THE GALAXY

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

Admiral Smyth says that this noble passage is more correctly rendered as follows:

Canst thou bind the delightful teemings of Cheemah?Or the contractions of Chesil canst thou open?Canst thou draw forth Mazzaroth in his seasonOr Ayeesh and his sons canst thou guide?

He writes: ‘In this very early description of the cardinal constellations,Cheemahdenotes Taurus with the Pleiades;Chesilis Scorpio; Mazzaroth isSirius in “the chambers of the south;” and Ayeesh the Greater Bear, the Hebrew word signifying abier, which was shaped by the four well-known bright stars, while the three forming the tail were considered as children attending a funeral.’ The Greeks at an early period were attracted by this cluster of stars, and Hesiod alludes to them in his writings. One passage converted into rhyme reads as follows:

There is a time when forty days they lie,And forty nights, conceal’d from human eye;But in the course of the revolving year,When the swain sharps the scythe, again appear.

Their heliacal rising was considered a favourable time for setting out on a voyage, and their midnight culmination, which occurred shortly after the middle of November, was celebrated by some nations with festivals and public ceremonies. Considerable diversity of opinion existed among the ancients with regard to the number of stars which constitute this group. It was affirmed by some that only six were visible, whilst others maintained that seven could be seen. Ovid writes:

Quae septem dici, sex tamen esse solent.

Homer and Attalus mention six; Hipparchus and Aratus seven. The legend with regard to the lost Pleiad would seem to indicate that, during a period in the past, the star possessed a superior brilliancy and was more distinctly visible than it is at the present time. This may have been so, for, should it belong to the class of variable stars, there wouldbe a periodic ebb and flow of its light, by which its fluctuating brilliance could be explained. When looked at directly only six stars can be seen in the group, but should the eye be turned sideways more than this number become visible. Several observers have counted as many as ten or twelve, and it is stated by Kepler that his tutor, Maestlin, was able to enumerate fourteen stars and mapped eleven in their relative positions. With telescopic aid the number is largely increased—Galileo observed thirty-six with his instrument and Hooke, in 1664, counted seventy-eight. Large modern telescopes bring into view several thousand stars in this region.

The Pleiades are situated at a profound distance in space. Their light period is estimated at 250 years, indicating a distance of 1,500 billions of miles. Our Sun if thus far removed would be reduced to a tenth-magnitude star. ‘There can be little doubt,’ says Miss Agnes Clerke, ‘that the solar brilliancy is surpassed by sixty to seventy of the Pleiades. And it must be in some cases enormously surpassed; by Alcyone 1,000, by Electra 480, by Maia nearly 400 times. Sirius itself takes a subordinate rank when compared with the five most brilliant members of a group, the real magnificence of which we can thus in some degree apprehend.’ This is the only star cluster which can be perceived to be moving in space, or which has an ascertained common proper motion. Its constituents form a magnificent system in which the stars bear a mutual relationship to each other, and performintricate internal revolutions, whilst they in systemic union drift along through the depths of space. There are two allusions to the Pleiades in ‘Paradise Lost.’ In describing the path of the newly created Sun, Milton introduces them as indicative of the joyfulness associated with the birth of the Universe—

First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,Regent of day, and all the horizon roundInvested with bright rays, jocund to runHis longitude through heaven’s high road; the greyDawn, and the Pleiades before him danced,Shedding sweet influence.—vii. 370-75.

It was believed that the Earth was created in the spring; and towards the end of April this group rises a little before the Sun and precedes him in his course, ‘shedding sweet influences.’ The ancients believed that the good or evil influences of the stars were exercised not in the night but during the day, when their rays mingled with those of the Sun. The pernicious influence of the Dog-star is mentioned by Latin writers as being most pronounced during the dog-days, at the end of summer and commencement of autumn, the time of the heliacal rising of this star.

The other allusion to the Pleiades is in Book X., line 673, where Milton, in describing the altered path of the Sun consequent upon the Fall, mentions how the orb travels through Taurus with the Seven Atlantic Sisters—the seven daughters of Atlas, the Pleiades, which are situated on the shoulder of the animal representing this zodiacal constellation.

