“Three years later, and Europe with its teeming millions went
under as mysterious a cloud, which, though not so dense, yet
continued longer and awoke a wonder and fear that was widely felt.
A haze, for which no known cause was then assigned (though in
subsequent years it has been supposed by some to have been
volcanic dust), spread through the entire breadth of the
atmosphere over all the continent far into Asia. It appeared in
Denmark, May 29, reached France, June 14; Italy, June 16; Norway,
June 22; Austria and Switzerland, June 23; Sweden, June 24; and
Russia, June 25. By the close of the month it had overspread like
a pall all Syria, and on July 18, had penetrated the heart of Asia
to the Altai Mountains. The obscurity prevailed a greater portion
of the summer, imparting to the sun an unnatural color of a dull,
rusty red, and causing both the days and nights to wear a weird
and gloomy aspect. The atmosphere was highly electric, and nature
was greatly convulsed.
“Dr. N. Webster in his valuable ‘History of Pestilences,’ vol. ii.
p. 274, testifies to the general fear. As it was in America on the
occurrence of the ‘dark day,’ so the churches in Europe were
crowded with alarmed multitudes supplicating mercy of Heaven.
Professor Lalande, the astronomer of France, attempted to quiet
the popular fear by ascribing the darkened heavens to exhalations
arising out of the earth; but both Webster and Humboldt (Cosmos
IV., p. 75) rejected this solution of the mysterious obscurity.
Protestant England shared in the alarm it occasioned; and the poet
Cowper sang that all the elements ‘preached the general doom.’ It
was to this unaccountable obscuration of light that he refers in
his ‘Task:’—
“ ‘Nature seems with dim and sickly eye
To wait the close of all.’ ”
—“_Great Consummation._”
“And The Stars Shall Fall.”
How this sign can be fulfilled is a query with some people, who, perhaps
captiously, remark that it would be impossible, since the earth itself is
but a small body compared with many of the vast worlds of space. But all
such queries are out of date now since the sign itself has already been
witnessed. On the night of November 13, 1833, the grandest display of
celestial fireworks ever beheld took place. From works of accepted
authority we take the following descriptions of this remarkable event:—
“But the most sublime phenomenon of shooting stars, of which the
world has furnished any record, was witnessed throughout the
United States on the morning of the 13th of November, 1833. The
entire extent of this astonishing exhibition has not been
precisely ascertained; but it covered no inconsiderable portion of
the earth’s surface.... The first appearance was that of fireworks
of the most imposing grandeur, covering the entire vault of heaven
with myriads of fire‐balls, resembling sky‐rockets. Their
coruscations were bright, gleaming, and incessant, and they fell
thick as the flakes in the early snows of December. To the
splendors of this celestial exhibition the most brilliant sky‐
rockets and fire‐works of art bear less relation than the
twinkling of the most tiny star to the broad glare of the sun. The
whole heavens seemed in motion, and suggested to some the awful
grandeur of the image employed in the Apocalypse, upon the opening
of the sixth seal, when ‘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.’ ”—_Burritt’s __“__Geography of the
Heavens,__”__ p. 163, ed. 1854._
[Illustration]
The Falling Stars.