.... SUN'S DISTANCES FROM THE EARTH. March 1st.. April 1st There seems now hardly any room for doubt that Biela's Comet touched the Earth on the 27th November last. We have certainly been uninjured by the collision, and the comet appears to have survived it. Believing, with many others, that the meteors of the 27th of November formed a part of the comet, M. Klinkerfues calculated its course for a few nights subsequent, and telegraphed to the Madras Observatory, as a favourable position for observing it, that the comet had touched the Earth, requesting them to look for it in the neighbourhood of Theta Centauri. After a search of one or two evenings, a small round nebulous body was found in the position indicated, which is almost certain to be the comet. The observations thus obtained will be invaluable for a more accurate determination of the orbit. The Sun enters Aries on the 20th, at one o'clock in the afternoon, and the spring quarter commences. The Moon will be in the constellation Pisces, on the 1st and 2nd; in Aries, on the 2nd and 3rd; in Taurus, on the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th; in Gemini, on the 8th and 9th; in Cancer, on the 10th; in Leo, on the 11th and 12th; in Virgo, on the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th; in Libra, on the 17th, 18th, and 19th; in Scorpio and Serpius Ophiuchus, on the 19th, 20th, and 21st; in Sagittarius, on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd; in Capricornus, on the 24th and 25th; in Aquarius, on the 25th and 26th; in Pisces, again on the 27th, 28th, and 20th; and in Aries, to the end of the month. The most interesting occultation visible at Greenwich will be that of Alpha Libræ, on the morning of the 18th, from 6h. 21m., to 7h. 10m. Mercury will be in perihelion on the evening of the 12th; on the morning of the 19th it will be at its greatest eastern elongation, eighteen degrees, and for several evenings before and after will be visible in the evenings after sunset. After the time of the greatest elongation it will begin to assume the crescent form. On the evening of the 26th the apparent motion changes from direct to retrograde. Venus is now a glorious object. It will be near the Moon on the 2nd and 31st. On the afternoon of the 7th it will be in perihelion. On the 29th it will be at its greatest distance northward from the ecliptic; the north declination will then be nearly twenty-three degrees. On the 30th it will be at its greatest brilliancy, and will appear in the telescope as a beautiful crescent, the apparent diameter of which will be thirty-eight seconds. It will be in Aries the greater part of the month. Mars is the morning star. On the 18th, an hour before noon, it will be quite close to the Moon; an occultation may be witnessed on the occasion in some regions in the southern hemisphere. On the 21st the apparent motion among the fixed stars changes from direct to retrograde: The planet is now less than its mean distance from the Earth, and is approaching us. Jupiter is the finest object in the evening sky, with the exception of the Moon and Venus. Its apparent motion is slowly, westward; during the month it retrogrades about three degrees. It will be near the Moon on the 11th. Saturn begins to be visible before sunrise. Uranus attains its greatest altitude, fifty-nine degrees, on the 11th at nine o'clock, and on the 26th at eight o'clock in the evening. Neptune is barely visible after sunset. J. ROCHE, PRINTER, 25, HOXton-square, LONDON, Birth-place of John Locke. (From an original Sketch by Mr. James M'Intyre.) THE COTTAGE HOMES OF ENGLAND. BY T. J. WESLEY BENNETT, F.R.S.L. No. I. THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE PHILOSOPHER, AND HOME OF THE CHRISTIAN POETESS. "The cottage homes of England By thousands on her plains, They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks, And round the hamlet fanes. VOL. XIX.-Second Series.-APRIL, 1873. Through glowing orchards forth they peep, And fearless here the lowly sleep, As the birds beneath their eaves."-Mrs. Hemans. WHERE lived, where died, the great and good? Let us endeavour to find some of them, and take a pilgrimage to spots which should be dear to English hearts. Not in stately halls, for Mr. Walpole has chronicled these, but in the cottages of England nestling in the valley, clustering in the hamlet, lodged on the hill-side, or sheltered in town and city, will we look for the homes and haunts of our worthies. How many of the afterwards illustrious of the world have made their entrance into its arena through cottage homes! Where shall we go? Well, it may not, perhaps, be an auspicious beginning, but we will turn our face towards the setting sun. Some summers past found us on the Cheddar valley side of the Mendip Hills. It was on a day when a golden glory was resting upon land and sea, that we set out for the village of Wrington. Our drive was along a road that gradually declined into the place, and gave facility for viewing a sweep of scenery peculiar to Somersetshire. Away to our left were the brightly beaming waters of the Bristol Channel, while far in the distance lay the lovely and picturesque locality of Clevedon. "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Blown upon by the western breeze, the locality around Clevedon has a perpetual emerald appearance, while the estuary of the Channel completes the imagery by its heaving waters. The stillness which lent to our view a charm, is now broken by that restless energy which is ambitious of placing a railway station in every sequestered nook. Wrington is one of those irregularly constructed villages having a couple of streets or roads that intersect each other obliquely, and but a scant supply of houses or people. Entering from the south side we come upon the church, whose pulpit for some years, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was