This is a very elegant description of a meteor well known to sailors. It has been called by the several names of the fire of _Saint Helen_, _Saint Elm_, _Saint Herm_, _Saint Clare_, _Saint Peter_, and _Saint Nicholas_. Whenever it appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be _Helena_, the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck, from the calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the Trojan war. When it came double it was called Castor and Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers' lances, or at sea on masts and sail-yards whirling and leaping in a moment from one place to another. Some have said, but erroneously, that it never appears but _after_ a tempest. It is also supposed to lead people to suicide by drowning. Further information on the subject may be collected from Plin. _Hist. nat._ 1. ii. c. 37. Seneca _Quæst. nat._ c. 1. Erasm. _Colloq. in naufragio._ Schotti. _Physica curiosa_, p. 1209. Menage _Dict. etym._ v. _Saint Telme._ Cotgrave _Dict._ v. _feu_, _furole_. Trevoux _Dict._ v. _furole_. _Lettres de_ Bergerac, p. 45. Eden's _Hist. of travayle_, fo. 432 b. 433 b. Camerarii _Horæ subsecivæ_ iii. 53. Cambray _Voy. dans la Finisterre_ ii. 296. Swan's _Speculum mundi_ p. 89. Shakspeare seems to have consulted Stephen Batman's _Golden books of the leaden goddes_, who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says "they were figured like two lampes or cresset lightes, one on the toppe of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the light first appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is good luck; if _either lights begin at the top-mast, bowsprit_ or foreship, and descend towards the sea, _it is a sign of tempest_. In taking therefore the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero to raise a storm. SCENE 2. Page 28. ARI. From the still-vext _Bermoothes_----