O, the lanes of long ago!
              The quiet lanes of long ago!
The narrow, mazy, ferny, bowery, ivied lanes of long
ago!

               O, the woods of long ago!
               The waving woods of long ago!
The music-stifling, poet-thrilling, harp-voiced woods of
long ago!

                 O, the hills of long ago!
                 The breezy hills of long ago!
The dazzling views of paradise from the magic hills of
long ago!

                  O, the clouds of long ago!
                  The glorious clouds of long ago!
The silver-brighten'd, violet-tinted, roseate clouds of long ago!

                   O, the winds of long ago!
                   The deep-toned winds of long ago!
The strong, the proud, the widely-roaming, passionate
winds of long ago!

                    O, the waves of long ago!
                    The mighty waves of long ago!
The swelling, heaving, bounding, curling, foaming
waves of long ago!

                     O, the storms of long ago!
                     The thundering storms of long ago!
The iron-handed, giant-voiced, black-brow'd storms of
long ago!

                      O, the homes of long ago!
                      The warm, true friends of long ago!
The undoubting eyes, the kindling hopes, the liberal
hearts of long ago!

                       O, the years of long ago!
                       The sad, sad years of long ago!
That friends might fail, and roses die, and joys be lost
with long ago!

             And with thoughts of the present and long ago,
              Comes dreams of the pure souls of long ago,
              And hopes yet to rest in the land of the blest,
            Where they pillow'd their weary heads long ago!

CHIPS FROM THE COMET.

FROM first to last, Donati's comet has
thrown off more chips than people in general
dream of, some of them very considerable
ones.  It has turned out to be a sort of
celestial egg enclosed in a multitude of shells,
which it got rid of as it approached the sun,
like the traveller who cast aside his cloak
under the mild persuasion of Phœbus Apollo;
although Boreas had in vain endeavoured to
force it from him.  Donati's comet exhibited
one very remarkable phenomenon; it formed
successively, around its central nebulosity, a
series of luminous envelopes distant and
distinct from each other, till they attained the
number of eight at least; so that the comet
seemed to be a never-ending nest of boxes of
light.  Similar phenomena were observed by
the first Herschel and by Olbers in the grand
comet of eighteen hundred and eleven.  What
physical condition of the star itself can be
conjoined with such a continual casting of
luminous skins, it is difficult for us to imagine
in our wildest reveries.  It would seem at
least to betoken the impossibility that the
hairy wanderer (cometa, derived from ?ó??,
coma, a head of hair) should be the dwelling-
place of any animated beings whatever.  And
yet, if we had never seen fish, nor water
insects and molluscs, and had no further
experience of water than that it drowned
us whenever we fell into it and remained
submerged, we might be tempted to say, that
it was impossible for organised creatures to
exist in water.  Therefore, we must hesitate
before deciding that even Donati's cornet may
not have its inhabitants, whom we may suppose
to wake up and dance, like a swarm of
gnats, at their approach to the sun, and to
fall again into torpid lethargy when their
long, long winter recommences.

That the existence of such cometarians is
improbable, though not impossible, may be
concluded from the observations and reasonings
of Monsieur Brento.  That learned
astronomer remarked, that the brightness of
Donati's comet was less than that of the
atmosphere soon after sunset; which is less
than that of the same atmosphere during
day-time, which is less than that of the moon
when she is visible in broad day; which is
nearly equal to that of a little white cloud
of the same angular diameter.  Yet the
comet was fully exposed to the blazing sunshine,
and was illuminated by its rays about
three times as much as we are.  If we combine
these indications with the immense depth
of the comet which our visual rays traversed
—an ocean of luminous matter millions of
miles deep in the portion of the tail compa-
ratively near to the nucleus —some idea may
be conceived of the excessive rarity of the
vapour or dust of which this heavenly body
is formed.

The curiosity of the public was greatly
excited to trace the development of the tail;
but that development may be easily understood
as soon as the excessive rarity of
the comet's ponderable matter is taken into
account.  Whether dust or vapour, it is
believed to be in any case an incoherent
assemblage of atoms; and, moreover, that
every ponderable atom of the tail follows its
own proper orbit, independent of the orbits
of the neighboring atoms.  Now, if you
throw into the air a shovelful of sand, it
requires particular care and a special address
to make the sand fly all in one mass, like a
stone; it is a necessary condition of such a
feat that the grains of sand, when they leave
the shovel, should all have equal and parallel
velocities.  If this condition be not fulfilled,
every grain follows its own course separately.
These courses diverge and separate, and the
shovelful of sand spreads itself out into diverse
forms.  It is like the contents of a gun-barrel
laden with small shot.  The charge