to decrease, and it became more and more obvious that the earth,
on her new orbit, was about to cross the orbit of Venus. Throughout this
time the earth had been making a perceptible approach towards Mercury,
and that planet--which is rarely visible to the naked eye,
and then only at what are termed the periods of its greatest
eastern and western elongations--now appeared in all its splendor.
It amply justified the epithet of "sparkling" which the ancients
were accustomed to confer upon it, and could scarcely fail
to awaken a new interest. The periodic recurrence of its phases;
its reflection of the sun's rays, shedding upon it a light
and a heat seven times greater than that received by the earth;
its glacial and its torrid zones, which, on account of the great
inclination of the axis, are scarcely separable; its equatorial bands;
its mountains eleven miles high;--were all subjects of observation
worthy of the most studious regard.

But no danger was to be apprehended from Mercury; with Venus
only did collision appear imminent. By the l8th of January
the distance between that planet and the earth had become reduced
to between two and three millions of miles, and the intensity
of its light cast heavy shadows from all terrestrial objects.
It might be observed to turn upon its own axis in twenty-three
hours twenty-one minutes--an evidence, from the unaltered duration
of its days, that the planet had not shared in the disturbance.
On its disc the clouds formed from its atmospheric vapor were plainly
perceptible, as also were the seven spots, which, according to Bianchini,
are a chain of seas. It was now visible in broad daylight.
Buonaparte, when under the Directory, once had his attention
called to Venus at noon, and immediately hailed it joyfully,
recognizing it as his own peculiar star in the ascendant.