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himself was unable to cope. Thereupon the image of the moon-god Chonsu was despatched in his mystic ark, for the purpose of exorcising the spirit and delivering the princess. The demon at once yielded to the divine influence; and the king of Bechten was so delighted that he kept the image in his possession for upwards of three years. In consequence of an alarming dream he then sent him back to Egypt with presents of great value. Whatever evil powers the moon may have exerted since, we must credit him with having once ejected an evil spirit and prolonged a royal life.

Returning to Thoth, we find the following valuable hints in the great work of Baron Bunsen:--"The connection between Tet and the moon may allude, according to Wilkinson, to the primitive use of a lunar year. The ancients had already remarked that the moon in Egyptian was masculine, not feminine, as the Greeks and Romans generally made it. Still we have no right to suppose a particular moon-god, separate from Thoth. We meet with a deity called after the moon (Aah) either as a mere personification, or as Thoth, in whom the agency of the moon and nature become a living principle. We find him so represented in the tombs of the Ramesseum, opposite to Phre; a similar representation in Dendyra is probably symbolical. According to Champollion he is often seen in the train of Ammon, and then he is Thoth. He makes him green, with the four sceptres and

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cup of Ptah, by the side of which, however, is a sort of Horus curl, the infantine lock, as child or son. In the inscriptions there is usually only the crescent, but on one occasion the sign nuter (god) is added. In the tombs a moon-god is represented sitting on a bark, and holding the sceptre of benign power, to whom two Cynocephali are doing homage, followed by the Crescent and Nuter god. Lastly, the same god is found in a standing posture, worshipped by two souls and two Cynocephali." 191

With these "dog-headed" worshippers of the moon may be associated another animal that from an early date has been connected with the luminaries of the day and night. We saw that the Australian moon-myth of Mityan was of a native cat. Renouf says: "It is not improbable that the cat, in Egyptian mäu, became the symbol of the Sun-god, or Day, because the word mäu also means light." 192 Charles James Fox, with no thought of Egyptian, told the Prince of Wales that "cats always prefer the sunshine." The native land of this domestic pet, or nuisance, is certainly Persia, and some etymologists assign pers as the origin of puss. Be this as it may, the pupil of a cat's eye is singularly changeable, dilating from the narrow line in the day-time to the luminous orb in the dark. On this account the cat is likened to the moon. But in Egypt feline eyes shine with supernatural lustre. Mr. Hyde Clarke tells us that "the mummies of cats, which Herodotus saw at Bubastis, attested then, as they do now, to the

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dedication of the cat to Pasht, the moon, and the veneration of the Egyptians for this animal. The cat must have been known to man, and have been named at least as early as the origin of language. The superstition of its connection with the moon is also of pre-historic date, and not invented by the Egyptians. According to Plutarch, a cat placed in a lustrum denoted the moon, illustrating the mutual symbology. He supposes that this is because the pupils of a cat's eyes dilate and decrease with the moon. The reason most probably depends, as before intimated, on another phenomenon of periodicity corresponding to the month. Dr. Rae has, however, called my attention to another possible cause of the association, which is the fact that the cat's eyes glisten at night or in the dark. It is to be observed that the name of the sun in the Malayan and North American languages is the day-eye, or sky-eye, and that of the moon the night-eye." 193 Our own daisy, too, is the day's eye, resembling the sun, and opening its little pearly lashes when the spring wakes to newness of life.

The Nubians "pay adoration to the moon; and that their worship is performed with pleasure and satisfaction, is obvious every night that she shines. Coming out from the darkness of their huts, they say a few words upon seeing her brightness, and testify great joy, by motions of their feet and hands, at the first appearance of the new moon." 194 The Shangalla worship the moon, and think that "a star

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passing near the horns of the moon denotes the coming of an enemy." 195 In Western Africa moon-worship is very prevalent. Merolla says: "They that keep idols in their houses, every first day of the moon are obliged to anoint them with a sort of red wood powdered. At the appearance of every new moon, these people fall on their knees, or else cry out, standing and clapping their hands, 'So may I renew my life as thou art renewed.'" 196

H. H. Johnston, Esq., F.Z.S., F.R.G.S., who had just returned from the region of the Congo, related the following curious incident before the Anthropological Institute, in January, 1884. It looks remarkably like a relic of ancient worship, which gave the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul, and committed murder on earth to awaken mercy in heaven! "At certain villages between Manyanga and Isangila there are curious eunuch dances to celebrate the new moon, in which a white cock is thrown up into the air alive, with clipped wings, and as it falls towards the ground it is caught and plucked by the eunuchs. I was told that originally this used to be a human sacrifice, and that a young boy or girl was thrown up into the air and torn to pieces by the eunuchs as he or she fell, but that of late years slaves had got scarce or manners milder, and a white cock was now substituted." 197

The Mandingoes are more attracted to the varying moon than to the sun. "On the first appearance of the new moon, which they look upon to be

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newly created, the Pagan natives, as well as Mahomedans, say a short prayer; and this seems to be the only visible adoration which the Kaffirs offer up to the Supreme Being." The purport of this prayer is "to return thanks to God for His kindness through the existence of the past moon, and to solicit a continuation of His favour during that of the new one." 198 Park writes on another page: "When the fast month was almost at an end, the Bushreens assembled at the Misura to watch for the appearance of the new moon; but the evening being rather cloudy, they were for some time disappointed, and a number of them had gone home with a resolution to fast another day, when on a sudden this delightful object showed her sharp horns from behind a cloud, and was welcomed with the clapping of hands, beating of drums, firing muskets, and other marks of rejoicing." 199 The Makololo and Bechuana custom of greeting the new moon is curious. "They watch most eagerly for the first glimpse of the new moon, and when they perceive the faint outline after the sun has set deep in the west, they utter a loud shout of 'Kuā!' and vociferate prayers to it." 200 The degraded Hottentots have not much improved since Bory de St. Vincent described them as "brutish, lazy, and stupid," and their worship of the moon is still demonstrative, as when Kolben wrote: "These dances and noises are religious honours and invocations to the moon. They call her Gounja. The Supreme they call Gounja-Gounja,

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or Gounja Ticquoa, the god of gods, and place him far above the moon. The moon, with them, is an inferior visible god--the subject and representation of the High and Invisible. They judge the moon to have the disposal of the weather, and invoke her for such as they want. They assemble for the celebration of her worship at full and change constantly. No inclemency of the weather prevents them. And their behaviour at those times is indeed very astonishing. They throw their bodies into a thousand different distortions, and make mouths and faces strangely ridiculous and horrid. Now they throw themselves flat on the ground, screaming out a strange, unintelligible jargon. Then jumping up on a sudden, and stamping like mad (insomuch that they make the ground shake), they direct, with open throats, the following expressions, among others, to the moon: 'I salute you; you are welcome. Grant us fodder for our cattle and milk in abundance.' These and other addresses to the moon they repeat over and over, accompanying them with dancing and clapping of hands. At the end of the dance they sing 'Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!' many times over, with a variation of notes; which being accompanied with clapping of hands makes a very odd and a very merry entertainment to a stranger." 201 In reality they hold a primitive watch-night service; their welcome of the new moon being very similar to our popular welcome of the new year. Nor should it be omitted that the ancient Ethiopians worshipped

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the moon; and that those who lived above Meroë admitted the existence of eternal and incorruptible gods, among which the moon ranked as a chief divinity.

Descending the Nile and crossing the Mediterranean, we come to Greece.

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece
  Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
  Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set." 202

Yes, Pericles and Plato, Sophocles and Pheidias, are dust; and much of their nation's pristine glory has "melted into the infinite azure of the past": but the sun shines as youthful yet as on that eventful day when unwearied he sank in ocean, "loth, and ere his time:

"So the sun sank, and all the host had rest
From onset and the changeful chance of war." 203

Where Phœbus sprang, sprang Phœbe also--the bright and beautiful moon. To a people addicted to the idolatry of perfect form and comeliness, no object could be more attractive than the queen of the night. When Socrates was accused of innovating upon the Greek religion, and of ridiculing the Athenian deities, he replied on his trial, "You strange man, Melêtus, are you seriously affirming that I do not think Helios and Selene to be

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gods, as the rest of mankind think?" 204 Pausanias, the historian, tells us that in Phocis there was a chapel consecrated to Isis, which of all the places erected by the Greeks to this Egyptian goddess was by far the most holy. It was not lawful for any one to approach this sacred edifice but those whom the goddess had invited by appearing to them for that purpose in a dream. 205 By Isis, as we saw from Diodorus, the Greeks understood the moon. Diana was also one of the Grecian moon-goddesses, but Sir George C. Lewis thinks that this was not till a comparatively late period. The religion of Greece was so mixed up, or made up, with mythology, that for an interpretation of their theogony we must resort to poetry and impersonation. Here again we see the working of sexual anthropomorphism. Ouranos espoused Ge, and their offspring was Kronos; which is but an ancient mode of saying that chronology is the measurement on earth of heavenly motion. Solar and lunar worship was but the recognition in the primitive consciousness of the superior worth-ship of these celestial bodies. As Grote says: "To us these now appear puerile, though pleasing fancies, but to our Homeric Greek they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, the description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and impious." 206 What an amount of misunderstanding would be obviated if readers of the Bible would bear this

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in mind when they meet with erroneous conceptions in Hebrew cosmogony. Grote further says on the same page of his magnificent history: "Personifying fiction was blended by the Homeric Greeks with their conception of the physical phenomena before them, not simply in the way of poetical ornament, but as a genuine portion of their everyday belief." We cannot better conclude our brief glance at ancient Greece than by quoting that splendid comparison from the bard of Chios, which Pope thought "the most beautiful night-piece that can be found in poetry." Pope's own version is fine, but, as a translation, Lord Derby's must be preferred:

"As when in heaven, around the glittering moon
The stars shine bright amid the breathless air;:
And every crag and every jutting peak
Stands boldly forth, and every forest glade
Even to the gates of heaven is opened wide
The boundless sky; shines each particular star
Distinct; joy fills the gazing shepherd's heart." 207

The Romans had many gods, superior and inferior. The former were the celestial deities, twelve in number, among whom was Diana; and the Dii Selecti, numbering eight. Of these, one was Luna, the moon, daughter of Hyperion and sister of the Sun. 208 Livy speaks of "a temple of Luna, which is on the Aventine"; and Tacitus mentions, in his Annals, a temple consecrated to the moon. In Horace, Luna is "siderum regina"; 209 and in Apuleius,[paragraph continues]

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"Regina coeli," 210 Bishop Warburton, in his synopsis of Apuleius, speaks of the hopeless condition of Lucius, which obliged him to fly to heaven for relief. "The moon is in full splendour; and the awful silence of the night inspires him with sentiments of religion." He then purifies himself, and so makes his prayer to the moon, invoking her by her several names, as the celestial Venus and Diana. 211 This whole section of the Divine Legation is worthy of close study.

"The ancient Goths," says Rudbeck ("Atalantis," ii. 609), "paid such regard to the moon, that some have thought that they worshipped her more than the sun." 212

And of the ancient Germans Grimm says: "That to our remote ancestry the heavenly bodies, especially the sun and moon, were divine beings, will not admit of any doubt." 213 Gibbon, Friedrich Schlegel, and others, say the same.

