Birmingham, at Tuam, it had declined to the third or fourth order of
brilliancy. In twelve days, dating from its first apparition in the
Irish heavens, it had sunk to the eighth rank, and it went on waning
until the 26th of June, when it ceased to be discernible except through
the medium of the telescope. This was a remarkable, though certainly not
an unprecedented proceeding on the part of a star; but one singular
circumstance in its behavior was that, after the lapse of nearly two
months, it began to blaze up again, though not with equal ardor, and
after maintaining its glow for a few weeks, and passing through sundry
phases of color, it gradually paled its fires, and returned to its
former insignificance. How many years had elapsed since this awful
conflagration actually took place, it would be presumptuous to guess;
but it must be remembered that news from the heavens, though carried by
the fleetest of messengers, light, reaches us long after the event has
transpired, and that the same celestial carrier is still dropping the
tidings at each station it reaches in space, until it sinks exhausted by
the length of its flight.

As the star had suddenly flamed up, was it not a natural supposition
that it had become inwrapped in burning hydrogen, which in consequence
of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities,
and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on
fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be
consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in
this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst
of light on the 20th of August.

By such a catastrophe, it is not wholly impossible that our own globe
may some time be ravaged; for if a word from the Almighty were to
unloose for a few moments the bonds of affinity which unite the elements