The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-06-07

and why it occurs, but astronomers
upon the earth have never yet been able
satisfactorily to explain it. Atanyrate
it begins to assume fiery aspect.
From faint cloudy object IL becomes
blazing meteor, throwing out behind
! it glowing train that stretches like q
conflagratiOn across the sky, and. adds
millions upon millions of miles to its
length rs it approaches the sun. Now,
indeed,
The comet he is on his way,
And singing as he flies;
The Keeling planets shrink before
The Specter Of the skies.
1t must make the blood of the man
upon the comet Jingle when he per-
ceives the terror and establishment that
his fiery courser inspires among the
worlds he passes swiftly in his flight.
What if there should be a collision?
But luckily for him all gates are wide
open, and he has aclear road, this John
Gilpin of the skies.
As he darts across the orbits of the
planets, supposing the direction of the
comets motion not to be greatly in
clined to the general plane of the sys-
TEN, he is able to study the aspect of
the various worlds. Terrestrial astron-
omers can never have such views as he
gets of those outposts of the solar sys-
tenn, Uranus and Neptune. He obtains,
perhaps, an insight into the nature and
constitution of the splendid rings that
encircle Saturn, to possess which Cali
leo or Herschel would almost have bar
tered life itself. He perceives in Jupiter,
far more clearly than we are able to
do with our greatest telescopes, the
marvellous phenomena of giant
planet which is just being born out of
the chaotic elements of an eXtinguished
sun. He has close view of some of
the throng of minute planets that cir
culate between Jupiter and Mars
planets which are 50 small some of
them, that their equators might serve
as a race track for Weston and Rowell
and the other go-as-you-please pedes-
TRANS.
What wonderful sights may he not
behold upon Mars, q world that has
advanced in its planetary development
many ages beyond the earth, and to
whose inhabitants some astronomers
have not hesitated TO ascribe achieve
ments that would be as impossible to
the descendants of Adam as the
bridging of the Atlantic Ocean.
He can obtain a most striking view
of this living earth and its dead COM
rade, the moon-the one whirling
swiftly upon its axis and ENJOYING the
rapid succession of day and night; its
waters sparkling in the sunshine: its
green prairies and forests glowing with
beauty: cities dotting its surface:
cloud-peopled atmosphere surrounding
it, vegetation covering the slopes of its
mountains; and its oceans, as well as
its continents, filled with a profusion of
life from its luXuriant equator to its
snow-capped poles; the other hanging
almost 'motionless upon its axis, a
WORKOUT world, without air. without
water, without vegetation, without life,
only q desert eXpanse of barren rocks;
its naked mountains; its silent vol
canoes; its untenanted plains; and its
old empty sea bottoms presenting a
scene of utter desolation, turned to the
untempered glare of the sun without
the shadow of cloud or q tree to hide
it. And these two worlds, presenting
so complete contrast. he beholds
chained together by the resistless power
of gravitation, their distance apart
being, as astronomical measures 90,
out the merest step.
If he passes close to Venus, he may
be able to penetrate the mask of clouds
which has ever hidden the face of the
Planet of Love from terrestrial star
gazers, and possibly he will discover
that the planets beauty, like that of
the amorOuS goddess whose name it
bears, is only skin deep. We cannot
guess what discoveries he might make
upon Mercury, the inmost planet of all,
which braves the sun at close quarters,
for our telescopes give us little hint as
to its condition.
And at last the comet is face to face
with the terrors of its perihelion
passage. 1t must swing around the
sun, which from little star has now
grown to gigantic orb of fire, so close
as almost to touch it. Long before he
approached so near the comets rider
beheld astonishing appendages about
the sun. Instead of smooth, dazzling
white globe, he saw the sun ringed with
scarlet flames, while shooting out on
ONClO olNlOs hblluICuo VI lllOuotitNlS, anu
in some cases, perhaps, even millions
of miles, were huge fans and shafts of
wonderful light, like fiery spokes
radating from the glowing hub of the
solar system.
And now, as the comet darts closer
in, he sees the whole surface of the
melting pot of the elements surging
and swirling in the mighty rush of CON
tending solar forces. People have lost
their heads by gazing too long at the
Niagara Whirlpool. That would tear
a ship to pieces. But there are mael-
stroms here in the sun that would
shatter and swallow a world. Iron and
copper and zinc are here reduced to
vapor and spouted heavenward thou
sands and even hundreds of thousands
of miles, and down they come again,
ceaseless and awful rain of molten
metal. Aye, masses Of sun substance