The Finns worshipped "Kun, the male god of the moon, who corresponded exactly with the Aku, Enizuna, or Itu of the Accadians." 214

In ancient Britain the moon occupied a high position in the religion of the Druids, who had superstitious rites at the lunar changes, and who are "always represented as having the crescent in their hands." 215 "From the Penitential of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the seventh century, and the Confessional of Ecgbert, Archbishop of York, in the early part of the eighth century, we may

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infer that homage was then offered to the sun and moon." 216 Again, "There are many proofs, direct and circumstantial, that place it beyond all doubt that the moon was one of the objects of heathen worship in Britain. But under what name the moon was invoked is not discoverable, unless it may have been Andraste, the goddess to whom the British queen Boadicea, with hands outstretched to heaven, appealed when about to engage in battle with the Romans." 217 A writer of the seventeenth century, says: " In Yorkeshire, etc., northwards, some country woemen do-e worship the New Moon on their bare knees, kneeling upon an earthfast stone. And the people of Athol, in the High-lands in Scotland, doe worship the: New Moon." 218 Camden writes of the Irish: "Whether or no they worship the moon, I know not; but, when they first see her after the change, they commonly bow the knee, and say the Lord's Prayer; and near the wane, address themselves to her with a loud voice, after this manner: "Leave us as well as thou foundest us." 219" Sylvester O'Halloran, the Irish general and historian, speaking of "the correspondent customs of the Phœnicians and the Irish," adds: "Their deities were the same. They both adored Bel, or the sun, the Moon, and the stars. The house of Rimmon (2 Kings v. 18), which the Phœnicians worshipped in, like our temples of Fleachta, in Meath, was sacred to the moon. The word 'Rimmon' has by no means been understood by the different commentators; and yet by recurring

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to the Irish (a branch of the Phœnicians) it becomes very intelligible; for Re is Irish for the moon, and Muadh signifies an image; and the compound word Reamham signifies prognosticating by the appearances of the moon. It appears by the life of our great St. Columba, that the Druid temples were here decorated with figures of the sun, the moon, and the stars. The Phœnicians, under the name of Bel-Samen, adored the Supreme; and it is pretty remarkable that to this very day, to wish a friend every happiness this life can afford, we say in Irish, 'the blessings of Samen and Eel be with you!' that is, of all the seasons; Bel signifying the sun, and Samhain the moon." 220 And again: "Next to the sun was the moon, which the Irish undoubtedly adored. Some remains of this worship may be traced, even at this day; as particularly borrowing, if they should not have it about them, a piece of silver on the first night of a new moon, as an omen of plenty during the month; and at the same time saying in Irish, 'As you have found us in peace and prosperity, so leave us in grace and mercy.'" 221 Tuathal, the prince to whom the estates (circa A.D. 106) swore solemnly "by the sun, moon, and stars, "to bear true allegiance," in that portion of the imperial domain taken from Munster, erected a magnificent temple called Flachta, sacred to the fire of Samhain, and to the Samnothei, or priests of the moon. Here, on every eve of November, were the fires of Samhain lighted up, with great pomp and ceremony, the monarch, the Druids, and

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the chiefs of the kingdom attending; and from this holy fire, and no other, was every fire in the land first lit for the winter. It was deemed an act of the highest impiety to kindle the winter fires from any other; and for this favour the head of every house paid a Scrubal, or threepence, tax, to the Arch-Druid of Samhain." 222 Another writer mentions another Irish moon-god. "The next heathen divinity which I would bring under notice is St. Luan, alias Molua, alias Euan, alias Lugidus, alias Lugad, and Moling, etc. The foundations, with which this saint under some of his aliases is connected, extend over eight counties in the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster. Luan is to this; day the common Irish word for the moon. We read that there were fifteen saints of the name of Lugadius; and as Lugidus was one of Luan's aliases, I have set them all down as representing the moon in the several places where that planet was worshipped as the symbol of Female nature." 223 We have already seen that the moon was the embodiment of the female principle in China, and now we see that the primitive Kelts associated sexuality with astronomy and religion. It but further proves that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

Moreover, to show that former moon-worship still colours our religion, it is not to be overlooked that, as our Christmas festivities are but a continuation of the Roman saturnalia, with their interchanges of visits and presents, so "the Church, celebrating in[paragraph continues]

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August the festival of the harvest moon, celebrates at the same time the feast of the Assumption and of the Sacred Heart of the Virgin. And Catholic painters, following the description in the Apocalypse, fondly depict her as 'clothed with the sun, and having the moon under her feet,' and both as overriding the dragon. Even the triumph of Easter is not celebrated until, by attaining its full, the moon accords its aid and sanction. Is it not interesting thus to discover the true note of Catholicism in the most ancient paganisms, and to find that the moon, which for us is incarnate in the blessed Virgin Mary, was for the Syrians and Greeks respectively personified in the virgin Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven, and Diana, or Phœbe, the feminine of Phœbus?" 224

A recent contributor to one of our valuable serials writes: "I take the following extract from a little book published under the auspices of Dr. Barnardo. It is the 'truthful narrative' of a little sweep-girl picked up in the streets of some place near Brighton, and 'admitted into Dr. Barnardo's Village Home.' 'She had apparently no knowledge of God or sense of His presence. The only thing she had any reverence for was the moon. On one occasion, when the children were going to evening service, and a beautiful moon was shining, one of them pointed to it, exclaiming, 'Oh, mother! look, what a beautiful moon!' Little Mary caught hold of her hand, and cried, 'Yer mustn't point at the blessed moon like that; and yer mustn't talk about it!' Was it from

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constantly sleeping under hedges and in barns, and waking up and seeing that bright calm eye looking at her, that some sense of a mysterious Presence had come upon the child?" 225 To this query, the answer we think should be negative. The cause more likely was that she had heard the common tradition which is yet current in East Lancashire, Cumberland, and elsewhere, that it is a sin to point at the moon. Certain old gentlemen, who ought to be better informed, still touch their hats, and devout young girls in the country districts still curtsey, to the new moon, as an act of worship.

The American races practise luniolatry very generally. The Dakotahs worship both sun and moon. The Delaware and Iroquois Indians sacrifice to these orbs, and it is most singular that "they sacrifice to a hare, because, according to report, the first ancestor of the Indian tribes had that name." But, although they receive in a dream as their tutelar spirits, the sun, moon, owl, buffalo, and so forth, "they positively deny that they pay any adoration to these subordinate good spirits, and affirm that they only worship the true God, through them." 226 This reminds us of some excellent remarks made by one whose intimate acquaintance with North American Indians entitled him to speak with authority. We have seen from Dr. Legge's writings that though the Chinese worshipped a multitude of celestial spirits, "yet the monotheism remained." Mr. Catlin will now assure us that though the American Indians adore the

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heavenly bodies, they recognise the Great Spirit who inhabits them all. These are his words: "I have heard it said by some very good men, and some who have even been preaching the Christian religion amongst them, that they have no religion--that all their zeal in their worship of the Great Spirit was but the foolish excess of ignorant superstition--that their humble devotions and supplications to the sun and the moon, where many of them suppose that the Great Spirit resides, were but the absurd rantings of idolatry. To such opinions as these I never yet gave answer, nor drew other instant inferences from them, than that, from the bottom of my heart, I pitied the persons who gave them." 227 Mr. Catlin undoubtedly was right, as the Apostle Paul was right, when he acknowledged that the Athenians worshipped the true God, albeit in ignorance. At the same time, though idolatry is in numberless instances nothing more than the use of media and mediators, in seeking the One, Invisible, Absolute Spirit, it is so naturally abused by sensuous beings who rest in the concrete, that no image worshipper is free from the propensity to worship the creature more than the Creator, and to forget the Essence in familiarity with the form. The perfection of worship, we conceive, is pure theism; but how few are capable of breathing in such a supersensuous air! Men must have their "means of grace," their visible symbols, their holy waters and consecrated wafers, their crucifixes and talismans, their silver

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shrines and golden calves. "These be thy gods, O Israel."

"The Ahts undoubtedly worship the sun and the moon, particularly the full moon, and the sun while ascending to the zenith. Like the Teutons, they regard the moon as the husband, and the sun as the wife; hence their prayers are more generally addressed to the moon, as being the superior deity. The moon is the highest of all the objects of their worship; and they describe the moon--I quote the words of my Indian informant--as looking down upon the earth in answer to prayer, and as seeing everybody." 228 Of the Indians of Vancouver Island, another writer says: "The moon is among all the heavenly bodies the highest object of veneration. When working at the settlement at Alberni in gangs by moonlight, individuals have been observed to look up to the moon, blow a breath, and utter quickly the word, 'Teech! teech!' (health, or life). Life! life! this is the great prayer of these people's hearts." 229 "Among the Comanches of Texas, the sun, moon, and earth are the principal objects of worship." The Kaniagmioutes consider the moon and sun to be brother and sister. 230

Meztli was the moon as deified by the Mexicans. In Teotihuacan, thirty miles north of the city of Mexico, is the site of an ancient city twenty miles in circumference. Near the centre of this spot stand the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun has a base 682 feet

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long and is 180 feet high (the Pyramid of Cheops is 728 feet at the base, and is 448 feet in height). The Pyramid of the Moon is rather less, and is due north of that of the Sun. 231 No doubt the philosophy of all pyramids would show that they embody the uplifting of the human soul towards the Heaven-Father of all.

In Northern Mexico still "the Ceris superstitiously celebrate the new moon." 232 This luniolatry the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg explains by a novel theory. He holds that the forefathers of American civilization lived in a certain Crescent land in the Atlantic that a physical catastrophe destroyed their country whereupon the remnant that was saved commemorated their lost land by adopting the moon as their god." 233 "The population of Central America," says the Vicomte de Bussierre, "although they had preserved the vague notion of a superior eternal God and Creator, known by the name Teotl, had an Olympus as numerous as that of the Greeks and the Romans. It would appear that the inhabitants of Anahuac joined to the idea of a supreme being the worship of the sun and the moon, offering them flowers, fruits, and the first fruits of their fields." 234 Dr. Reville bids us "note that the ancient Central-American cultus of the sun and moon, considered as the two supreme deities, was by no means renounced by the Aztecs." 235 Regarding this remarkable race, a writer in the Quarterly Review for April, 1883, says: "Even the Chaldæans were not

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greater astrologers than the Aztecs, and we need no further proof that the heavenly bodies were closely and accurately observed, than we find in the fact that the true length of the tropical year had been ascertained long before scientific instruments were even thought of. Their religious festivals were regulated by the movements of these bodies; but with their knowledge was mingled so vast a mass of superstition, that it is difficult to discern a gleam of light through the thick darkness." "The Botocudos of Brazil held the moon in high veneration, and attributed to her influence the chief phenomena in nature." 236 The Indian of the Coroados tribe in Brazil, "chained to the present, hardly ever raises his eyes to the starry firmament. Yet he is actuated by a certain awe of some constellations, as of everything that indicates a spiritual connection of things. His chief attention, however, is not directed to the sun, but to the moon; according to which he calculates time, and from which he is used to deduce good and evil." 237

The celebrated Abipones honour with silver altars and adoration the moon, which they call the consort of the sun, and certain stars, which they term the handmaids of the moon: but their most singular idea is that the Pleiades represent their grandfather; and "as that constellation disappears at certain periods from the sky of South America, upon such occasions they suppose that their grandfather is sick, and are under a yearly apprehension that he

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is going to die; but as soon as those seven stars are again visible in the month of May, they welcome their grandfather, as if returned and restored from sickness, with joyful shouts, and the festive sound of pipes and trumpets, congratulating him on the recovery of his health." 238

The Peruvians "acknowledge no other gods than the Pachacamac, who is the supreme, and the Sun, who is inferior to him, and the Moon, who is his sister and wife." 239 In the religion of the Incas the idol (huaco) of the Moon was in charge of women, and when it was brought from the house of the Sun, to be worshipped, it was carried on their shoulders, because they said "it was a woman, and the figure resembled one." 240 Pachacamac, the great deity mentioned above, signifies "earth-animator."