The Galaxy or Milky Way is the great luminous zone encircling the heavens, which can be seen extending across the sky from horizon to horizon. Its diffused nebulous appearance caused the ancients much perplexity, and many quaint opinions were hazarded as to the nature of this celestial highway; but the mystery associated with it was not solved until Galileo directed his newly invented telescope to this lucent object, when, to his intense delight, he discovered that it consists of myriads of stars—millions upon millions of suns so distant as to be individually indistinguishable to ordinary vision, and so closely aggregated, that their blended light gives rise to the milky luminosity signified by its name. This stelliferous zone almost completely encircles the sphere, which it divides into two nearly equal parts, and is inclined at an angle of 63° to the celestial equator. In Centaurus it divides into two portions, one indistinct and of interrupted continuity, the other bright and well defined; these, after remaining apart for 120°, reunite in Cygnus. The Milky Way is of irregular outline and varies in breadth from 5° to 16°; it intersects the equinoctial in the constellations Monoceros and Aquila, and approaches in Cassiopeia to within 27° of the north pole of the heavens; an equal distance intervenes between it and the south pole. Its poles are in Coma Bernices and Cetus. The stars in the galactic tract are very unevenly distributed;in some of its richest regions as many stars as are visible to the naked eye on a clear night have been counted within the space of a square degree. In other parts they are much less numerous, and there have been observed besides, adjacent to the most luminous portions of the zone, dark intervals and winding channels almost entirely devoid of stars. An instance of this kind occurs in the constellation of the Southern Cross, where there exists in a rich stellar region a large oval-shaped dark vacuity, 8° by 5° in extent, that appears to be almost entirely denuded of stars. In looking at it, an impression is created that one is gazing into an empty void of space far beyond the Milky Way. This gulf of Cimmerian darkness was called by early navigators the Coal Sack. Similar dark spaces, though not of such magnitude, are seen in Ophiuchus, Scorpio, and Cygnus.

The Galaxy, when viewed with a powerful telescope, is found to consist of congeries of stars, vast stellar aggregations, great luminous tracts resolvable into clouds of stars of overpowering magnificence, superb clusters of various orders, and convoluted nebulous streams wandering ‘with mazy error’ among ‘islands of light and lakes of darkness,’ resolved by the telescope into banks of shining worlds. The concourses of stars which enter into the formation of this wonderful zone exhibit in a marvellous degree the amazing profusion in which these orbs exist in certain regions of space; yet those multitudes of stars perform their motionsin harmonious unison and in orderly array, and by their mutual attraction sustain the dynamical equilibrium of this stupendous galactic ring, the diameter of which, according to one authority, is not traversed by light in less than 13,000 years.

FIG. 8.—A Portion of the Milky Way.Fig.8.—A Portion of the Milky Way.

