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maintaine d , with great seriousness that it was a matter of which he rtas certainly better entitled to judge than any one else . When reduced almost to the last extremity , he still persisted in going
out in his carnage , and eating and drinking all sorts of things as usual , —and ended with a bad pun on the name of his parish priest . This worthy person who was called M . Chapeau , having come to see him the day before
he died , the Comte told him with great politeness , that he need not come again till he was sent for , which , however , would be Tery soon , for , as the weather was beginning to be bad , he ra . ther thought he should not go out again sans Chapeau ; and next
day , accordingly , the good vicar was sent for to bury him ! ( P . 3190 2 . Comets . The farther that our knowledge
has extendedythe more phenomena have been brought from the dominion of Chance and placed under the government of physical causes ; and the farther off have the boundaries of darkness been
carried . It was , says M . Laplace , of the phenomena not supposed to be subjected to the regulation of fixed laws , that superstition took hold , for the purpose of awakening the fears and enslaving the minds of men . The
llNe , adds he , is not far distant , when unusual rains or unusual drought , the appearance of a co met , of an eclipse , of an aurora borealis , and , in general of
any extraordinary phenomenon , was regarded as a sign of the an . ger of heaven , and prayers were P ut up to avert its dangerous conse quences . Men never prayed to i
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change the course of the sun or of the planets , as experience would soon have taught them the inefficacyofsuch supplications . But those phenomena of which the order was not clearly perceived , were
thought to be apart of the system of nature which the Divinity had not subjected to fixed laws , but had left free , for the purpose of punishing the sins of the world ,
and warning men of tbeir danger . The great Comet of 1456 spread terror over all Europe , at that time alarmed by the rapid successes of the Turks and the fall
of the Greek empire 5 and the Pope directed public prayers to be said , on account of the ap * pearance of the comet , no less than the progress of Mahomet . It is curious to remark tow
different the sensations have been , which , after four revolutions , this same comet has excited in the world . Halley having recognized its identity with the comets of
1531 , 1607 , 1682 , shewed it to be a body revolving round the sun in 75 years nearly ; he foretold its return in 1758 , or the beginning of 1759 , and the event has verified the most remarkable predictian in science . Comets have
since ceased to be regarded assigns of the Divine displeasure ; and every body must have remarked with satisfaction , how far the comet of 1811 was from beinef
viewed with terror ( in this country at least ) , even by the least instrucfed of the people , and from
exciting any sentiment but admiration of its extraordinary bea . uty . The dominion of Chance is thus suffering constant diminution ; and the Anarch Old may still complain , as in Miltou , of the encroachments that are continually
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Comets . 669
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vu -. x . 4 u
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1814, page 669, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2446/page/9/
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