of the earth, and produce deluges at will, to account for the various geological phenomena. By this means, the popular dread of comets was kept up long