Sir William Herschel, to whom we are indebted for most of what we know of the Milky Way, commenced a series of observations in 1785 with the object of acquiring a knowledge of the structure of the sidereal heavens. In the accomplishment of this object, to which he devoted a considerable part of his life, he undertook a systematic survey of that portion of the Galaxy which is visible in the Northern Hemisphere. By a method called star-gauging, which consisted in the enumeration of the stars in each successive telescopic field as the instrument moved slowly over the region under observation, he found that the depth of the star strata could be approximately ascertained by counting the stars along the line of vision; those were most numerous where the visual line appeared of the greatest length and fewest in number where it was shortest. Herschel perceived the internal structure of the Galaxy to be exceedingly intricate and complex, and that it embraced within its confines an endless variety of systems, clusters, and groups, branches, sprays, arches, loops, and streaming filaments of stars, all of which combined to form this luminous zone. ‘It is indeed,’ says a well-known astronomer, ‘only to the most careless glance, or when viewed through an atmosphere of imperfect transparency, that the MilkyWay seems a continuous zone. Let the naked eye rest thoughtfully on any part of it, and, if circumstances be favourable, it will stand out rather as an accumulation of patches and streams of light of every conceivable variety of form and brightness, now side by side, now heaped on each other; again spanning across dark spaces, intertwining and forming a most curious and complex network; and at other times darting off into the neighbouring skies in branches of capricious length and shape which gradually thin away and disappear.’ Sir John Herschel, who was occupied for four years at theCape of Good Hope in exploring the celestial regions of the Southern Hemisphere, describes the coming on of the Milky Way as seen in his 20-foot reflector. He first remarks ‘that all the stars visible to us, whether by unassisted vision or through the best telescopes, belong to and form part of a vast stratum or considerably flattened and unsymmetrical congeries of stars in which our system is deeply and eccentrically plunged; and, moreover, situated near a point where the stratum bifurcates or spreads itself out into two sheets.’ ‘As the main body of the Milky Way comes on the frequency and variety of those masses (nebulous) increases; here the Milky Way is composed of separate or slight or strongly connected clouds of semi-nebulous light, and, as the telescope moves, the appearance is that of clouds passing in a scud, as sailors call it.’ The Milky Way is like sand, not strewed evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls (and both hands at once), leaving dark intervals, and all consisting of stars of the fourteenth, sixteenth, twentieth magnitudes down to nebulosity, in a most astonishing manner. After an interval of comparative poverty, the same phenomenon, and even more remarkable, I cannot say it is nebulous, it is all resolved, but the stars are inconceivably numerous and minute; there must be millions and all almost equally massed together. Yet they nowhere run to nuclei or clusters much brighter in the middle. Towards the end of the seventeenth hour (Right Ascension) the globular clusters begin to come in;they consist of stars of excessive minuteness, but yet not more so than the ground of the Milky Way, on which not only they appear projected, but of which it is very probable they form a part. ‘From the foregoing analysis of the telescopic aspect of the Milky Way in this interesting region, I think it can hardly be doubted that it consists of portions differing exceedingly in distance, but brought by the effect of projection into the same, or nearly the same, visual line; in particular, that at the anterior edge of what we have called the main stream, we see foreshortened a vast and illimitable area scattered over with discontinuous masses and aggregates of stars in the manner of the cumuli of a mackerel sky, rather than of a stratum of regular thickness and homogeneous formation.’

The profound distance at which the stars of the Galaxy are situated in space precludes the possibility of our obtaining any definite knowledge of their magnitude and of the extent of the intervals by which they are separated from each other, nor can we learn anything of the details associated with the systems and combinations into which they enter. It is believed that the majority of the stars in the Milky Way equal or surpass the Sun in brilliancy and splendour. They are tenth to fifteenth magnitude stars; now, the Sun at the distance indicated by these magnitudes would in the telescope appear a much fainter object; he would not reach the fifteenth magnitude. Consequently, the galactic stars are regarded as his peers or superiors in magnitude andbrilliancy. Those myriads of suns are all in motion—in nature a stationary body is unknown—and they are sufficiently far apart so as not to be unduly influenced by their mutual gravitational attraction; a distance perhaps equal to that which separates our Sun from the nearest fixed star may intervene between each of those orbs. In the deepest recesses of the Milky Way, Sir William Herschel was able to count 500 stars receding in regular order behind each other; between each there existed an interval of space, probably not less extensive than the interstellar spaces among the stars by which we are surrounded.

The richest galactic regions in the Northern Hemisphere are found in Perseus, Cygnus, and Aquila. Night after night could be spent in sweeping the telescope over fields where the stars can be seen in amazing profusion. In the interval of a quarter of an hour, Sir William Herschel observed 116,000 stars pass before him in the telescope, and on another occasion he perceived 258,000 stars in the space of forty-one minutes. In the constellation of the Swan there is a region about 5° in breadth which contains 331,000 stars. Photography reveals in a remarkable manner the amazing richness of this stelliferous zone; the impress of the stars on the sensitive plate of the camera, in some instances, resembles a shower of descending snowflakes.

Though Sir William Herschel was able to fathom the Galaxy in most of its tracts, yet there were regions which his great telescopes were unableto penetrate entirely through. In Cepheus there is a spot where he observed the stars become ‘gradually less till they escape the eye so that appearances here favour the idea of a succeeding more distant clustering part.’ He perceived another in Scorpio ‘where, through the hollows and deep recesses of its complicated structure, we behold what has all the appearance of a wide and indefinitely prolonged area strewed over with discontinuous masses and clouds of stars which the telescope at length refuses to analyse.’ The Great Cluster in Perseus, which lies in the Milky Way, also baffled the penetrative capacity of Herschel’s instruments. We cannot help quoting Professor Nichol’s description of Herschel’s observation of this remarkable object. He says: ‘In the Milky Way, thronged all over with splendours, there is one portion not unnoticed by the general observer, the spot in the sword-hand of Perseus. That spot shows no stars to the naked eye; the milky light which glorifies it comes from regions to which unaided we cannot pierce. But to a telescope of considerable power the space appears lighted up with unnumbered orbs; and these pass on through the depths of the infinite, until, even to that penetrating glass, they escape all scrutiny, withdrawing into regions unvisited by its power. Shall we adventure into these deeper retirements? Then, assume an instrument of higher efficacy, and lo! the change is only repeated; those scarce observed before appear as large orbs, and, behind, a newseries begins, shading gradually away, leading towards farther mysteries! The illustrious Herschel penetrated on one occasion into this spot, until he found himself among depths whose light could not have reached him in much less than 4,000 years; no marvel that he withdrew from the pursuit, conceiving that such abysses must be endless!’ The Milky Way may be regarded as a universe by itself, and our Sun as one of its myriad stars.