occupied by Dr. Francis Roberts, an eminent Divine and expositor. On the north side of the churchyard stands the cottage wherein, on the 29th of August, 1632,* JOHN LOCKE," the English Philosopher," * On the wall of the house in the Churchyard is the following inscription:— JOHN LOCKE Was born in this house, A.D. 1637. This Stone Was Erected by the Inhabitants of this Parish, A.D. 1844. But why is the date put five years later than that given by biographers? first saw the light. Mr. James M'Intyre's sketch presents the reader with an admirable view of the situation. The cottage was humble enough, though doubtless sufficient for the Justice's clerk, which capacity the elder Locke filled. How long the family remained here it is difficult to determine. Doubtless long enough for the earlier years of our metaphysician to be sombered by the associations of the churchyard, and to mould his mind to those habits of reflection which afterwards produced such masses of powerful reasoning. We are brought to this conclusion by the plain results which are briefly recorded. The Justice's clerk becomes changed into a captain in the Parliamentary army, and of a regiment in which one Colonel Popham is superior officer. The Colonel has seen the boy, and marked that— 66 "Pale thought o'ercast his face," and advises Captain Locke to send him to Westminster School, the highest aim entertained probably being that he might become a respectable clerk in orders." More ambitious hopes could scarcely have disturbed the some time Justice's clerk. Young Locke distanced these dreams, for at nineteen he had won an election to Oxford. Having passed through the academic course, he applied himself to the study and practice of medicine. This led to an introduction to the celebrated Ashley, first Earl of Shaftesbury, and with this nobleman his fortunes were afterwards more or less linked for many years. Locke now held offices under Government for about three years. On the fall of Shaftesbury he fled to Holland, and thus retired from public into private life, where he wrote and published his famous Letter on Toleration, completed his wondrous "Essay on the Human Understanding," of which Dr. Reid has said, "It is the first example of writing on abstract subjects with simplicity and perspicuity." Horne Tooke, in his "Diversions of Purley," criticises it after another fashion, bringing us to the conclusion that if Locke had failed, Tooke would not have succeeded. Literary labours filled his remaining years, together with a close study of the Scriptures, with which this great man deplored that he had not earlier acquainted himself. He wrote a Treatise on the Reasonableness of Christianity, and Paraphrase and Notes on some of the Epistles of St. Paul; the latter work is unhappily tainted with Socinianism. Of his literary industry sixteen volumes bear evidence. "Looking upon this life as affording no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of doing well and in the hope of another life," this is the Christian philosopher's reflection as sitting in his study in the Earl of Peterborough's mansion at Fulham, listening to Lady Masham reading the Psalms on an October day in 1704, he finishes the imperfect life of earth. These are the passing memories as we take our leave of this cottage home to resume our journey to another but a little distance away. We pass the Vicarage, around whose garden there is a complete bowery hedge of roses that is perfectly enchanting, on to Cowslip-Green, to a cottage which has become famous in the annals of English literature by the name of Barley-Wood. Hither came from scholastic toils, to rest upon an honourable independence gained thereby, HANNah More. This elegant little place was erected under the direction of this lady and her sisters, most of the trees which surround it in its charming grounds having been planted by her own hands in 1791. Here she spent twenty-five years in enjoyable literary toil or ease, refreshed by visits to Bath, or to the Duke of Beaufort's seat at Badminton. The cottage stands upon a gentle acclivity surrounded by flowers, shrubs and trees. The vegetation is particularly rich, and the locality looks as if its negligée could only be "the litter of roseleaves," and its stillness broken but by "the noise of the nightingales." In 1804, Mrs. Montague presented to Hannah More an urn, with an appropriate inscription to the memory of John Locke, which was erected in the pleasure-grounds in full sight of the philosopher's birthplace. Mrs. More was endowed with a wonderfully varied capacity. In whatever department of literary work her pen was exercised, it won for her almost universal praise. At eighteen her poems had gained the critical admiration of David Garrick, and from that time, through several decades, she contributed to the literature of her country, lyric poems, dramas, sacred and classic, essays and stories, which influenced for good, and counteracted in a large degree the evil tendency of the infidel and revolutionary press of that day. So popular a writer was she, that in the year 1795 a million copies of her works were sold; indeed, it was difficult to meet the demand. The air of Wrington might seem to be congenial to the production of educational works. John Locke gave us "Thoughts on the Education of Children," and Hannah More a "Treatise on Female Education," and "Hints towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess." Both these were written in the seclusion of Barley-Wood. The latter work was composed at the special request of royalty, the subject of it being the Princess Charlotte. In 1819 her literary career may be said to have closed, by the issue of a collection of some smaller pieces in one volume. She was then between seventy and eighty years of age. Even now, in the perusal of her sharp and pungent criticisms, we cannot fail to admire the rare |