NUMBER SIX.

INCURSION INTO THE EMPIRE STATE

PART I.

the journey and the result-Sandwiches as compared with -Sixty cents saved and proposed investment for it-Str y spent at Albany-Siceping ears and the excellence of their -Une xjcted of stacle to the enjoyment of their fall benefit-ArriIe great land purchase of Gorham and Phelps.

or engagement to repeat my Address on the yashington, at two or three places, in the westState of New York, circumstances had preg the appointment till the middle of Decemfss that I looked forward to the expedition

A journey of a thousand miles into the ason of the year, to be made in six days, Escourse of two hours' length was to be person who has reached the age of that, a pretty serious affair. On taking

s friend upon the subject, he advised me, ake on me and with me, an extra supply of i. if I had occasion, as I certainly should, to

to be sure to get a berth in one of the mised to follow his advice on both points. to the first, I was already well provided with of the accustomed articles of clothing, exteral, of the warmest materials and closest tissues.

the Cambridge Observatory. Such, of course, was not the case, but as soon as the disappearance of the moon admitted good observations, it was detected nearly at the same time by three Astronomers in the United States, each observer being ignorant of Donati's discovery. It was seen by Mr. H. P. Tuttle at Cambridge on the evening of the 28th of June, and an accurate determination of its place made the same night at the Observatory in that place. On the 29th it was discovered by H. M. Parkhurst, Esq., at Perth Amboy, in New Jersey, and on the 1st of July by Miss Mitchell of Nantucket,—the · lady who had the good fortune to gain the Comet Medal of the King of Denmark, for the first discovery of a telescopic comet in 1847, and the only lady to whom that medal was ever given.

Some difficulty was at first experienced in fixing upon the probable path of the comet, but by the middle of August its future course and the great increase of brightness which would take place as it approached the sun had been ascertained with certainty. It was still, however, invisible to the naked eye, and distinguishable from other telescopic comets only by the slowness of its motion and the vivid light of its nucleus. Traces of a tail were seen on the 20th of August, and on the 29th it appeared to the naked eye as a hazy star. For a few weeks it was seen both in the morning and evening sky, which led some to the opinion that there were two comets. It was at this time also supposed by some persons to be identical with the comet of 1264 and of 1556. It has since been ascertained that it is moving in an orbit (according to the mean of six calculations) of 2,156 years, consequently that if ever seen before by man, it was in the year 298 before our era,— two years before the capture of Athens by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and just a quarter of a century after the death of Alexander the Great.

On the 6th of September the curvature of the train was noticed for the first time, which afterward acquired such ex

pansion, and constituted one of the most remarkable features of the comet. The streamers detached from the principal train first appeared on the 25th September, and increased in number and length; and a succession of most extraordinary, and some of them never before observed phenomena in the nucleus, in its immediate surroundings, and in the train, furnished matter of observation the most intensely interesting and curious, till the comet had passed its perihelion. It was brightest on the 5th of October, the day before I saw it.-Mr. George Bond, in drawing to a close the admirable Memoir to which I have already alluded, and from which such portions of this paper as were not matters of personal observation have been taken, says:

"The Comet of Donati, although surpassed by many others in size, has not often been equalled in the intensity of the light of the nucleus.-It would be difficult to instance any one of its predecessors, which has combined so many attractive features."

There is no branch of science in which the United States have made more rapid and substantial progress than in Astronomy. Our observatories, observers, and geometers, now take rank with those of Europe. Gibbon, after his magnificent enumeration of the seven appearances of the comet of 1680, given in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, adds, "at the eighth period, in the year two thousand two hundred and fifty-five, the calculations of Bernouilli, Newton, and Halley, may perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some future capital in the Siberian or American wilderness." It is a somewhat singular circumstance, that, at a date nearly four hundred years in advance of that assumed by Gibbon, the two largest refracting telescopes in the world are found, the one in Russia, and the other in America; and in either country a degree of astronomical skill equal to the highest operations of the science.

I had a good deal more, when I commenced this paper, which I wished to say on the subject of the Observatory at Cambridge, and the labors and discoveries of its director and his assistants. I could not, however, do justice to the topic in the space which remains to me in this number, and I must reserve it for a future opportunity.

We have reason to be grateful that, in the progress of science, the superstitious alarms, once excited by the appearance of comets, have wholly ceased to be felt by well-informed persons. On one occasion when a comet was approaching its perihelion, it was said that the directors of the Bank of England requested the municipal authority to station fireengines in Threadneedle street. It is now supposed by astronomers that the earth might pass through the tail of a comet, and that fact not be perceived by its inhabitants. The comet is the body which would suffer by the collision. That of Lexell so called was wholly deflected from its orbit in 1767, by coming within the attraction of Jupiter, which does not appear to have been in the least affected by the approach of the comet. But even if a collision were likely to prove disastrous to our planet, we have no more reason to apprehend that precise derangement in the order of the universe, as established by Creative wisdom and goodness, than we have to apprehend any other imaginable catastrophe.

The following thoughts by Addison, in the Guardian, on the comet of 1680, are so just and so beautifully expressed, that I am persuaded they will be acceptable to the reader :

"I seldom see any thing that raises wonder in me, which does not glve my thoughts a turn that makes my heart the better for it. As I was lying in my bed, and ruminating on what I had seen, I could not forbear reflecting on the insignificancy of human art, when set in comparison with the designs of Providence. In the pursuit of this thought I considered a comet, or in the language of the vulgar, a blazing star, as a sky-rocket discharged by a hand that is almighty. Many of my readers saw that in the year 1680, and if they are not mathematicians,