Milton was aware of the stellar constitution of the Milky Way, which was one of Galileo’s discoveries. The poet gives a singularly accurate description of this luminous path, which he glorifies as the way by which the Deity returned up to the Heaven of Heavens after He finished His great work of creation—

So sungThe glorious train ascending: He through Heaven,That opened wide her blazing portals, ledTo God’s eternal house direct the way—A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,And pavement stars, as stars to thee appearSeen in the Galaxy, that Milky WayWhich nightly as a circling zone thou seestPowdered with stars.—vii. 573-81.

Records of the appearance of these remarkable objects have been handed down from earliest times; and when one of those mysterious visitors, travelling from out the depths of space, became visible in our skies, it was regarded with apprehension anddread as betokening the occurrence of calamities and direful events among the nations of the Earth.

The word comet is derived from the Greek κομη, signifying ‘hair,’ to which the hazy, luminous appearance of those objects bears some resemblance. A comet consists of a bright central part called thenucleus; this is surrounded by layers of nebulous matter called thecoma, and both combined form thehead, from which a long appendage extends called thetail. The nucleus and tail are not essential parts of a comet, for many have been observed in which both have been wanting. The tail is frequently very conspicuous, and presents considerable diversity both as regards its appearance and length. In some comets it is entirely absent, and in others it has been observed to stretch over an arc of sixty or seventy degrees, indicating a length of 100 to 150 million miles. Sometimes it is straight, and at other times it is curved at the extremity; it has been observed bifurcated into two branches; and, on rare occasions, comets have been seen with two or more tails. The tail of a comet is always directed away from the Sun; it increases in size as the comet approaches the orb, and diminishes as it recedes from him. This depends upon the degree of heat to which the comet is exposed, which has the effect of driving off or evaporating some of the matter composing the head. During the time the comet is travelling round the Sun there is a continuous emission of this highly attenuated matter, which is visible asthe tail, but when the comet begins to recede from the orb and reaches cooler regions of space the tail diminishes in size as the temperature becomes reduced, and ultimately it disappears.

The appearance of a comet in the sky is often sudden and unexpected, and one of those erratic wanderers may become visible at any time and in any part of the heavens. It was remarked by Kepler that there are as many comets in the sky as there are fishes in the ocean. This may or may not be true, for they only become visible when they approach the Sun, and the time during which they remain so does not usually exceed a few weeks or months. Ancient astronomers were much perplexed with the motions of comets, which appeared to be much more irregular than those of other celestial bodies and unconformed to any known laws. Tycho Brahé believed that comets moved in circular orbits, and Kepler imagined that they travelled in straight lines outwards from the Sun. Newton, however, was able to demonstrate that any conic section can be described about the Sun consistent with the law of gravitation, and that the orbits of comets correspond with three of the four sections into which a cone can be divided. Consequently, they obey the laws of planetary motion. Comets which move in ellipses of known eccentricity and return with periodical regularity may be regarded as belonging to the solar system. Twenty of these are known, and eleven of them have more than once passed their perihelion.Those most familiarly known complete their periods in years as follows:—Encke’s 3·3; Swift’s, 5·5; Winnecke’s, 5·6; Tempel’s, 6; Brorsen’s, 5·5; Faye’s, 7·4; Tuttle’s, 13·8, and Halley’s, 76. Comets with parabolic and hyperbolic orbits may be regarded as stray objects which visit our system once, and depart never to return again. Besides those already mentioned there are many comets with orbits of such marked eccentricity that their ellipses when near perihelion cannot be distinguished from parabolæ. The great comets of 1780, 1811, 1843, 1858, 1861, and 1882 traverse orbits approaching this form, and some of them require hundreds and thousands of years to accomplish a circuit of their paths.

