pale, shut your eyes, clench your teeth.
Pay, and go thy ways ; but to the Belvedere
no more.

METEORS.

ON the evening of the seventh of December
last, at about a quarter before five o'clock,
while the sky was cloudless, and when
twilight had commenced, a beautiful ball of fire,
with a vivid tail of streaming vapour was
seen to descend and to give out occasionally
dazzling showers of sparks. When the head
had disappeared, the tail, which had the
aspect of an illuminated cloud, gradually
twisted into the form of Hogarth's line of
beauty, and thus continued in sight for twenty
minutes. In this country, the fire-ball
seemed to vanish out of sight when near the
horizon; but, at Havre, persons are said to
have heard a loud explosion as it neared the
earth. It was seen far and wide; it was a
striking object at Rouen; and Mr. Webster,
of Neath, in South Wales, says it was the
same there. Mr. R. J. Mann writes from
Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, that it burst
upon him like a flash of lightning; and a
spectator at Great Grimsby, in Lincolnshire,
declares that little boys there mistook it for
the moon falling down. No doubt it was
seen at more distant places than these, and
must have been very high above the ground
when first visible. It would appear, from a
comparison of all observations, to have fallen
far out at sea. One of its biographers has
estimated that it exploded at least fifty miles
high in the air; and he has frightened the
susceptible by assuring us that its weight was
above five million tons.

In periods and places lacking the light of
knowledge, much alarm has been created by
these sudden appearances. One meteor,
which fell with a great noise at the village of
Doorallah in the Sikh country not long since,
was immediately conveyed with much respect
to the village, and a subscription forthwith
commenced to build a temple over it; the
devout considering it not inferior to a fresh
incarnation of deity. The rajah, however,
eyed it politically; and, fearing that it meant
evil to his dynasty, gladly listened to the
request of a British officer, who begged it of his
highness; who ordered it to be escorted by a
guard of honour of Brahmins and Sikh
horse, but with express orders that it should
not be brought near the place of his
residence. Another meteor which burst over a
town in Malacca, so affected a Chinaman who
was ill at the time, that he fell down in a fit
and expired. In our straightforward times,
we shall not be inclined to look upon such
phenomena as other than freaks of nature;
and few will be prepared to join the old lady
who said, on hearing about the meteor of
December, that, if we marked her, we should
hear of something serious about the war.
Something serious has been heard; and the
elderly prophetess will no doubt be tempted
to say she "told us so," since we have heard
what it is to be sincerely hoped is something
seriously good.

Many of these extraordinary bodies have
been recorded, especially within the last few
years; but more have probably found their
way to earth unseen. History speaks of a
lump of meteoric iron which descended
into the river at Narni, in the Papal States,
in the year nine hundred and thirty-one,
before our era, as so large that it stood
four feet above the level of the water.
Another at Ægos Potamos was said to have
been equal in size to two large millstones.
Modern times have not seen such big things,
though not less interesting. In Normandy,
at midday, fifty years ago, it rained hot
stones over a surface of twenty square miles;
and some of the stones weighed twenty
pounds. A little more than two years ago a
magnificent meteor shone out over the north
of England. It was, to look at, equal in size
to the sun, and was pronounced to be a comet.
It fell towards the east, bursting with a noise
like thunder, scattering portions of its
substance over Hanover. All the fragments of
these aërolites are found to possess nearly a
similar constitution —half, or more, metallic
(that mostly iron or nickel), and the rest
earthy. The stony constituents predominate
rarely; which leads to the unquestionable
inference, that such masses as that found in a
plain north-west of Buenos Ayres, supposed
to weigh thirteen tons, and surrounded by
nothing which would explain its presence or
claim its affinity: another discovered by a
Russian traveller on a mountain of slate in.
Siberia, fourteen hundred pounds in weight;
and many others in equally unaccountable
positions, were once fiery meteors, finishing
their wandering existence by a rapid plunge
into our earth.

What are they before we see them, and
where do they come from? Some—and
learned men, too—have supposed them to
come from volcanoes in the moon; others
have suggested that these solid bodies are
formed in the air, manufactured out of gas;
but the lapse of time and the learning of
valuable experience has pointed out a source
quite satisfactory; and, has lifted the curtain
before a panorama of a most wonderful
character.

Who has not felt an interest in watching,
on a clear night, the irregular flittings
of those pretty stars which appear to be in
search of a suitable lodgment in the sky?
Some are faint, and their journey is short;
others take long sweeps and are bright,
while a few become brilliant as the planet
Venus, and sometimes leave streaks of cloudy
light behind them. Abundant evidence has
proved that these shooting stars,

                                     Gilding the night
      With sweeping glories and long trains of light,

are none other than small bodies or lumps of