was tremendous) exceeds any swiftness that falls within observation; except that of the rays of light; it being nearly 2000 times greater than the swiftness of a cannon-ball, at the instant of its discharge; yet scarcely a thousandth part of the velocity of light passing from the Sun[4]. This Comet approached to within 40,000 miles of the Sun’s surface, and was calculated to be heated 2000 times hotter than red hot iron; a globe of iron the size of the Earth in this heat, would be 50,000 years in cooling. These amazing visiters, whom philosophy contemplates with awe very different from that terror with which superstition had long viewed them, moving in such amplitude of space, so numerous as they are, and so great as some of them, must have functions assigned to them proportionally important: either occasionally of terrific revolution; or more generally of recruiting the atmosphere of the planets in their successive appulse to any of them, and supplying the diminution of the solar fires. Perhaps too they are useful in preventing the central tendency of the planets to the Sun, from increasing more than in a certain degree; so that the apparent disturbances, thus produced, will be part of the necessary order and harmony of the system. It is probable (though their orbits are so much oblique in all directions to those of the planets, that it can rarely happen) that Comets may be instrumental to great shocks; either by direct collision, the effect of which, considering the velocity and mass of some of them cannot be estimated, or by near approach: and of this latter a possible result, and such as seems, in one instance at least, to have already taken place, is noticed in the Remarks annexed to this account of the _Eidouranion_. But the philosophic observer will have this reflection presented to him from the phænomena of the Universe; that the apparently disturbing and destructive powers are secondary and subservient; while those of the preserving and meliorating kind are primary, continued, and universal. And those incidental causes of a melancholy and distressing aspect, when resolved into their ultimate tendency and necessary effects, manifest themselves, in so far as we can trace them, to be parts essential to the system of pure and perfect benevolence. Stability and duration are stamped on the Universe, and the imagination is lost in the immensity of the prospects; and whether we turn to the past or to the future, our conception vainly pants to grasp the idea of boundless Eternity. * * * * *