Numerous instances of the appearance of remarkable comets have been recorded in the annals of ancient nations. The earliest records of comets are by the Chinese, who were careful observers of celestial phenomena. A comet is said to have appeared at the time of the birth of Mithridates (134B.C.), which had a disc as large as that of the Sun; a great comet also became visible in the heavens about the time of the death of Julius Cæsar (44B.C.), and another was seen in the reign of Justinian (531A.D.). A remarkable comet was observed in 1106, and in 1456, the year in which the Turks obtained possession of Constantinople and threatened to overrun Europe, a great comet appeared, which was regarded by Christendom with ominous forebodings. The celebrated astronomerHalley was the first to predict the return of a comet. Having become acquainted with Newton’s investigations, which showed that the forms of the orbits of comets were either parabolæ or extremely elongated ellipses, he subjected the next great comet, which appeared in 1682, to a series of observations, calculated its orbit, and predicted that it would return to perihelion in seventy-five or seventy-six years. On referring to past records he discovered that a great comet appeared in 1607, which pursued a path similar to the one traced out for his comet, another was seen in 1531, and one in 1456. Halley perceived that the intervals between those dates corresponded to a period of about seventy-six years, the time which he calculated would be required for his comet to complete a revolution of its orbit. He therefore had no hesitation in predicting that the comet would appear again in 1758. Halley knew that he would not be alive to witness the event, and alludes to it in the following sentence: ‘Wherefore if it should return according to our prediction about the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.’ As the time approached when the comet should be drawing near to our system, much interest was excited among astronomers, who would have an opportunity afforded them of testing the accuracy of Halley’s prediction. An eminent French mathematician named Clairaut computed anew, by a method rather different to that adoptedby Halley, the retarding effect of the attraction of the planets upon the speed of the comet, and arrived at the conclusion that it would reach perihelion about the middle of April 1759; but, owing to unknown influences—Uranus and Neptune not having been discovered—it might be a month before or behind the calculated time. Clairaut made this announcement on November 14, 1758. Astronomers were now intently on the look-out for the comet, and night after night the sky was swept by telescopes in search of the expected visitor, which for upwards of seventy years had been pursuing its solitary path invisible to mortal eyes. But the mental vision of the mathematician did not fail to follow this celestial object, which was now announced as being on the confines of our system. The comet was first observed on December 25, 1758, it soon became conspicuous in the heavens, and reached perihelion on March 12, 1759, a month before the time assigned to it by Clairaut but within the limit of error allowed for unknown influences. Halley’s comet returned again in 1835, and may be expected about the year 1911. The periodic appearance of this comet has been traced back to the year 1305.

The celebrated comet of 1680 was noted as having been the one which afforded Newton an opportunity of making observations which led to his discovery that comets describe orbits round the Sun in conformity with the different sections of a cone. The comet of 1811 was observed for manyweeks in the northern heavens as a brilliant object with a beautiful fan-shaped tail; it completes a revolution of its orbit in about 3,000 years. The comet of 1843 was also a splendid object. It possessed a tail 200 million miles in length, and approached within 32,000 miles of the Sun. The heat to which it was exposed was sufficient to volatilize the most infusible substances known to exist. Donati’s comet of 1858 will be long remembered as one of the most impressive of celestial spectacles: its tail extended over an area of forty degrees, and enveloped the star Arcturus, which could be seen shining through it with undiminished brilliancy. Its period is estimated to be 2,100 years. A great comet appeared in 1861, through the tail of which the Earth passed without any perceptible effect having resulted. No remarkable comets have appeared during recent years. In 1880, 1881, and 1882, several were observed, and that of 1881 was the first successfully photographed.

Comets consist of cosmical matter which exists in a condition of extreme tenuity, and especially so in the coma and tail. Sir John Herschel described them as almost spiritual in texture, and small stars have been seen shining through their densest parts without any perceptible diminution of their light. The nucleus is believed to be composed of a congeries of meteoric fragments, and these, when exposed to the Sun’s heat, throw off luminous nebulous particles that are swept by some repulsive force into space and form the appendage known as the tail.Comets may be regarded as celestial objects that are perfectly innocuous. Neither fear nor dread need be apprehended from their visits; they come to please and instruct, not to injure or destroy.

