the national costumes of the peasants in the environs of Paris. What has become of the custom of the young girls of Oberland of receiving, with the approval of their parents, the young men who were their suitors and offering them cherry wine.

We allude not to the glare of the volcano, the flash of the lightning, or the coruscations of the northern lights, but to brilliant appearances of a more recondite description-more remote, too, from terrestrial connections, most frequently and magnificently seen in tropical localities, sometimes visible over thousands of square miles of the earth's surface, and through a vast linear extent of celestial space, occurring both as isolated drops of

ets, from various parts of the city, as night closes in upon the celebration of the evermemorable fourth of July. Up they go, not one by one, or score after score, but in a monster burst-flaring, hissing, and vaulting, then curling and winding aloft like so many fiery flying serpents, till they finally dissolve in a shower of stars, most dazzling to the half million pair of upturned eyes that follow their course. Though admiration is excited, there is little surprise, except among the juveniles. Much less is the mind of the multitude stirred with those feelings of awe bordering on apprehension, which are usually roused when the impression to the eye is so occult as to defy intelligence to apprehend its cause-a splendid but mysterious apparition. The whole is of the earth, earthy.

It is known to be of man's device, and of no difficult manipulation, while only gorgeous or even visible within a very limited range. At a comparatively short distance from the scene of action, the lofty seemed low, the beautiful was obscure, and the imposing became insignificant. It dwindled down to the likeness of a few squibs, fired by some frolicsome urchins escaped from school, till, a little further off, the horizon showed nothing in the direction but the ordinary darkness of night. Far otherwise is it with the fireworks which nature occasionally exhibits.

ers. St. John might have had the phenomenon before him on its grandest scale when he indited the passage in which he refers to the opening of the sixth seal: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind."

It is very common, when the curtains of the night are drawn, and clouds are absent from the star-decked sky, or only

concave to arrest the eye, as though a fiery arrow had been shot from an invisible bow in space, or a star had fallen from its sphere into an extinguishing gulf. Hence the familar names of shooting and falling stars applied to such apparitions. In certain situations—as when away from the din of towns, on shipboard, in the still valley, or on the solitary moor-the appearance is not a little impressive; and, being not more striking than well known in all climes and countries, it has been consecrated in the records of inspiration as an image of the complete and rapid overthrow of principalities and powers. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Often as the sight has been witnessed, it seldom fails to arrest attention, whether contemplated by rustic ignorance or cultivated science, and to fix thought upon the inquiry, for the moment," What can it be?" In the oldest literature we meet with allusions to these swift and evanescent luminosities. Homer compares the hasty flight of Minerva from the peaks of Olympus, to break the truce between the Greeks and Trojans, to the rapidity of a radiant overhead streamer. Virgil makes it a kind of telegraph between Jupiter and poor old Anchises; and mentions the phenomenon, when frequent, as a prognostic of stormy weather:

"And oft, before tempestuous winds arise, The seeming stars fall headlong from the skies, And, shooting through the darkness, gild the night

With sweeping glories and long trains of light."

Modern observations show that these and other objects of the same class-the shooting stars, falling stars, fire-balls, and thunder-bolts of the vulgar-the meteors, meteorites, aërolites, bolides, eolides, and uranolites of the scientific-are to a moral certainty identical in their nature and origin, though differing in their exhibitions. The leading circumstances under which they appear may be thus stated:

1. Shooting stars, meteors, or whatever else we may call them, vary in their form, magnitude, and brightness. Some consist of phosphoric lines, apparently described by a point; and these are the most numerous class. In others, the globular shape is occasionally very conspicuous, answering to a ball of fire, usually followed by a train of intensely white light; but

this is sometimes tinged with various prismatic colors of great beauty. A third variety present no uniform aspect, remain stationary in the heavens, and are visible for a considerable time. Estimates of the diameters of the globular class give measurements of five hundred feet, one thousand feet, and two thousand six hundred feet. Some are not more conspicuous than small stars to the naked eye, while others are more resplendent than the brightest of the planets, and throw a very perceptible illumination upon the path of the traveler.

2. These luminous objects differ likewise in their height, velocity, and duration. A series of observations was carefully conducted by Brandes, with coadjutors at Breslau and the neighborhood, between April and October, 1823, when, out of a great number, ninety-eight were observed simultaneously at different stations. Of these, at the time of extinction, the computed altitudes were,

The greatest velocity was thirty-six miles a second, or double that of the earth in its orbit; but a rate vastly greater has been registered, equal to eleven times that of the earth, and to seven and a half times that of Mercury, the fastest galloper of the planets; and much greater altitudes are on record. Commonly, the time of visibility involves only a few seconds; but the luminous trains of the globular class have been seen from several minutes to half an hour after the disappearance of the brilliant balls, while examples of the stationary amorphous kind have remained in sight much longer.

3. Their direction is in general more or less oblique, but sometimes it seems horizontal; and the extraordinary fact is mentioned in one instance of a shooting star moving away from the earth, or upward, as if caught in the act of deserting celestial space, and dragged back into its depths by an attraction superior to terrestrial gravitation. It is usually the case that these objects move from northeast to southwest, which is contrary to the direction of the earth in its orbit. This seems to have an important bearing upon their physical history.

