Nevertheless, despite a few tragedies consequent upon fear at the comet’s near approach, the lurking dread of evil it might have had in store for us was considerably less on the occasion of the return of Halley’s comet in 1910, than was usual in the gloomy, prognosticating period of the Middle Ages. Yet certain events occurred which made some people wonder if there was not a kernel of truth in the so-called portents after all. For instance, during the month of January (in the eventful year 1910) the so-called Daylight comet—a totally unexpected visitor to the sun’s domain—blazed out in the evening sky and the people of Paris saw its reflection in the flood which threatened to destroy their city. In May, while Londoners were watching for Halley’s comet, which proved to be a very disappointing spectacle in this part of the world, the body of King Edward the Seventh lay in state at Westminster. “What wonder,” as Mr. Arthur R. Hinks observes in his book entitled _Astronomy_, “that the imagination seizes upon these deplorable coincidences and the fear of comets dies hard among us?” Tennyson thus refers to Halley’s comet in his poem “Harold”: “Lo! there once more—this is the seventh night You grimly-glaring, treble-brandished scourge of England. · · · · · Look you, there’s a star. · · · · · It glares in heaven, it flares upon the Thames, The people are as thick as bees below, They hum like bees—they cannot speak—for awe, Lord Leodwin, dost thou believe that these Three rods of blood-red fire up yonder mean The doom of England and the wrath of Heaven?” Milton in “Paradise Lost” compares Satan to a comet: “That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.” It has been suggested that the poet was doubtless referring to the comet of 1618, which was held responsible for the great Thirty Years’ War. Milton was only ten years old at the time, but the impression made on his mind by this magnificent comet with a train 104° long (or over twenty times the distance separating the pointers in the constellation of the Great Bear), “may well have lasted until he wrote the above lines as a man of fifty.”[1] Elsewhere, in “Paradise Lost,” Milton refers to a comet as the brandish’d sword of God: “... before them blaz’d Fierce as a Comet: which, with torrid heat, And vapours as the Lybian air adust, Began to parch that Temperate clime.” According to the translation by Longfellow, Dante in his “Paradiso,” Canto XXIV, refers to comets as “souls beatified.” “Thus Beatrice: and those souls beatified Transformed themselves to spheres on steadfast poles Flaming intensely in the guise of Comets.”