replied that a few years of respite would most
probably be granted. From year to year the
date was put back till the ninth century, when
there was a special expectation and dread, lasting
till the year one thousand, which had been
definitely fixed as the term of the world's
existence. During that century, many grants
of estates were made to the churches and
monasteries, under the formula " Termino mundi
appropinquante"—"Whereas the end of the
world is approaching." When the thousandth
year had passed without any catastrophe, there
was a new reason why gifts should be made to
the clergy. A new lease was granted to
mankind, and the fine payable was a renewal and
redecoration of the episcopal churches, monasteries,
and chapels, which took place all over Europe.
The illustrious Manuel Comnenus, in the reign
of the Emperor Basil the Second, was
incessantly tormented by men who would predict the
very hour and moment of the end of all. This
emperor, who wore monastic dress under his
armour, whom his people cursed and his Church
blessed, had caves prepared, in which he might
take refuge, and his courtiers and flatterers were
busy as ants about him, making galleries under
the earth, against the time of need.

In the year eleven hundred and seventy-nine,
the Eastern astrologers sent letters all over the
world, announcing positively that in the middle
of September, seven years after date, the end of
all things would be brought about by storms of
wind. Terrified men were surprised when the
time came, by gentle zephyrs and the mildest
autumn weather.

In the year fifteen hundred and twenty-four,
there was great terror, because John Stomer, a
German astrologer, had predicted universal
deluge for the month of February. There were
many great conjunctions in the constellation of
the Fishes, which indicated terrible mutation by
flood in all lands and among all creatures. Men
in France, England, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere,
fled from the low grounds, and lived upon the
hills. A Professor of Divinity at Alcala wrote
a book, blaming the great cost incurred in
removals, and suggesting cheap ways of escape.
A doctor of Toulouse built himself a boat raised
on four pillars. Nevertheless this February, in
which all Europe was prepared to battle with
the floods, turned out to be "extremely clear and
fine." In Hall's contemporary chronicle we
read that in this year, because of the signs,
"many persons victualled themselves and went
to high grounds for fear of drowning, and
specially one Bolton, who was prior of St.
Bartholomew's, in Smithfield" (but the story, true
as to many, was a mistake as to Bolton), "builded
him a house upon Harrow-of-the-Hill, only for
fear of this flood, and thither he went, and made
provision for all things necessary within him for
the space of two months; but the faithful people
put their trust and confidence only in God. And
this rain was by the writers prognosticated to
be in February, wherefore, when it began to
rain in February, the people were much afraid,
and said, 'Now it beginneth!' but many wise
men which thought that the world could not be
drowned again, contrary to God's promise, put
their trust in Him only, but because they thought
that some great rains might fall, by inclinations
of the stars, and that water-mills might stand
still and not grind, they provided for meal, and
yet, God be thanked, there was not a fairer
season in many years. And, at the last, the
astronomers, for their excuse, sayd that in their
computacion they had mistaken and miscounted
in their nomber an hundreth yeres."

In fifteen hundred and eighty-six, the Sieur
Andreas announced that in two years the world
would come to an end, and that immediately
afterwards all the powers would fall under the
dominion of the Turks.

A famous book in the history of Physical
Science, Whiston's Theory of the Earth, professed
on its title-page to make "the Deluge and the
General Conflagration perfectly agreeable to
Reason and Philosophy." This reverend gentleman
was—in accordance with the scanty
knowledge of more than a century and a half ago—
the philosophical beginner of the vulgar dread
awakened still whenever a comet moves in the
direction of this earth. He thought that the near
approach of a comet to the earth could so retard
its motion for a time as to alter the form of its
path round the sun from a circle into an ellipse,
"so near to the sun in its perihelion that the sun
itself would scorch and burn, dissolve and
destroy it in the most prodigious degree; and this
combustion being renewed every revolution,
would render the earth a perfect chaos again, and
change it from a planet to a comet for ever after.
'Tis evident," he adds, " this is a sufficient cause
of a general conflagration with a witness; and such
an one as would entirely ruin the make of the
present, and the possibility of a future world."
On which last account, he proceeds to say,
another method of destruction must be looked
for; therefore he goes on to paint this picture,
founded, we need hardly observe, upon a
perfectly false notion of a comet and of many things
besides. Having said that the central heat alone
would burn the earth up if its surface were not
kept cool by the wash of waters and the
coldness of the air, he adds,

"If therefore the passing by of a comet be
capable of emptying the seas and ocean and of
rendering the air and its contiguous upper
surface of the earth extremely hot and inflamed, no
more, I suppose, will be necessary to a general
conflagration. Or if any more assistance be
afforded by the presence of the comet, it will be
in excess, and only contribute still the more
certainly, and the more suddenly, to kindle such a fatal
fire and so dreadful a combustion. Now that both
these requisite conditions for a general
conflagration would be the consequents of this passage
of the ascending comet, is plain and evident:
For (1) on the approach of the comet a vast
tide would arise in the great abyss; and by the
new, more considerable, and more violent elevations
thereof into the protuberances, and the
spheroid surface of the whole, the old fissures
and breaches would be opened again, and not a