Prescott, in describing the temple of the Sun, at Cuzco in Peru, tells us that "adjoining the principal structure were several chapels of smaller dimensions. One of them was consecrated to the Moon, the deity held next in reverence, as the mother of the Incas. Her effigy was delineated in the same manner as that of the Sun, on a vast plate that nearly covered one side of the apartment. But this plate, as well as all the decorations of the building, was of silver, as suited to the pale, silvery light of the beautiful planet." 241

In the far-off New Hebrides the Eramangans "worship the moon, having images in the form of the new and full moons, made of a kind of stone.[paragraph continues]

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They do not pray to these images, but cleave to them as their protecting gods." 242

We have now circumnavigated the globe, touching at many points, within many degrees of latitude and longitude. But everywhere, among men of different literatures and languages, colours and creeds, we have discovered the worship of the moon. No nation has outgrown the practice, for it obtains among the polished as well as the rude. One thing, indeed, we ought to have had impressed upon our minds with fresh force; namely, that we often draw the lines of demarcation too broad between those whom we are pleased to divide into the civilized and the savage. Israelite and heathen, Grecian and barbarian, Roman and pagan, enlightened and benighted, saintly and sinful, are fine distinctions from the Hebrew, Greek, Roman, enlightened, and saintly sides of the question; but they often reflect small credit upon the wisdom and generosity of their authors. The antipodal Eramangan who cleaves to his moon image for protection may be quite equal, both intellectually and morally, with the Anglo-Saxon who still wears his amulet to ward off disease, or nails up his horse-shoe, as Nelson did to the mast of the Victory, as a guarantee of good luck. Sir George Grey has written: "It must be borne in mind, that the native races, who believed in these traditions or superstitions, are in no way deficient in intellect, and in no respect incapable of receiving the truths of Christianity; on the contrary, they readily embrace

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its doctrines and submit to its rules; in our schools they stand a fair comparison with Europeans; and, when instructed in Christian truths, blush at their own former ignorance and superstitions, and look back with shame and loathing upon their previous state of wickedness and credulity." 243

IV. THE MOON A WATER-DEITY.
We design this chapter to be the completion of moon-worship, and at the same time an anticipation of those lunary superstitions which are but scattered leaves from luniolatry, the parent tree. If the new moon, with its waxing light, may represent the primitive nature-worship which spread over the earth; and the full moon, the deity who is supposed to regulate our reservoirs and supplies of water: the waning moon may fitly typify the grotesque and sickly superstition, which, under the progress of radiant science and spiritual religion, is readier every hour to vanish away.

"The name Astarte was variously identified with the moon, as distinguished from the sun, or with air and water, as opposed in their qualities to fire. The name of this goddess represented to the worshipper the great female parent of all animated things, variously conceived of as the moon, the earth, the watery element, primeval night, the eldest of the destinies." 244 It is worthy of note that Van Helmont, in the seventeenth century, holds similar language.[paragraph continues]

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His words are, "The moon is chief over the night darkness, rest, death, and the waters." 245 It is also remarkable that in the language of the Algonquins of North America the ideas of night, death, cold, sleep, water, and moon are expressed by one and the same word. 246 In the oriental mythology "the connection between the moon and water suggests the idea that the moon produces fertility and freshness in the soil." 247 "Al Zamakhshari, the commentator on the Koran, derives Manah (one of the three idols worshipped by the Arabs before the time of Mohammad) from the root "to flow," because of the blood which flowed at the sacrifices to this idol, or, as Millius explains it, because the ancient idea of the moon was that it was a star full of moisture, with which it filled the sublunary regions." 248 The Persians held that the moon was the cause of an abundant supply of water and of rain, and therefore the names of the most fruitful places in Persia are compounded with the word mâh, "moon"; "for in the opinion of the Iranians the growth of plants depends on the influence of the moon." 249 In India "the moon is generally a male, for its most popular names, Candras, Indus, and Somas, are masculine; but as Somas signifies ambrosia, the moon, as giver of ambrosia, soon came to be considered a milk-giving cow; in fact, moon is one among the various meanings given in Sanskrit to the word Gâus (cow). The moon, Somas, who illumines the nocturnal sky, and the pluvial sun, Indras, who during the night,

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or the winter, prepares the light of morn, or spring, are represented as companions; a young girl, the evening, or autumnal twilight, who goes to draw water towards night, or winter, finds in the well, and takes to Indras, the ambrosial moon, that is, the Somas whom he loves. Here are the very words of the Vedic hymn: 'The young girl, descending towards the water, found the moon in the fountain, and said: I will take you to Indras, I will take you to Çakras; flow, O moon, and envelop Indras.'" 250 Here in India we again find our old friend "the frog in the moon." "It is especially Indus who satisfies the frog's desire for rain. Indus, as the moon, brings or announces the Somas, or the rain; the frog, croaking, announces or brings the rain; and at this point the frog, which we have seen identified at first with the cloud, is also identified with the pluvial moon." 251 This myth is not lacking in involution.

In China "the moon is regarded as chief and director of everything subject in the kosmic system to the Yin [feminine] principle, such as darkness, the earth, female creatures, water, etc. Thus Pao P'ah Tsze declares with reference to the tides: 'The vital essence of the moon governs water: and hence, when the moon is at its brightest, the tides are high.'" 252 According to the Japanese fairy tale the moon was to "rule over the new-born earth and the blue waste of the sea, with its multitudinous salt waters." 253 Thus we see that throughout Asia, "as lord of moisture and humidity, the moon is connected

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with growth and the nurturing power of the peaceful night." 254

Of the kindred of the Pharaohs, Plutarch observes: "The sun and moon were described by the Egyptians as sailing round the world in boats, intimating that these bodies owe their power of moving, as well as their support and nourishment, to the principle of humidity" (Plut. de Isid. s. 34): which statement Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson says is confirmed by the sculptures. The moon-god Khons bears in his hands either a palm-branch or "the Nilometer." When the Egyptians sacrificed a pig to the moon, "the first sacred emblem they carried was a hydria, or water-pitcher." At another festival the Egyptians "marched in procession towards the sea-side, whither likewise the priests and other proper officers carried the sacred chest, inclosing a small boat or vessel of gold, into which they first poured some fresh water; and then all present cried out with a loud voice 'Osiris is found.' This ceremony being ended, they threw a little fresh mould, together with rich odours and spices, into the water, mixing the whole mass together, and working it up into a little image in the shape of a crescent. The image was afterwards dressed and adorned with a proper habit, and the whole was intended to intimate that they looked upon these gods as the essence and power of earth and water." 255

The Austro-Hungarians have a man in the moon who is a sort of aquarius. Grimm says: "Water, an

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essential part of the Norse myth, is wanting in the story of the man with the thorn bush, but it reappears in the Carniolan story cited in Bretano's Libussa (p. 421): the man in the moon is called Kotar, he makes her grow by pouring water." 256 The Scandinavian legend, distilled into Jack and Jill, is, as we have seen, an embodiment of early European belief that the ebb and flow of the tides were dependent upon the motions and mutations of the moon.

We find the same notion prevailing in the western hemisphere. "As the MOON is associated with the dampness and dews of night, an ancient and widespread myth identified her with the goddess of water. Moreover, in spite of the expostulations of the learned, the common people the world over persist in attributing to her a marked influence on the rains. Whether false or true, this familiar opinion is of great antiquity, and was decidedly approved. by the Indians, who were all, in the words of an old author, (great observers of the weather by the moon.' They looked upon her, not only as forewarning them by her appearance of the approach of rains and fogs, but as being their actual cause. Isis, her Egyptian title, literally means moisture; Ataensic, whom the Hurons said was the moon, is derived from the word for water; and Citatli and Atl, moon and water, are constantly confounded in Aztec theology." 257 One of the gods of the Dakotahs was "Unk-ta-he (god of the water). The Dakotahs say that this god and

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its associates are seen in their dreams. It is the master-spirit of all their juggling and superstitious belief, From it the medicine men obtain their supernatural powers, and a great part of their religion springs from this god." 258 Brinton also says of this large Indian nation, "that Muktahe, spirit of water, is the master of dreams and witchcraft, is the belief of the Dakotahs." 259 We know that the Dakotahs worshipped the moon, and therefore see no difficulty in identifying that divinity with their god of dreams and water. "In the legend of the Muyscas it is Chia, the moon, who was also goddess of water and flooded the earth out of spite." 260 In this myth the moon is a malevolent deity, and water, usually a symbol of life, becomes an agency of death. Reactions are constantly occurring in the myth-making process. The god is male or female, good or evil, angry or amiable, according to the season or climate, the aspect of nature or the mood of the people. "In hot countries," says Sir John Lubbock, "the sun is generally regarded as an evil, and in cold as a beneficent being." 261 We are willing to accept this, with allowance. There is little question that taking men as a whole they are mainly optimistic in their judgments respecting the gifts of earth and the glories of heaven. Mr. Brinton, in reference to the imagined destructiveness of the water deity, writes: "Another reaction in the mythological laboratory is here disclosed. As the good qualities of water were attributed to the goddess of night, sleep, and death,

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so her malevolent traits were in turn reflected back on this element. Taking, however, American religions as a whole, water is far more frequently represented as producing beneficent effects than the reverse." 262

"The time of full moon was chosen both in Mexico and Peru to celebrate the festival of the deities of water, the patrons of agriculture, and very generally the ceremonies connected with the crops were regulated by her phases. The Nicaraguans said that the god of rains, Quiateot, rose in the east, thus hinting how this connection originated." 263 "The Muyscas of the high plains of Bogota were once, they said, savages without agriculture, religion, or law; but there came to them from the east an old and bearded man, Bochica, the child of the sun, and he taught them to till the fields, to clothe themselves, to worship the gods, to become a nation. But Bochica had a wicked, beautiful wife, Huythaca, who loved to spite and spoil her husband's work; and she it was who made the river swell till the land was covered by a flood, and but a few of mankind escaped upon the mountain tops. Then Bochica was wroth, and he drove the wicked Huythaca from the earth, and made her the moon, for there had been no moon before; and he cleft the rocks and made the mighty cataract of Tequendama, to let the deluge flow away. Then, when the land was dry, he gave to the remnant of mankind the year and its periodic sacrifices, and the worship of the sun. Now the