4. While limited to no particular part of the earth, state of the weather, or season of the year, they are most numerously seen in tropical localities, under tranquil conditions of the atmosphere, toward the close of summer and the commencement of autumn, especially about the middle of August and November. The displays have been gorgeous and terrific, as seen in America, when at the same time nothing remarkable has been observed in European skies; while cotemporaneously, on other occasions, the revelation has been splendid in the atmosphere of opposite hemispheres. In 1837 a vast number appeared in Europe; and on the same day, on the other side of the globe, they were witnessed from the French ship "Bonite."

occasionally hissing noises and loud detonations have been distinctly audible, owing, doubtless, to greater contiguity. Windows and doors have rattled, and even buildings have trembled at the violence of the explosions. The meteor which passed over in Italy, in 1676, disappeared to seaward in the direction of Corsica,

with a report which was heard at Leghorn. A similar visitor, witnessed all over England in 1718, passed from northeast to southwest, and the sound of an explosion was heard through Devon and Cornwall, and along the opposite coast of Brittany. This was a very brilliant object. Sir Hans Sloane, being abroad in the streets of London at the time of its appearancea quarter past eight at night-found his path suddenly and intensely illumined. He at first thought it proceeded from a discharge of rockets; but, looking up, he saw an orb of fire traveling with immense velocity aloft, so vividly bright that several times he was compelled to turn away his eyes from it. The stars disappeared; the moon-nine days old, and high near the meridian, the sky being very clear-was so effaced as to be scarcely visible.

6. On the same night the appearance of falling stars is ordinarily limited to two or three examples, and weeks may pass away without a single one being observed; but at times the number is prodigious, as if the whole celestial host had been loosened from the concave to rush in lawless flight toward the earth, resembling a perfect shower of fiery snow. Mediæval chronicles contain records of such events, once considered as marvels invented by the chroniclers, but now admitted to the class of facts, since modern experience is familiar with precisely similar displays. Some of these relations are worthy of notice.

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VOL. XI.-2

roar of the cataract, the wild dash and incessant plunging of the waters below it, with the fiery storm overhead, combined to form a scene of unequaled sublimity. Some persons died of fright. Many thought that the last great day had come. In the slave states, the terror of the negroes was extreme. "I was suddenly awakened," says a planter in South Carolina, "by the most distressing cries that ever fell on my ears. Shrieks of horror and cries for mercy I could hear from most of the negroes of three plantations, amounting to from six to eight hundred. While earnestly listening for the cause, I heard a faint voice near the door calling my name. I arose, and, taking my sword, stood at the door. At this moment I heard the same voice still beseeching me to rise, and saying, 'O, master! the world is on fire!' I then opened the door, and it is difficult to say which excited me most, the awfulness of the scene, or the distressed shrieks of the negroes. Upward of one hundred lay prostrate on the ground -some speechless, and some with the bitterest cries, but most with their hands raised, imploring God to save the world and them. The scene was truly awful; for never did the rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell toward the earth. East, west, north, and south, it was the same." An observer at Boston compared them, when at the maximum, to half the number of flakes seen in the air during an ordinary snow-storm. When they became less dense, so as to admit of being individualized, he counted six hundred and fifty in fifteen minutes, in a vertical zone, which did not include a tenth part of the visible horizon.

Some leading features of this magnificent spectacle, as noted by intelligent eyewitnesses, may be concisely stated. First. The meteors had their origin beyond the limits of our atmosphere. They all, without exception, moved in lines which converged in one and the same point of the heavens. But their course commenced at different distances from it, while around the point itself there was a circular space of several degrees in which none appeared. The position of this radiating point, with reference to the stars, was near y in the constellation Leo. It was stationary among the stars during the whole period of observation, or, in other words, instead of accompanying the earth in its diurnal rota

tion eastward, it attended the stars in their apparent movement westward. Thus the common focus from which the meteors seemed to emanate was clearly in the regions of space exterior to our atmosphere. Secondly. The height of the place whence they proceeded, though not accurately determined, must have been several thousand miles above the surface of the earth. This was inferred from observations of parallax. Thirdly. The meteors did not fall by the force of gravity alone, for the velocity observed was estimated to be much greater than could possibly result from the law of gravitation. Fourthly. They consisted of combustible matter, took fire, and were consumed in traversing the atmosphere. They were not luminous in their original situations in space, otherwise the body would have been seen from which they emanated. Combustion ensued upon reaching the atmosphere, owing to the heat evolved by the sudden and powerful com pression of the air consequent on their tremendous velocity; and the combustion was complete, since no particles, notwithstanding the momentum, made their way to the surface of the earth. Fifthly. Some of the meteors were evidently bodies of considerable size. Several fire-balls were observed apparently as large as the full moon. Dr. Smith, of North Carolina, who was traveling all night on professional business, thus describes one : "In size it appeared somewhat larger than the full moon rising. I was startled by the splendid light in which the surrounding scene was exhibited, rendering even small objects quite visible; but I heard no noise, although every sense seemed to be suddenly aroused, in sympathy with the violent impression on the sight." Sixthly. The large meteors were still high in the atmosphere when they exploded, or resolved themselves into smoke, for evidently the same objects were observed from far distant points; and while the explosions were seen, no report of any kind reached the ear.

While the eye was alone appealed to upon this occasion, the ear, as before remarked, has been addressed; and the sense of touch has taken cognizance of solid bodies which have fallen from surrounding space. But these "bits of stars," with the hypotheses proposed to explain the entire phenomena, must be reserved for future notice.