Lady Cowper, in her Diary, protests that Linnet took the oaths which secured him in his preferment, much against his will; ‘and they choked him, for he actually died the next day of no other disease but swearing to the Government.’ [Sidenote: _THE DERWENTWATER LIGHTS._] That day was the last Tuesday in February, when London, just after dark, was attracted by strange flashes of light in the North West. The light was diversely compared to the dawn of day, to that of the moon breaking through the clouds; and a newspaper philosopher cheerfully described it as ‘darting many streams towards all parts of the sky, which looked like smoak.’ Its progress was towards the South-East, and it died out at the witching hour of night. Superstition sharpened or deceived the eyes of beholders in all parts of the country. The London Jacobites hailed this Aurora as a message from Heaven to cheer them after the depression caused by the execution of the sentence on the Jacobite leaders. The London Whigs did not know what to make of it, but men of both parties, whose eyes were made the fools of other senses, agreed in seeing in the field of the sky armies fiercely engaged, giants flying through ether with bright flaming swords, and fire-breathing dragons flaring from swift and wrathful comets. They swore they heard the report of guns; they were quite sure they smelt powder. What one man said he saw, another assented to, and proceeded to see something more monstrous. Whatever din of battle was heard by one group, a thousand echoes of it were heard by another. The journals were not nice in calling such people by rude names. ◆[Sidenote: _SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS._]◆ The scientific critics saw nothing but what was natural, and they schooled the Londoners in this wise:――‘The Sun having been hot for two days past, and particularly that afternoon, by which vapours were exhaled both from the Earth and Water, and the sulphurous Particles mixed with them, taking fire, might occasion that Light, and some coruscations, as is very common upon marshes in fenny places, in Spring and Summer nights.’ The explainer spoke with more confidence as to the intentions of Providence. The Jacobites had taken courage at the eclipse of the preceding year. To them it was a sign that the temporary adumbration of the Sun of Stuart would be followed by triumphant effulgency. The Sun of Stuart had proved to be only a mock Sun. _Argal_――‘they have,’ writes the philosophic critic, ‘all the reason in the world to believe that this last prodigy, if they will have it so called, portends a due chastisement for their obstinacy in carrying out designs against their King, their Country, and the Protestant Religion.’