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people who told this myth had not forgotten, what indeed we might guess without their help, that Bochica was himself Zuhé, the sun, and Huytheca, the sun's wife, the moon." 264 This interesting and instructive legend, to which we alluded before in a brief quotation from Mr. Brinton, is worthy of reproduction in its fuller form, and fitly concludes our moon mythology and worship, as it presents a synoptical view of the chief points to which our attention has been turned. It shows us primitive or primeval man, the dawn of civilization, the daybreak of religion, the upgrowth of national life. In its solar husband and lunar wife it embraces that anthropomorphism and sexuality which we think have been and still are the principal factors in the production of legendary and religious impersonations. It includes that dualism which is one of man's oldest attempts to account for the opposition of good and evil. And finally it predicts a new humanity, springing from a remnant of the old; and a progress of brighter years, when, the deluge having disappeared, the dry land shall be fruitful in every good; when men shall worship the Father of lights, and "God shall be all in all." *139

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MOON SUPERSTITIONS.
I. INTRODUCTION.
Superstition may be defined as an extravagance of faith and fear: not what Ecclesiastes calls being "righteous overmuch," but religious reverence in excess. Some etymologists say that the word originally meant a "standing still over or by a thing" in fear, wonder, or dread. 265 Brewer's definition is rather more classical: "That which survives when its companions are dead (Latin, supersto). Those who escaped in battle were called superstitës. Superstition is that religion which remains when real religion is dead; that fear and awe and worship paid to the religious impression which survives in the mind when correct notions of Deity no longer exist." 266 Hooker says that superstition "is always joined with a wrong opinion touching things divine. Superstition is, when things are either abhorred or observed with a zealous or fearful, but erroneous relation to God. By means whereof the superstitious do sometimes serve, though the true God, yet with needless offices, and defraud Him of duties necessary; sometimes load others

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than Him with such honours as properly are His." 267 A Bampton Lecturer on this subject says: "Superstition is an unreasonable belief of that which is mistaken for truth concerning the nature of God and the invisible world, our relations to these unseen objects, and the duties which spring out of those relations." 268

We may next briefly inquire into the origin of the thing, which, of course, is older than the word. Burton will help us to an easy answer. He tells us that "the primum mobile, and first mover of all superstition, is the devil, that great enemy of mankind, the principal agent, who in a thousand several shapes, after divers fashions, with several engines, illusions, and by several names, hath deceived the inhabitants of the earth, in several places and countries, still rejoicing at their falls." 269 Verily this protean, omnipresent, and malignant devil has proved himself a great convenience! He has been the scapegoat upon whom we have laid the responsibility of all our mortal woe: and now we learn that to his infernal influence we are indebted for our ignorance and superstition. Henceforth, when we are at our wit's end, we may apostrophize the difficulty, and exclaim, "O thou invisible spirit, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!" We hesitate to spoil this serviceable illusion: for as we have known some good people, of a sort, who would be distressed to find that there was no hell to burn up the opponents of their orthodoxy; we fear lest

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many would be disappointed if they found out that the infernal spirit was not at the bottom of our abysmal ignorance. But we will give even the devil his due. We are not like Sir William Brown, who "could never bring himself heartily to hate the devil." We can, wherever we find him; but we think it only honest to father our own mental deficiencies, as well as our moral delinquencies, and instead of seeking a substitute to use the available remedy. "To err is human"; and it is in humanity itself that we shall discover the source of superstition. We are the descendants of ancestors who were the children of the world, and we were ourselves children not so long ago. Childhood is the age of fancy and fiction; of sensitiveness to outer influences; of impressions of things as they seem, not as they are. When we become men we put away childish things; and in the manhood of our race we shall banish many of the idols and ideas which please us while we grow. Darwin has told us that our "judgment will not rarely err from ignorance and weak powers of reasoning. Hence the strangest customs and superstitions, in complete opposition to the true welfare and happiness of mankind, have become all-powerful throughout the world. How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the mind of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the

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early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason." 270

But if superstition be the result of imperfection, there is no gainsaying the fact that it is productive of infinite evil; and on this account it has been attributed to a diabolical paternity. Bacon even affirms that "it were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity." 271 Most heartily do we hold with Dr. Thomas Browne: "It is not enough to believe in God as an irresistible power that presides over the universe; for this a malignant demon might be. It is necessary for our devout happiness that we should believe in Him as that pure and gracious Being who is the encourager of our virtues and the comforter of our sorrows.

"Quantum religio potuit suadere malorum,"

exclaims the Epicurean poet, in thinking of the evils which superstition, characterized by that ambiguous name, had produced; and where a fierce or gloomy superstition has usurped the influence which religion graciously exercises only for purposes of benevolence to man, whom she makes happy with a present enjoyment, by the very expression of devout gratitude for happiness already enjoyed, it would not be easy

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to estimate the amount of positive misery which must result from the mere contemplation of a tyrant in the heavens, and of a creation subject to his cruelty and caprice." 272 The above quoted line from Lucretius--To such evils could religion persuade!--is more than the exclamation of righteous indignation against the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, at the bidding of a priest, to propitiate a goddess. It is still further applicable to the long chain of outrageous wrongs which have been inflicted upon the innocent at the instigation of a stupid and savage fanaticism. What is worst of all, much of this bloodthirsty religion has claimed a commission from the God of love, and performed its detestable deeds in the insulted name of that "soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit," whom the loftiest and best of men delight to adore as the Prince of peace. No wonder that Voltaire cried out, "Christian religion, behold thy consequences!" if he could calculate that ten million lives had been immolated on the altar of a spurious Christianity. One hundred thousand were slain in the Bartholomew massacre alone. Righteousness, peace, and love were not the monster which Voltaire laboured to crush: he was most intensely incensed against the blind and bigoted priesthood, against the malicious and murderous servants who ate the bread of a holy and harmless Master, against "their intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their

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casuistry, their besotted cruelty." 273 We have been betrayed into speaking thus strongly of the extreme lengths to which superstition will carry those who yield themselves to its ruthless tyranny. But perhaps we have not gone far from our subject, after all; for the innocent Iphigenia, whose doom kindled our ire, was sacrificed to the goddess of the moon.

II. LUNAR FANCIES.
There are a few phosphorescent fancies about the moon, like ignes fatui,

"Dancing in murky night o'er fen and lake,"

which we may dispose of in a section by themselves. Those of them that are mythical are too evanescent to become full-grown myths; and those which are religious are too volatile to remain in the solution or salt of any bottled creed. Like the wandering lights of the Russians, answering to our will-o'-the-wisp, they are the souls of still-born children. There is, for example, the insubstantial and formless but pleasing conception of the Indian Veda. In the Râmâyanam the moon is a good fairy, who in giving light in the night assumes a benignant aspect and succours the dawn. In the Vedic hymn, Râkâ, the full moon, is exhorted to sew the work with a needle which cannot be broken. Here the moon is personified as preparing during the night her luminous garments, one for the evening, the other for the morning, the

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one lunar and of silver, the other solar and of gold. 274 Another notion, equally airy but more religious, has sprung up in Christian times and in Catholic countries. It is that heathen fancy which connects the moon with the Virgin Mary. Abundant evidence of this association in the minds of Roman Catholics is furnished by the style of the ornaments which crowd the continental churches. One of the most conspicuous is the sun and moon in conjunction, precisely as they are represented on Babylonian and Grecian coins; and the identification of the Virgin and her Child with the moon any Roman Catholic cathedral will show. 275 The Roman Missal will present to any reader "Sancta Maria, cœli Regina, et mundi Domina"; the Glories of Mary will exhibit her as the omnipotent mother, Queen of the Universe; and Ecclesiastical History will declare how, as early as the close of the fourth century, the women who were called Collyridians worshipped her "as a goddess, and judged it necessary to appease her anger, and seek her favour and protection, by libations, sacrifices, and oblations of cakes (collyridæ)." 276 This is but a repetition of the women kneading dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven, as recorded by Jeremiah; and proves that the relative position occupied by Astarte in company with Baal, Juno with Jupiter, Doorga with Brahma, and Ma-tsoo-po with Boodh, is that occupied by Mary with God. Nay more, she is "Mater Creatoris" and "Dei Genetrix": Mother of the Creator, Mother of God. Having thus been

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enthroned in the position in the universal pantheon which was once occupied by the moon, what wonder that the ignorant devotee should see her in that orb, especially as the sun, moon, and stars of the Apocalypse are her chief symbols. Southey has recorded a good illustration of this superstitious fancy. "A fine circumstance occurred in the shipwreck of the Santiago, 1585. The ship struck in the night; the wretched crew had been confessing, singing litanies, etc., and this they continued till, about two hours before break of day, the moon arose beautiful and exceeding bright; and forasmuch as till that time they had been in such darkness that they could scarcely sec one another when close at hand, such was the stir among them at beholding the brightness and glory of that orb, that most part of the crew began to lift up their voices, and with tears, cries, and groans called upon Our Lady, saying they saw her in the moon." 277

The preceding fancies would produce upon the poetic and religious sense only an agreeable effect. Other hallucinations have wrought effects of an opposite kind. The face in the moon does not always wear an amiable aspect, and it is not unnatural that those who have been taught to believe in angry gods and frowning providences should see the caricatures of their false teachers reproduced in the heavens above and in the earth beneath. We are reminded here of the magic mirror mentioned by Bayle. There is a trick, invented by Pythagoras, which is performed in the following manner. The moon being at the full,

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some one writes with blood on a looking-glass anything he has a mind to; and having given notice of it to another person, he stands behind that other and turns towards the moon the letters written in the glass. The other looking fixedly on the shining orb reads in it all that is written on the mirror as if it were written on the moon. 278 This is precisely the modus operandi by which the knavish have imposed upon the foolish in all ages. The manipulator of the doctrine stands behind his credulous disciple, writing out of sight his invented science or theology, and writing too often with the blood of some innocent victim. The poor patient student is meanwhile gazing on the moon in dreamy devotion; until as the writing on the mirror is read with solemn intonation, it all appears before his moon-struck gaze as a heavenly revelation. Woe to the truth-loving critic who breaks the enchantment and the mirror, crying out in the vernacular tongue, Your mysteries are myths, your writings are frauds; and the fair moon is innocent of the lying imposition!