Milton does not fail to introduce into his poem several allusions to comets, and in doing so expresses the ideas and sentiments which in his time were associated with those objects.

In describing the hostile meeting between Satan and Death before the Gates of Hell, he writes:

On the other side,Incensed with indignation, Satan stoodUnterrified, and like a comet burned,That fires the length of Ophiuchus hugeIn the arctic sky, and from his horrid hairShakes pestilence and war.—ii. 706-11.

This passage is eminently descriptive of the appearance of a great comet, and the occasion on which it is introduced adds to the intensity of the lurid imaginings and feelings of terror and dismay with which these objects have always been regarded. The comparison of the enraged Prince of Hell with one of those mysterious and fiery looking visitors to our skies was a grand conception of the poet’s, and one worthy of the mighty combatant. Ophiuchus (the Serpent-bearer) is a large constellation which occupies a rather barren region of the heavens to the south of Hercules. It has a length of about forty degrees, and is represented by the figure of a man bearing a serpent in both hands. It is not easy to imagine why Milton should have assigned the cometto this uninteresting constellation; he may possibly have seen one in this part of the sky, or his poetical ear may have perceived that the expression ‘Ophiuchus huge,’ which has about it a ponderous rhythm, was well adapted for the poetic description of a comet.

The only other allusion in the poem to a comet is near its conclusion, when the Cherubim descend to take possession of the Garden, prior to the removal of Adam and Eve—

High in front advanced,The brandished sword of God before them blazed,Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat,And vapour as the Lybian air adustBegan to parch that temperate clime.—xii. 632-36.

On any clear night an observer can, by attentively watching the heavens, perceive a few of those objects which become visible for a moment as a streak of light and then vanish. They are the result of the combustion of small meteoric masses having a celestial origin, and travelling with cosmical velocity, and which, in their headlong flight, become so heated by contact with the Earth’s atmosphere that they are converted into glowing vapour. This vapour when it cools condenses into fine powder or dust, and gradually descends upon the Earth’s surface, where it can be detected.

Shooting stars become visible at a height varying between twenty and one hundred and thirtymiles, and their average velocity has been estimated at about thirty miles a second. Though casual falling stars can be seen at all times in every part of the heavens, yet there are certain periods at which they appear in large numbers, and have been observed to radiate from certain well-defined parts of the sky. When the radiant point is overhead, the falling stars spread out and resemble a parachute of fire; but when it is below the horizon, the stars ascend upwards like rockets into the sky. The radiant point is fixed among the stars, so that at the commencement of a shower it may be overhead, and before the termination of the display it may have travelled below the horizon. The radiant is usually named after the constellation in which it is observed.

The November meteors are called Leonids, because they radiate from a point in the constellation Leo; those in Taurus are called Taurids; in Perseus, Perseids; in Lyra, Lyraïds; and in Andromeda, Andromedes, because their radiant points are situated in those constellations.

The falling stars that have attracted most attention are those which appear on or about November 13. Every year at this period they can be seen in greater or less numbers, and on referring to numerous past records it has been ascertained that a magnificent display of those objects occurs every thirty-three years. The earliest historical allusion to this meteoric shower is by Theophanes, who wrote that in the year 472A.D.the sky at Constantinople appearedto be on fire with falling stars. In the year 902A.D.another remarkable display took place, and from that time until 1833 twelve conspicuous displays are recorded as having occurred at recurring intervals of thirty-three years. The grandest display of this kind that was ever witnessed occurred in 1833. It was visible over nearly the whole of the American continent, and, having commenced at midnight, lasted for four or five hours. The falling stars were so numerous that they appeared to rain upon the Earth, and caused the utmost consternation and terror among those who witnessed the phenomenon, many persons having imagined that the end of the world was at hand. The regular recurrence of these meteoric displays has been satisfactorily explained by the assumption that round the Sun there travels in an elliptical orbit with planetary velocity a vast shoal of meteoric bodies some millions of miles in length and several hundred thousand miles in breadth. The nearest point of their orbit to the Sun coincides with the Earth’s orbit, and the most distant part extends beyond the orbit of Uranus. These bodies accomplish a circuit of their orbit in 33¼ years. The Earth in her annual revolution intersects the path of the meteors, and when this occurs some falling stars can always be seen; but when the intersection happens at the time the shoal is passing, then there results a grand meteoric display. Numerous other meteoric swarms travel in orbital paths round the Sun.

