Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

430 CONCLUSIONS.

And Milton speaks from the same universal inspiration when he tells us : “A comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiucus huge In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.”

And in the Shakespeare plays * we read :

“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night ! Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky ;

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars.”

Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet as a great terror and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits uneasily when one blazes in the sky. Even to the scholar and the scientist they are a puzzle and a fear; they are erratic, unusual, anarchical, monstrous—something let loose, like a tiger of the heavens, athwart an orderly, peaceful, and harmonious world. They may be impalpable and harmless attenuations of gas, or they may be loaded with death and ruin; but in any event man can not contemplate them without terror.

* 1 Henry VI, 1, 1.