To multitudes the moon has always been an object of terror and dread. Not only is it a supramundane and magnified man--that it will always be while its spots are so anthropoid, and man himself is so anthropomorphic--but it has ever been, and still is, a being of maleficent and misanthropic disposition. As Mr. Tylor says, "When the Aleutians thought that if any one gave offence to the moon, he would fling down stones on the offender and kill him; or when the moon came down to an Indian squaw, appearing in

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the form of a beautiful woman with a child in her arms, and demanding an offering of tobacco and fur-robes: what conceptions of personal life could be more distinct than these?" 279 Personal and distinct, indeed, but far from pleasant. Another author tells us that "in some parts of Scotland to point at the stars or to do aught that might be considered an indignity in the face of the sun or moon, is still to be dreaded and avoided; so also it was not long since, probably still is, in Devonshire and Cornwall. The Jews seem to have been equally superstitious on this point (Jer. viii. 1, 2), and the Persians believed leprosy to be an infliction on those who had committed some offence against the sun." 280 Southey supplies us with an illustration of the moon in a fit of dudgeon. He is describing the sufferings of poor Hans Stade, when he was caught by the Tupinambas and expected that he was about to die. "The moon was up, and fixing his eyes upon her, he silently besought God to vouchsafe him a happy termination of these sufferings. Yeppipo Wasu, who was one of the chiefs of the horde, and as such had convoked the meeting, seeing how earnestly he kept gazing upwards, asked him what he was looking at. Hans had ceased from praying, and was observing the man in the moon, and fancying that he looked angry; his mind was broken down by continual terror, and he says it seemed to him at that moment as if he were hated by God, and by all things which God had created. The question only half roused him from this phantasy, and he

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answered, it was plain that the moon was angry. The savage asked whom she was angry with, and then Hans, as if he had recollected himself, replied that she was looking at his dwelling. This enraged him, and Hans found it prudent to say that perhaps her eyes were turned so wrathfully upon the Carios; in which opinion the chief assented, and wished she might destroy them all." 281 Some such superstitious fear must have furnished the warp into which the following Icelandic story was woven. "There was once a sheep-stealer who sat down in a lonely place, with a leg of mutton in his hand, in order to feast upon it, for he had just stolen it. The moon shone bright and clear, not a single cloud being there in heaven to hide her. While enjoying his gay feast, the impudent thief cut a piece off the meat, and, putting it on the point of his knife, accosted the moon with these godless words:--

        'O moon, wilt thou
        On thy mouth now
This dainty bit of mutton-meat?'

Then a voice came from the heavens, saying:--

        'Wouldst thou, thief, like
        Thy cheek to strike
This fair key, scorching-red with heat?'

At the same moment, a red-hot key fell from the sky on to the cheek of the thief, burning on it a mark which he carried with him ever afterwards. Hence arose the custom in ancient times of branding or

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marking thieves." 282 The moral influence of this tale is excellent, and has the cordial admiration of all who hate robbery and effrontery: at the same time it exhibits the moon as an irascible body, with which no liberty may be taken. In short, it is an object of superstitious awe.

One other lunar fancy, born and bred in fear, is connected with the abominable superstition of witchcraft. Abominable, unquestionably, the evil was; but justice compels us to add that the remedy of relentless and ruthless persecution with which it was sought to remove the pest was a reign of abhorrent and atrocious cruelty. Into the question itself we dare not enter, lest we should be ourselves bewitched. We know that divination by supposed supernatural agency existed among the Hebrews, that magical incantations were practised among the Greeks and Romans, and that more modern witchcraft has been contemporaneous with the progress of Christianity. But we must dismiss the subject in one borrowed sentence. "The main source from which we derived this superstition is the East, and traditions and facts incorporated in our religion. There were only wanted the ferment of thought of the fifteenth century, the energy, ignorance, enthusiasm, and faith of those days, and the papal denunciation of witchcraft by the bull of Innocent the Eighth, in 1459, to give fury to the delusion. And from this time, for three centuries, the flames at which more than a hundred thousand victims perished cast a lurid light over Europe." 283[paragraph continues]

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The singular notion, which we wish to present, is the ancient belief that witches could control the moon. In the Clouds of Aristophanes, Strepsiades tells Socrates that he has "a notion calculated to deprive of interest"; which is as follows:--

"Str. If I were to buy a Thessalian witch, and draw down the moon by night, then shut her up in a round helmet-case, like a mirror, and then keep watching her--"

"Soc. What good would that do you, then?"

"Str. What? If the moon were not to rise any more anywhere, I should not pay the interest."

"Soc. Because what?"

"Str. Because the money is lent by the month." 284

Shakespeare alludes to this, where Prospero says, "His mother was a witch, and one so strong that could control the moon " (Tempest, Act v.).

If the witch's broom, on whose stick she rode to the moon, be a type of the wind, we may guess how the fancy grew up that the airy creation could control those atmospheric vapours on which the light and humidity of the night were supposed to depend. 285

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answer to know what the matter was. At last I cried as loud as possibly I could to the old man to know the reason of this sad confusion and outcry, who in a great fright pointed up to the heavens, and said, 'Look there; see, the devil is eating up the moon!' I was very glad to hear that there was no other cause of their fright but their own ignorance. It was only a great eclipse of the moon. I smiled, and told him that there was no danger; that in a little while the moon would be as well as ever. Whereupon, catching fast hold of my sleeve, as I was returning to bed, he asked me if I was sure on't (for they take us white men to be very wise in those matters). I assured him I was, and that we always knew many years before when such a thing would happen; that it proceeded from a natural cause, according to the course and motion of the sun and moon, and that the devil had no hand in it. After the eclipse was over, the old man, being not a little rejoiced, took me in." 300 Another writer speaks of the East India Islands in general. "There is to this day hardly a country of the Archipelago in which the ceremony of frightening the supposed monster from his attack on the luminary is not performed. This consists in shouting, in striking gongs, but, above all, in striking their stampers against the sides of the wooden mortars which are used by the villagers in husking their corn." 301 That the Indians of the continent regard the phenomena in question with more than ordinary interest is evinced by their resorting in large numbers

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to Benares, the ancient seat of brahminical learning and religion, on every occasion of an eclipse of the moon. Lord Kames reminds us that among the Greeks " an eclipse being held a prognostic given by the gods of some grievous calamity, Anaxagoras was accused of atheism for attempting to explain the eclipse of the moon by natural causes: he was thrown into prison, and with difficulty was relieved by the influence of Pericles. Protagoras was banished Athens for maintaining the same doctrine." 302

Thucydides tells us that an eclipse of the moon delayed the departure of the expedition against the Syracusans. "The preparations were made, and they were on the point of sailing, when the moon, being just then at the full, was eclipsed. The mass of the army was greatly moved, and called upon the generals to remain. Nicias himself, who was too much under the influence of divination and omens, refused even to discuss the question of their removal until they had remained thrice nine days, as the soothsayers prescribed. This was the reason why the departure of the Athenians was finally delayed." 303

"At any eclipse of the moone, the Romanes would take their brazen pots and pannes, and beat them, lifting up many torches and linckes lighted, and firebrandes into the aire, thinking by these superstitious meanes to reclaime the moone to her light." 304

The Constantinople Messenger of December 23rd, 1880, contains the following:--"Mgr. Mamarbasci, who represents the Syrian Patriarch at the Porte,

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and who resides in St. Peter's Monastery in Galata, underwent a singular experience on the evening of the last eclipse of the moon. Hearing a great noise outside of the firing of revolvers and pistols, he opened his window to see what could be the cause of so much waste of powder. Being a native of Aleppo, he was at no loss to understand the cause of the disturbance as soon as he cast his eye on the heavens, and he therefore immediately withdrew his head from the window again. Hardly had he done so, however, ere a ball smashed the glass into a thousand pieces. Rising from the seat into which he had but just sat down, he perceived a conical ball on the floor of his room, which there is every reason to believe would have killed him on the spot had he remained a moment longer on the spot he had just quitted. From the yard of the mosque of Arab-Djami, which is in front of the prelate's window, the bullet had, it appears, been fired with the intention of frightening the dragon or bear which, according to oriental superstition, lies in wait to devour the moon at its eclipse. It is a fortunate circumstance that the Syrian ecclesiastic escaped scathless from the snares laid to destroy the celestial dragon." 305

In the Edda, an ancient collection of Scandinavian poetry, embodying the national mythology, Managarmer is the monster who sometimes swallows up the moon, and stains the heaven and the air with blood. "Here," says M. Mallett, "we have the cause of eclipses; and it is upon this very ancient

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opinion that the general practice is founded, of making noises at that time, to fright away the monster, who would otherwise devour the two great luminaries." 306 Of the Germans, Grimm says:--"In a lighted candle, if a piece of the wick gets half detached and makes it burn away too fast, they say 'a wolf (as well as a thief) is in the candle'; this too is like the wolf devouring the sun or moon. Eclipses of sun or moon have been a terror to many heathen nations; the incipient and increasing obscuration of the luminous orb marks for them the moment when the gaping jaws of the wolf threaten to devour it, and they think by loud cries to bring it succour." 307 And again:--"The personality of the sun and moon shows itself moreover in a fiction that has well-nigh gone the round of the world. These two, in their unceasing unflagging career through the void of heaven, appear to be in flight, avoiding some pursuer. A pair of wolves are on their track, Sköll dogging the steps of the sun, Hati of the moon: they come of a giant race, the mightiest of whom, Mânagarmr (moon-dog), apparently but another name for Hati, is sure some day to overtake and swallow the moon." 308 Francis Osborn, whose Advice contains, in the opinion of Hallam, "a considerable sprinkling of sound sense and observation," thus counsels his son: "Imitate not the wild Irish or Welch, who, during eclipses, run about beating kettles and pans, thinking their clamour and vexations available to the assistance of the higher orbs." 309 "In eclipses of the moon, the Greenlanders

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carry boxes and kettles to the roofs of their houses, and beat on them as hard as they can." 310 With the Californian Indians, "on an eclipse, all is consternation. They congregate and sing, as some say to appease, and others to frighten, the evil spirits. They believe that the devils are eating up the luminary, and they do not cease until it comes forth in its wonted splendour." 311 Among certain Indian tribes "dogs were supposed to stand in some peculiar relation to the moon, probably because they howl at it, and run at night; uncanny practices which have cost them dear in reputation. The custom prevailed among tribes so widely asunder as Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, Algonkins, and Greenland Eskimos, to thrash the curs most soundly during an eclipse. The Creeks explained this by saying that the big dog was swallowing the sun, and that by whipping the little ones they could make him desist. What the big dog was they were not prepared to say. We know. It was the night goddess, represented by the dog, who was thus shrouding the world at midday." 312

It is well known that Columbus found his acquaintance with the calculations of astronomy of great practical value. For when, during his last expedition, he was reduced to famine by the inhabitants of the newly discovered continent, who kept him and his companions prisoners, he, aware that an eclipse was at hand, threatened to deprive them of the light of the moon, if they did not forthwith bring him provisions. At first they did not care; but when

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the moon disappeared, they brought abundance of supplies, with much entreaty of pardon. This occurred on the 1st day of March, 1504, a date which modern tables of lunar eclipses may fully verify.