Milton, in his poem, alludes to falling stars upontwo occasions. In describing the fall of Mulciber from Heaven he says:—

from mornTo noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,A summer’s day; and with the setting sunDropt from the zenith like a falling star,On Lemnos the Ægaean isle.—i. 742-46.

The rapid flight of the archangel Uriel from the Sun to the Earth is described in the following lines:—

Thither came Uriel, gliding through the evenOn a sunbeam, swift as a shooting starIn autumn thwarts the night, when vapours firedImpress the air, and shows the marinerFrom what point of his compass to bewareImpetuous winds.—iv. 555-60.

Milton mentions the season of the year in which those stars are most frequently seen, and refers to an ancient belief by which they were regarded as the precursors of stormy weather. A translation from Virgil contains a similar allusion to them—

Oft shalt thou see ere brooding storms arise,Star after star glide headlong down the skies.

The standard borne by the Cherub Azazel is described as having—

Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind.—i. 537.

The theme chosen by Milton for his great epic, viz. the Fall of Man and his expulsion from Paradise—perhaps the most momentous incident in the history of the human race—was one worthy of the genius of a great poet and in the treatment of which Milton has been sublimely successful. The newly created Earth; the untainted loveliness of the Paradise in which our first parents dwelt during their innocence; their temptation; their fall and removal from the happy garden, furnished a theme which afforded him an opportunity for the display of his unrivalled poetic genius.

Though the chief interest in the poem is centred in the Garden of Eden and its occupants, yet Milton was enabled, by the comprehensive manner in which he treated his subject, to introduce into his work a cosmology which embraced not only the system to which our globe belongs, but the entire starry heavens by which we are surrounded. But the universality of his genius did not rest here. In the utterance of his sacred song he soared beyond the starry sphere, describing himselfas wrapt above the pole—the starry pole—up to the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the ineffable abode of the Deity and the blissful habitation of angelic beings who, in adoration and worship, surround the throne of the Most High.

Descending to that nether world at the opposite pole of the universe, in the lowest depth of Chaos, the place prepared by Eternal Justice for the rebellious, he unfolds to our horror-stricken gaze the terrors of this infernal region; its fiery deluge of ever-burning sulphur; its ‘regions of sorrow;’ its ‘doleful shades’—the unhappy abode of fallen angels who ‘in floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,’ alternated by exposure to unendurable cold and icy torment, experience the direful consequences of their apostacy.

Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ may be regarded as the loftiest intellectual effort in the whole range of literature. In it we find all that was known of science, philosophy, and theology. The theme, founded upon a Bible narrative, itself written under divine inspiration, embraces the entire system of Christian doctrine as revealed in the Scriptures, and many of the noblest passages in the sacred volume are introduced into the poem expressed in the lofty utterance of flowing and harmonious verse. The choicest classical writings of Greek and Latin authors; the mythological and traditional beliefs of ancient nations; historical incidents of valour and renown and all that was great and good in the annals of mankind were laid under contribution byMilton in the illustration and embellishment of his poem.

In order to obtain a basis or foundation upon which to construct his great epic, Milton found it necessary to localise the regions of space in which the principal events mentioned in his poem are described as having occurred. The unfathomable abyss of space may be regarded as an uncircumscribed sphere boundless on all sides round, and so far as we can comprehend of infinite extent. This sphere Milton divided into two hemispheres—an upper and a lower. The upper was called Heaven, or the Empyrean—a glorified region of boundless dimensions; the lower hemisphere embraced Chaos—a dark, fathomless abyss in which the elements of matter existed in a state of perpetual tumult and wild uproar. The occurrence of a rebellion in Heaven necessitated a further division of the sphere. The revolt, headed by Lucifer, one of the highest archangels, afterwards known as Satan, who drew after him a third of the angelic host, contested the supremacy of Heaven with Michael and the angels which kept their loyalty. After two days’ battle—

Him the Almighty PowerHurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,With hideous ruin and combustion, downTo bottomless perdition; there to dwellIn adamantine chains and penal fire.—i. 44-48.