"In the Mexican mythology we read of the woman serpent, or the moon, devoured by the sun, a myth probably descriptive of the changes in the phases of the moon." 313 More probably this myth referred to the moon's eclipse; for Bradford tells us that "the Mexicans believed when there was an eclipse of the sun or moon, that one of those bodies was being devoured by the other. The Peruvians believed these phenomena portended some great calamity; that the eclipsed body was sick and about to die, in which case the world would perish. As soon as an eclipse commenced, they made a dreadful noise with their musical instruments; they struck their dogs and made them howl, in the hope that the moon, which they believed had an affection for those animals in consequence of some signal service which they had rendered her, would have pity on their cries. The Araucanians called eclipses the 'deaths' of the sun and moon." 314 In Aglio we are told of the Mexicans that "in the year of Five Rabbits, or in 1510, there was an eclipse of the sun; they take no account of the eclipses of the moon, but only of those of the sun; for they say that the sun devours the moon when an eclipse of the moon takes place." 315 "The Tlascaltecs, regarding the sun and the moon as husband and wife, believed eclipses to be domestic

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quarrels. Ribas tells how the Sinaloas held that the moon in an eclipse was darkened with the dust of battle. Her enemy had come upon her, and a terrible fight, big with consequence to those on earth, went on in heaven. In wild excitement the people beat on the sides of their houses, encouraging the moon, and shooting flights of arrows up into the sky to distract her adversary. Much the same as this was also done by certain Californians." 316 "At a lunar eclipse the Orinoko Indians seized their hoes and laboured with exemplary vigour on their growing corn, saying the moon was veiling herself in anger at their habitual laziness." 317 The umbrated moon did good in this way: as many of us remember the beautiful comet of 1858 did good, when it frightened some trembling Londoners into a speedy settlement of old debts, in anticipation of the final account. Ellis says of the Tahitians: "An eclipse of the moon filled them with dismay; they supposed the planet was natua, or under the influence of the spell of some evil spirit that was destroying it. Hence they repaired to the temple, and offered prayers for the moon's release. Some imagined that on an eclipse, the sun and moon were swallowed by the god which they had by neglect offended. Liberal presents were offered, which were supposed to induce the god to abate his anger, and eject the luminaries of day and night from his stomach." 318 The Tongans or Friendly Islanders have a notion that the earth's surface is flat, that the sun and moon "pass through the sky and come back

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some way, they know not how. When the moon is eclipsed, they attribute the phenomenon to a thick cloud passing over it: the same with the sun." 319 In the Hervey Islands, the common exclamation during an eclipse is, "Alas! a divinity has devoured the moon!"

Finally, to close this chapter where it commenced, in Chaldæa, the cradle of star-reading, Sir Austen Henry Layard says: "I gained, as other travellers have done before me, some credit for wisdom and superhuman knowledge by predicting, through the aid of an almanack, a partial eclipse of the moon. It duly took place, to the great dismay of my guests, who well-nigh knocked out the bottoms of all my kitchen utensils in their endeavour to frighten away the jins who had thus laid hold of the planet. The common notion amongst ignorant Mahometans is, that an eclipse is caused by some evil spirit catching hold of the sun or moon. On such occasions, in Eastern towns, the whole population assembles with pots, pans, and other equally rude instruments of music, and, with the aid of their lungs, make a din and turmoil which might suffice to drive away a whole army of evil spirits, even at so great a distance." 320 We have reached three general conclusions. First, when the moon is occulted by the earth it is believed to be devoured by some evil demon, or by wolves or dogs. This is the superstitious vagary of the Hindoos, the Chinese, Asiatics generally, Europeans, Africans, Americans, and Polynesians. Secondly, a lunar

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eclipse is the precursor of some dreadful calamity to the inhabitants of the earth. This notion is also traceable in every quarter of the globe. And thirdly, during the obscuration the light of the moon is reddened, and at last extinguished, by the blood which flows from its wounds; which belief originates with the Edda, and obtains in the Western world. Students of sacred prophecy may still elect to deem these occurrences that are purely natural as of supernatural significance, and may risk the interests of true religion in their insane disregard of science; but the truth will remain, in spite of their misconceptions, that eclipses of the moon have no concern with the moral destiny of mankind.

IV. LUNAR INFLUENCES.
The superficies of the earth being twice seven times that of the moon, what an influence the earth must exercise over its satellite! We may be unable to describe this influence in all of its effects; but we may observe its existence in some of its apparent signs. The moon not only turns while we turn, but its rotations on its axis keep exact time with its revolutions round our globe; it accompanies us as we encircle the sun, facing us all the while, never turning its back upon us; it waits on us like a link-bearer, or lackey; is our admiring Boswell, living and moving and having its being in the equability it derives from attending its illustrious master. An African sage

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once illustrated this philosophical principle of the greater controlling the less, by the following fine conundrum. "Why does the dog waggle his tail?" This problem, being beyond his auditors, was given up. The sage made answer, "Because the dog is bigger than the tail; else the tail would waggle the dog." It is alarming to contemplate the effect which the moon might have upon our august earth, if it were fourteen times larger instead of fourteen times smaller in extent of surface. As it is, Luna's influences are so many and so mighty, that we will require considerable space merely to set them in order, and to substantiate them with a few facts. We believe that most, if not all, of them, are the offspring of superstition; but we shall none the less find them in every land, in every age. In the nineteenth century as well as in the dark ages, in London as well as in the ends of the earth, men of all colours and clans are found turning their faces heavenward to read their duty and destiny in the oracular face of the moon. Many consult their almanacks more than their Bibles, and follow the lunar phases as their sole interpretation of the will of God.

Among those who worship the moon as a personal deity, whether beneficent or malign, its influences are of course welcomed or dreaded as the manifestations of supreme power. In South America, for example, "the Botocudos are said to give the highest rank among the heavenly bodies to Taru, the moon, as causing thunder and lightning and the failure of

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vegetables and fruits, and as even sometimes falling to the earth, whereby many men die." 321 So, in Africa, the emotions of the worshippers vary with their subjective views of their god. "Negro tribes seem almost universally to greet the new moon, whether in delight or disgust. The Guinea people fling themselves about with droll gestures, and pretend to throw firebrands at it; the Ashango men behold it with superstitious fear; the Fetu negroes jumped thrice into the air with hands together and gave thanks." 322 But even amongst men who neither personify nor deify the moon, its dominion over the air, earth, and sea, over human health and happiness, is held to be so all-important, that if the Maker and Monarch of all were jealous, as men count jealousy, such lunar fears and affections would be unpardonable sin.

Let us proceed to particulars, rising from inorganic nature to beings endowed with the highest instruments of life. Even the mineral kingdom is supposed to be swayed by the moon; for in Scotland, Martin says, "The natives told me, that the rock on the east side of Harries, in the Sound of Island Glass, hath a vacuity near the front, on the north-west side of the Sound; in which they say there is a stone that they call the Lunar Stone, which advances and retires according to the increase and decrease of the moon." 323 An ancient instance of belief in lunar influence upon inanimate matter is cited by Plutarch. "Euthydemus of Sunium feasted us upon a time at his house, and

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set before us a wilde bore, of such bignesse, that all wee at the table wondred thereat; but he told us that there was another brought unto him farre greater; mary naught it was, and corrupted in the carriage, by the beames of the moone-shine; whereof he made great doubt and question, how it should come to passe; for that he could not conceive, nor see any reason, but that the sunne should rather corrupt flesh, being as it was, farre hotter than the moone." 324 Pliny said that the moon corrupted carcases of animals exposed to its malefic rays. As with the lifeless, so with the living. "The inhabitants of St. Kilda observe that when the April moon goes far in May, the fowls are ten or twelve days later in laying their eggs than ordinarily they use to be." 325 The influence of the moon upon vegetation is an opinion hoary with age. In the Zend-Avesta we read, "And when the light of the moon waxes warmer, golden-hued plants grow on from the earth during the spring." 326 An old English author writes:--

"Sowe peason and beanes, in the wane of the moone,
Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soone
That they with the planet may rest and arise,
And flourish, with bearing most plentiful wise." 327

Cucumbers, radishes, turnips, leeks, lilies, horseradish, saffron, and other plants, are said to increase during the fulness of the moon; but onions, on the contrary, are much larger and are better nourished during the decline. 328 To recur to Plutarch is to find

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him saying: "The moone showeth her power most evidently even in those bodies, which have neither sense nor lively breath; for carpenters reject the timber of trees fallen in the ful-moone, as being soft and tender, subject also to the worme and putrifaction, and that quickly, by reason of excessive moisture; husbandmen, likewise, make haste to gather up their wheat and other grain from the threshing-floore, in the wane of the moone, and toward the end of the month, that being hardened thus with drinesse, the heape in the garner may keepe the better from being fustie, and continue the longer; whereas corne which is inned and laied up at the full of the moone, by reason of the softnesse and over-much moisture, of all other, doth most cracke and burst. It is commonly said also, that if a leaven be laied in the ful-moone, the paste will rise and take leaven better." 329 Still in Cornwall the people gather all their medicinal plants when the moon is of a certain age; which practice is very probably a relic of druidical superstition. "In some parts it is a prevalent belief that the growth of mushrooms is influenced by the changes of the moon, and in Essex the subjoined rule is often scrupulously adhered to:--

"When the moon is at the full,
Mushrooms you may freely pull
But when the moon is on the wane,
Wait ere you think to pluck again.'" 330

Henderson says, "I may, perhaps, mention here, that apples are said to 'shrump up' in Devonshire if

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picked when the moon is waning." 331 A writer of miscellaneous literature tells us that "it has been demonstrated that moonlight has the power, per se, of awakening the sensitive plant, and consequently that it possesses an influence of some kind on vegetation. It is true that the influence is very feeble, compared with that of the sun; but the action is established, and the question remains, what is the practical value of the fact? 'It will immediately,' says Professor Lindley, 'occur to the reader that possibly the screens which are drawn down over hothouses at night, to prevent loss of heat by radiation, may produce some unappreciated injury by cutting off the rays of the moon, which nature intended to fall upon plants as much as the rays of the sun." 332 The same author says elsewhere, "Columella, Cato, Vitruvius, and Pliny, all had their notions of the advantages of cutting timber at certain ages of the moon; a piece of mummery which is still preserved in the royal ordonnances of France to the conservators of the forests, who are directed to fell oaks only 'in the wane of the moon' and 'when the wind is at north.'" 333 Of trees, astrologers affirm that the moon rules the palm tree (which the ancients say "sends forth a twig every time the moon rises") and all plants, trees, and herbs that are juicy and full of sap. 334

"A description of the New Netherlands, written about 1650, remarks that the savages of that land 'ascribe great influence to the moon over crops.' This venerable superstition, common to all races, still

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lingers among our own farmers, many of whom continue to observe 'the signs of the moon ' in sowing grain, setting out trees, cutting timber, and other rural avocations." 335 What is here said of the new world applies also to the old; for in England a current expression in Huntingdonshire is "a dark Christmas sends a fine harvest": dark meaning moonless.

Of the lunar influence upon the tides, old John Lilly writes: "There is nothing thought more admirable, or commendable in the sea, than the ebbing and flowing; and shall the moone, from whom the sea taketh this virtue, be accounted fickle for encreasing and decreasing?" 336 Another writer of the sixteenth century says, "The moone is founde, by plaine experience, to beare her greatest stroke uppon the seas, likewise in all things that are moiste, and by consequence in the braines of man." 337 Dennys tells us that "the influence exerted by the moon on tides is recognised by the Chinese." 338 What some record in prose, others repeat in rhyme. The following is one kind of poetry.

"Moone changed, keepes closet, three daies as a Queene,
Er she in hir prime, will of any be scene :
If great she appereth, it showreth out,
If small she appereth, it signifieth drout.
At change or at full, come it late, or else soone,
Maine sea is at highest, at midnight and noone,
But yet in the creekes, it is later high flood:
Through farnesse of running, by reason as good." 339

Indirectly, through the influence upon the tides, the moon is concerned in human mortality.

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"Tyde flowing is feared, for many a thing,
Great danger to such as be sick it doth bring.
Sea eb, by long ebbing, some respit doth give,
And sendeth good comfort, to such as shal live." 340

Henderson says, "It is a common belief along the east coast of England, from Northumberland to Kent, that deaths mostly occur during the falling of the tide." 341 Every reader of the inimitable Dickens will be reminded here of the death of poor old Barkis.

"'He's a-going out with the tide,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his hand.