Having been precipitated over the crystal wall of Heaven into the deep abyss, Milton says:—

Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared,And felt tenfold confusion in their fallThrough his wild Anarchy; so huge a routEncumbered him with ruin. Hell at last,Yawning, received them whole, and on them closed.—vi. 871-75.

Hell, Milton locates in the lowest depth of Chaos, a region cut off from the body of Chaos, through which the expelled angels fell for nine days before reaching their destined habitation. There are now three divisions of space:Heaven,Chaos, andHell. But a fourth is required to enable Milton to complete his scheme for the delineation of his poem. The Earth and starry universe were not as yet called into existence, but after the overthrow of the rebellious angels, God, by circumscribing a portion of Chaos situated immediately underneath the Empyrean, created the Mundane Universe, or the ‘Heavens and the Earth.’[15]This new universe He reclaimed from Chaos, and with the embryo elements of matter—

His dark materials to create new worlds.—ii. 916.

He formed the Earth and all the countless shining orbs visible overhead, and the myriads more which the telescope reveals, scattered in apparently endless profusion over the circular immensity of space. It is this new universe—the Earth and Starry Heavens—that claims our chief attention, and in the delineation of Milton’s imaginative and descriptive powers it is to this latest manifestation of Divinewisdom and might that our remarks shall principally apply. After the expulsion of the rebel angels from Heaven, God sent His Son, the Messiah to create the new universe—a work of omnipotence described by Milton in a manner worthy of so magnificent a display of almighty power—

Meanwhile the SonOn his great expedition now appeared,Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crownedOf majesty divine: sapience and loveImmense; and all his Father in Him shone.About his chariot numberless were pouredCherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones,And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots wingedFrom the armoury of God, where stand of oldMyriads, between two brazen mountains lodgedAgainst a solemn day, harnessed at hand,Celestial equipage; and now came forthSpontaneous, for within them Spirit lived,Attendant on their Lord. Heaven opened wideHer ever-during gates, harmonious sound!On golden hinges moving, to let forthThe King of Glory, in his powerful WordAnd Spirit, coming to create new worlds.On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shoreThey viewed the vast immeasurable abyssOutrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,Up from the bottom turned by furious windsAnd surging waves, as mountains to assaultHeaven’s highth, and with the centre mix the pole.‘Silence, ye troubled Waves, and thou Deep, peace!’Said then the omnific Word: ‘your discord end!’Nor stayed; but on the wings of CherubimUplifted, in paternal glory rodeFar into Chaos, and the World unborn;For Chaos heard his voice. Him all his trainFollowed in bright procession, to beholdCreation, and the wonders of his might.Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his handHe took the golden compasses, preparedIn God’s eternal store, to circumscribeThis Universe, and all created things.One foot he centred, and the other turnedRound through the vast profundity obscure;And said, ‘Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds;This be thy just circumference, O World!’Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth,Matter unformed and void. Darkness profoundCovered the abyss; but on the watery calmHis brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,Throughout the fluid mass; but downward purgedThe black, tartareous, cold, infernal dregs,Adverse to life; then founded, then conglobedLike things to like; the rest to several placeDisparted, and between spun out the Air;And Earth self balanced on her centre hung.—vii. 192-242.

Milton begins his narrative of the Creation by describing the progress of the Deity on His great expedition, accompanied by hosts of angels and surrounded with all the solemn pomp and splendour of Heaven. The brilliant throng having passed through Heaven’s gates, which opened wide their portals, they beheld in front of them the dark abyss of Chaos—a tempest-tossed sea of warring elements upturned in wild confusion. At God’s instant command silence and peace reigned over the deep, and tranquil calm succeeded noisy discord. Then on the wings of Cherubim He rode far into Chaos, and with His golden compasses decreed the dimensions of the universe by circumscribing the vast vacuity of space. Into the elements whichhasted to their several places, His Spirit infused vital warmth and caused the formless mass of matter to assume the figure of a sphere, and thus the Earth poised on her axis unsupported, and in darkness shrouded hung suspended in space. The placing of the golden compasses in the hands of the Creator, with which He measured out the heavens, is a noble conception on the part of Milton, and one most appropriate, since the construction of the universe is based upon the principles of geometrical science.

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