"My eyes were dim, and so were Mr. Peggotty's; but I repeated in a whisper, 'With the tide?'

"'People can't die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in-not properly born, till flood. He's a-going out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide.'

"'He's coming to himself,' said Peggotty.

"Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence, 'They are both a-going out fast.'

"He now opened his eyes.

"I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and said to me distinctly, with a pleasant smile,--

"'Barkis is willin'.'

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"And, it being low water, he went out with the tide." 342

That the rise and fall of our tides twice a day, with spring and neap tides twice in the lunar month, are the effect of the combined action of the sun and moon, is never called in question. The water under the moon is drawn up from the earth, and the earth is drawn from the water on the opposite side, the consequence of which is two high tides in the two hemispheres at the same hour. The rotation of the earth bringing the same point of the ocean twice under the moon's meridian, once under the upper meridian and once under the lower, each hemisphere has two high tides in the course of the day. The spring tide is caused by the attractive force of the sun and moon acting in conjunction, or in a straight line; and the neap tide is caused by the moon being in quadrature, or when the sun and moon are at right angles to each other. They counteract each other's influence, and our tides arc therefore low. So much is science; but the connection of ebb and flow with life and death is superstition.

From a very remote antiquity, in the twilight of natural astrology, a belief arose that changes in the weather were occasioned by the moon. 343 That the notion lives on, and will not soon die, is clear to any one who is conversant with current literature and common folk-lore. Even intelligent, well-informed people lend it countenance. Professor Newcomb, of Washington, rightly says: "Thus far there is no

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evidence that the moon directly affects the earth or its inhabitants in any other way than by her attraction, which is so minute as to be entirely insensible except in the ways we have described. A striking illustration of the fallibility of the human judgment when not disciplined by scientific training is afforded by the opinions which have at various times obtained currency respecting a supposed influence of the moon on the weather. Neither in the reason of the case nor in observations do we find any real support for such a theory. It must, however, be admitted that opinions of this character are not confined to the uneducated." 344 Mr. Edward B. Tylor holds similar language: "The notion that the weather changes with the moon's quarterings is still held with great vigour in England. That educated people to whom exact weather records are accessible should still find satisfaction in the fanciful lunar rule, is an interesting case of intellectual survival." 345 No marvel that the "heathen Chinee" considers lunar observations as forecasting scarcity of provisions he is but of the same blood with his British brother, who takes his tea and sends him opium. "The Hakkas (and also many Puntis) believe that if in the night of the fifteenth day of the eighth month (mid autumn) there are clouds obscuring the moon before midnight, it is a sign that oil and salt will become very dear. If, however, there are clouds obscuring the moon after midnight, the price of rice will, it is supposed, undergo a similar change." 346

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One of our provincial proverbs is: "So many days old the moon is on Michaelmas Day, so many floods after." Sometimes a proverb is a short saying spoken after long experience; at other times it is a small crystal left after a lengthy evaporation. In certain instances our rural apothegms are sacred relics of extinct but canonized fictions. An equally wise prediction is that if Christmas comes during a waxing moon we shall have a very good year; and the nearer to the new moon, the better. But if during a waning moon, a hard year; and the nearer the end of the moon, so much the worse. Another sage belief is that the condition of the weather is dependent upon the day of the week upon which the new moon chances to fall. We are told that "Dr. Forster, of Bruges, well known as a meteorologist, declares that by the Journal kept by his grandfather, father, and self, ever since 1767, to the present time, whenever the new moon has fallen on a Saturday, the following twenty days have been wet and windy, in nineteen cases out of twenty." 347 In Italy it is said, "If the moon change on a Sunday, there will be a flood before the month is out." New moon on Monday, or moon-day, is, of course, everywhere held a sign of good weather and luck.

That a misty moon is a misfortune to the atmosphere is widely supposed. In Scotland it is an agricultural maxim among the canny farmers that--

"If the moon shows like a silver shield,
You need not be afraid to reap your field p. 186
But if she rises haloed round,
Soon we'll tread on deluged ground." 348

Others say that a mist is unfavourable only with the new moon, not with the old.

"An old moon in a mist
Is worth gold in a kist (chest)
But a new moon's mist
Will never lack thirst," 349

is a rugged rhyme found in several places. In Cornwall the idea is that--

"A fog and a small moon
Bring an easterly wind soon."

The east wind, as we know, is dry. Two of the Shepherd of Banbury's rules are:

xii. If mists in the new moon, rain in the old.
xiii. If mists in the old, rain in the new moon." 350

One thing is a meteorological certainty: the full moon very frequently clears the sky. But this may be partly accounted for by the fact that a full moon shows the night to be clear, which in the moon's absence might be called cloudy.

Another observation shows that in proportion to the clearness of the night is its cold. The clouds covering the earth with no thick blanket, it radiates its heat into space. This has given rise to the notion that the moon itself reduces our temperature. It is cold at night without doubt. But the cold moon is so warm when the sun is shining full on its disk

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that no creature on earth could endure a moment's contact with its surface. The centre of the "pale-faced moon" is hotter than boiling water. This thought may cheer us when "the cold round moon shines deeply down." We may be pardoned if we take with a tincture of scepticism the following statement "Native Chinese records aver that on the 18th day of the 6th moon, 1590, snow fell one summer night from the midst of the moon. The flakes were like fine willow flowers on shreds of silk." 351 Instead of cold, it is more likely that the white moon gives us heat, for from Melloni's letter to Arago it seems to be already an ascertained fact. Having concentrated the lunar rays with a lens of over three feet diameter upon his thermoscopic pile, Melloni found that the needle had deviated from 0° 6' to 4° 8', according to the lunar phase. Other thermoscopes may give even larger indications; but meanwhile the Italian physicist has exploded an error with a spark of science.

"Another weather guide connected with the moon is, that to see 'the old moon in the arms of the new one' is reckoned a sign of fine weather; and so is the turning up of the horns of the new moon. In this position it is supposed to retain the water, which is imagined to be in it, and which would run out if the horns were turned down." 352 On this novel idea of a lunar bason or saucer, Southey writes from "Keswick, December 29th, 1828," as follows:--"Poor Littledale has this day explained

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the cause of our late rains, which have prevailed for the last six weeks, by a theory which will probably be as new to you as it is to me. 'I have observed,' he says, 'that, when the moon is turned upward, we have fine weather after it; but if it is turned down, then we have a wet season; and the reason I think is, that when it is turned down, it holds no water, like a bason, you know, and then down it all comes.' There, it will be a long while before the march of intellect shall produce a theory as original as this, which I find, upon inquiry, to be the popular opinion here." 353 George Eliot has taken notice of this fancy in the burial of "poor old Thias Bede." "They'll ha' putten Thias Bede i' the ground afore ye get to the churchyard," said old Martin, as his son came up. "It 'ud ha' been better luck if they'd ha' buried him i' the forenoon when the rain was fallin'; there's no likelihoods of a drop now, an' the moon lies like a boat there, dost see? That's a sure sign o' fair weather; there's a many as is false, but that's sure." 354

In Dekker's Match Me in London, Act i., the King says, "My Lord, doe you see this change in the moone? Sharp hornes doe threaten windy weather."

In the famous ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, concerning whose origin there has been so much discussion, without eliciting any very accurate information, we read:

"O ever alack! my master dear,
  I fear a deadly storm. p. 189
I saw the new moon late yestreen,
  Wi' the auld moon in her arm
  And if ye gang to sea, maister,
I fear we'll suffer harm." 355

Jamieson informs us that "prognostications concerning the weather, during the course of the month, are generally formed by the country people in Scotland from the appearance of the new moon. It is considered as an almost infallible presage of bad weather, if she lies sair on her back, or when her horns are pointed towards the zenith. It is a similar prognostic, when the new moon appears wi' the auld moon in her arm, or, in other words, when that part of the moon which is covered with the shadow of the earth is seen through it." 356 The last sentence is a lapsus calami. Dr. Jamieson should have said, when that part of the moon which is turned from the sun is dimly visible through the reflected light of the earth.

"At Whitby, when the moon is surrounded by a halo with watery clouds, the seamen say that there will be a change of weather, for the 'moon dogs' are about." 357 At Ulceby, in Lincolnshire, "there is a very prevalent belief amongst sailors and seafaring men that when a large star or planet is seen near the moon, or, as they express it, 'a big star is dogging the moon,' that this is a certain prognostication of wild weather. I have met old sailors having the strongest faith in this prediction, and who have told me that they have verified it by a long course of observation." 358

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"Some years ago," says a writer from Torquay, "an old fisherman of this place told me, on the morning next after a violent gale, that he had foreseen the storm for some time, as he had observed one star ahead of the moon, towing her, and another astern, chasing her. 'I know'd 'twas coming, safe enough.'" 359 The moon was simply in apparent proximity to two stars; but the old Devonian descried mischief.

The following incident from Zulu life will be of interest. "1878. A curious phenomenon occurred 7th January. A bright star appeared near the moon at noonday, the sun shining brightly. Omen--The natives from this foretold the coming war with the Amazulu. Intense heat and drought prevailed at this time." 360

Hitherto we have reviewed only the imaginary influences of the moon over inanimate nature and what are called irrational beings. We have seen that this potent orb is supposed to affect the lightning and thunder of the air; the rocks and seas, the vegetables and animals of the earth; and generally to govern terrestrial matters in a manner altogether its own. Furthermore, we have found these imaginations rooted in all lands, and among men whose culture might have been expected to refuse such fruitless excrescences. When classical authors counsel us to set eggs under the hen at new moon, and to root up trees only when the moon is waning and after mid-day; and when "the wisest, brightest," if

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not the "meanest of mankind" seriously attributes to the moon the extraction of heat, the furtherance of putrification, the increase of moisture, and the excitement of animal spirits, with the increase of hedges and herbs if cut or set during certain phases of that body, we can but repeat to ourselves the saying, "The best of men are but men at the best." The half, however, has not been told; and we must now pass on to speak of lunar influences upon the birth, health, intellect, and fortune of microcosmical man.

In the system of astrology, which professed to interpret the events of human existence by the movements of the stars, the moon was one of the primary planets. As man was looked upon in the light of a microcosm, or world in miniature, so the several parts of his constitution were viewed as but a reproduction in brief of the great parts of the vast organism. Creation was a living, intelligent being, whose two eyes were the sun and the moon, whose body was the earth, whose intellect was the ether, whose wings were the heavens. Man was an epitome of all this; and as the functions of the less were held to correspond with the functions of the greater, the microcosm with the macrocosm, man's movements could be inferred by first ascertaining the motions of the universe. The moon, having dominion in the twelve "houses" of heaven, through which she passed in the course of the year, her aspects to the other bodies were considered as of prime significance, in indicating benignant or malignant influences upon

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human life. This system, which was based upon ignorance and superstition, and upheld by arbitrary rules and unreasoning credulity, is so repugnant to all principles of science and common sense, that it would be unworthy of notice, if we did not know that to this day there are educated persons still to be seen poring over old almanacs and peering into the darkness of divination, to read their own fortune or that of their children by the dim light of some lucky or unlucky configuration of the planets with the moon. The wheel of fortune yet revolves, and the despotism of astrology is not dead. The lunar influence is considered supreme in the hour of birth. Nay, with some the moon is potential even before birth. In Iceland it is said: "If a pregnant woman sit with her face turned towards the moon, her child will be a lunatic." 361 And this imagination obtains at home as well as abroad. We are told that "astrologers ascribe the most powerful influence to the moon on every person, both for success and health, according to her zodiacal and mundane position at birth, and her aspects to other planets. The sensual faculties depend almost entirely on the moon, and as she is aspected so are the moral or immoral tendencies. She has great influence always upon every person's constitution." 362 This is the doctrine of a book published not thirty years ago. Another work, issued also in London, says, "Cynthia, 'the queen of heaven,' as the ancients termed her, or the MOON, the companion of the earth, and chief source

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of our evening light, is a cold, moist, watery, phlegmatic planet, variable to an extreme, in astrological science; and partaking of good or evil, as she is aspected by good or evil stars. When angular and unafflicted in a nativity, she is the promissory pledge of great success in life and continual good fortune. She produces a full stature, fair, pale complexion, round face, gray eyes, short arms, thick hands and feet, smooth, corpulent, and phlegmatic body. Blemishes in the eyes, or a peculiar weakness in the sight, is the result of her being afflicted by the Sun. Her conjunction, semi-sextile, sextile, or trine, to Jupiter, is exceeding fortunate; and she is said by the old Astrologers to govern the brain, stomach, bowels, left eye of the male, and right eye of the female. Her usual diseases are rheumatism, consumption, palsy, cholic, apoplexy, vertigo, lunacy, scrophula, smallpox, dropsy, etc.; also most diseases peculiar to young children." 363 Such teaching is not a whit in advance of Plutarch's odd dictum that the moon has a "special hand in the birth of children."

If this belief have disciples in London, it is not by any means confined to that city. In Sweden great influence is ascribed to the moon, not only in regulating the weather, but as affecting all the affairs of man's daily life. The lower orders, and many of the better sort, will not fell a tree for agricultural purposes in the wane of that orb, lest it should shrink and decay; nor will the housewife then slaughter for her family, lest the meat should shrivel

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and melt away in the pot. The moon is the domestic deity, whom the household must fear: the Fortuna who presides over the daily doings of sublunary mortals. In the matter of birth, we find Francis Bacon affirming that "the calculation of nativities, fortunes, good or bad hours of business, and the like fatalities, are mere levities that have little in them of certainty and solidity, and may be plainly confuted by physical reasons"; 364 and yet in his Natural History he writes: "It may be that children and young cattle that are brought forth in the full of the moon, are stronger and larger than those that are brought forth in the wane." 365 There surely can be no superstition in studying the moon's conjunctions and oppositions if her influence in a nativity have the slightest weight. And this influence is still widely maintained by philosophers who read Bacon, as well as by the peasants who read nothing at all. "In Cornwall, when a child is born in the interval between an old moon and the first appearance of a new one, it is said that it will never live to reach the age of puberty. Hence the saying, 'no moon, no man.' In the same county, too, when a boy is born in the wane of the moon, it is believed that the next birth will be a girl, and vice versa; and it is also commonly said that when a birth takes place on the 'growing of the moon' the next child will be of the same sex." 366

As a natural proceeding, we find that the moon has influence when the child is weaned. Caledonian

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mothers very carefully observe the lunar phases on this account. Jamieson tells us that "this superstition, with respect to the fatal influence of a waning moon, seems to have been general in Scotland. In Angus, it is believed, that, if a child be put from the breast during the waning of the moon, it will decay all the time that the moon continues to wane." 367 So in the heart of Europe, "the Lithuanian precept to wean boys at a waxing, but girls on a waning moon, no doubt to make the boys sturdy and the girls slim and delicate, is a fair match for the Orkney Islanders' objection to marrying except with a growing moon, while some even wish for a flowing tide." 368 As to marriage, the ancient Greeks considered the day of the full moon the most propitious period for that ceremony. In Euripides, Clytemnestra having asked Agamemnon when he intended to give Iphigenia in marriage to Achilles, he replies, "When the full moon comes forth with good luck." In Pindar, too, this season is preferred. 369

Lunar influences over physical health and disease must be a fearful contemplation to those who are of a superstitious turn. There is no malady within the whole realm of pathology which the moon's destroying angel cannot inflict; and from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot the entire man is at the mercy of her beams. We have all seen those disgusting woodcuts to which the following just condemnation refers: "The moon's influence on parts of the human body, as given in some old-fashioned

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almanacs, is an entire fallacy; it is most untrue and absurd, often indecent, and is a discredit to the age we live in." 370 Most of these inartistic productions are framed upon the assumption of the old alchymists that the physiological functions were regulated by planetary influence. The sun controlled the heart, the moon the brain, Jupiter the lungs, Saturn the spleen, Mars the liver, Venus the kidneys, and Mercury the reproductive powers. But even with this distribution among the heavenly bodies the moon was allowed plenipotentiary sway. As in mythology it is the god or goddess of water, so in astrology it is the embodiment of moisture, and therefore rules the humours which circulate throughout the human system. No wonder that phlebotomy prevailed so long as the reign of the moon endured. "This lunar planet," says La Martinière, "is damp of itself, but, by the radiation of the sun, is of various temperaments, as follows: in its first quadrant it is warm and damp, at which time it is good to let the blood of sanguine persons; in its second it is warm and dry, at which time it is good to bleed the choleric; in its third quadrant it is cold and moist, and phlegmatic people may be bled; and in its fourth it is cold and dry, at which time it is well to bleed the melancholic." Whatever the moon's phase may be, let blood be shed! We are reminded here of that sanguifluous theology, which even Christians of a certain temperament seem to enjoy, while they sing of fountains filled with blood: as though

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a God of love could take delight in the effusion of precious life. La Martinière continues, and physicians will make a note of his words: " It is a thing quite necessary to those who meddle with medicine to understand the movement of this planet, in order to discern the causes of sickness. And as the moon is often in conjunction with Saturn, many attribute to it apoplexy, paralysis, epilepsy, jaundice, hydropsy, lethargy, catapory, catalepsy, colds, convulsions, trembling of the limbs, etc., etc. I have noticed that this planet has such enormous power over living creatures, that children born at the first quarter of the declining moon are more subject to illness, so that children born when there is no moon, if they live, are weak, delicate, and sickly, or are of little mind or idiots. Those who are born under the house of the moon which is Cancer, are of a phlegmatic disposition." 371

That the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans believed in the deleterious influence of the moon on the health of man, is very evident. The Talmud refers the words, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" (Ps. xxiii. 4) "to him who sleeps in the shadow of the moon." 372 Another Psalm (cxxi. 6) reads, literally, "By day the sun shall not smite thee, and the moon in the night." In the Greek Testament we find further proof of this belief. Among those who thronged the Great Teacher (Matt. iv. 24) were the σεληνιαζομένοι (lunatici, Beza; i lunatici, Diodati; les lunatiques, French version; "those who were lunatick"). The Revised Version of 1881 reads

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epileptic," but that is a comment, not a translation. So again (Matt. xvii. 15) we read of a boy who was "lunatick"--σεληνιάζεται. On which Archbishop Trench remarks, "Of course the word originally, like μανία (from μήν�? and lunaticus, arose from the widespread belief of the evil influence of the moon on the human frame." 373 Jerome attributes all this superstition to dæmons, of which men were the dupes. "The lunatics," he says, "were not really smitten by the moon, but were believed to be so, through the subtlety of the dæmons, who by observing the seasons of the moon sought to bring an evil report against the creature, that it might redound to the blasphemy of the Creator." 374 Demons or no demons, faith in moonstroke is clear enough. Pliny was of opinion that the moon induced drowsiness and stupor in those who slept under her beams. Galen, in the second century, taught that those who were born when the moon was falciform, or sickle-shaped, were weak and short-lived, while those born during the full moon were vigorous and of long life. He also took notice of the lunar influence in epilepsy 375 of which fearful malady a modern physician writes, "This disease has been known from the earliest antiquity, and is remarkable as being that malady which, even beyond insanity, was made the foundation of the doctrine of possession by evil spirits, alike in the Jewish, Grecian, and Roman philosophy." 376 The terrible disorder was a fact; and evil spirits or the moon had to bear the blame.

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In modern times the moon is no less the deity of insalutary disaster. Of Mexico, Brinton says: "Very different is another aspect of the moon-goddess, and well might the Mexicans paint her with two colours. The beneficent dispenser of harvests and offspring, she nevertheless has a portentous and terrific phase. She is also the goddess of the night, the dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave." 377 So farther south, "the Brazilian mother carefully shielded her infant from the lunar rays, believing that they would produce sickness; the hunting tribes of our own country will not sleep in its light, nor leave their game exposed to its action. We ourselves have not outgrown such words as lunatic, moon-struck, and the like. Where did we get these ideas? The philosophical historian of medicine, Kurt Sprengel, traces them to the primitive and popular medical theories of ancient Egypt, in accordance with which all maladies were the effects of the anger of the goddess Isis, the moisture, the moon." 378 Perhaps Dr. Brinton's own Mexican myth is a better elucidation of this origin of nocturnal evil than that which traces it to Egypt. According to an ancient tradition in[paragraph continues]

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Mexico, "it is said that in the absence of the sun all mankind lingered in darkness. Nothing but a human sacrifice could hasten his arrival. Then Metzli, the moon, led forth one Nanahuatl, the leprous, and building a pyre, the victim threw himself in its midst. Straightway Metzli followed his example, and as she disappeared in the bright flames, the sun rose over the horizon. Is not this a reference to the kindling rays of the aurora, in which the dark and baleful night is sacrificed, and in whose light the moon presently fades away, and the sun comes forth?" 379 We venture to think that it is, and that it is nearest to a natural explanation of purely natural effects.

Coming next to Britain, we find that "no prejudice has been more firmly rivetted than the influence of the moon over the human frame, originating perhaps in some superstition more ancient than recorded by the earliest history. The frequent intercourse of Scotland with the north may have conspired to disseminate or renew the veneration of a luminary so highly venerated there, in counteracting the more southern ecclesiastical ordinances." 380 Forbes Leslie surely goes too far, and mixes matters up too much, when he writes: "An ancient belief, adhered to by the ignorant after being denounced and apparently disproved by the learned, is now admitted to be a fact; viz. the influence of the moon in certain diseases. This, from various circumstances, is more apparent in some of the Asiatic countries, and may have given rise to the custom which extended into[paragraph continues]

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Britain, of exposing sick children on the housetops." 381 We know that the solar rays, from the time of Hippocrates, the reputed "father of medicine," were believed by the Greeks to prolong life; and that the Romans built terraces on the tops of their houses called solaria, where they enjoyed their solar baths. "Levato sole levatur morbus," was one of their medical axioms. But who ever heard of the lunar rays as beneficial? If sick children were exposed on the housetops, it must have been in the daytime; and, unless it were intended as an alterative, it is difficult to see what connection this had with the belief that disease was the product of the lunar beam. Besides, is the moon's influence in disease an admitted fact? The "certain diseases" should be specified, and their lunar origin sustained.

The following strange superstition is singularly like that interpolated legend in the Gospel of John, about the angel troubling the pool of Bethesda. In this case the medicinal virtue seems to come with the change of the moon. But in both cases supernatural agency is equally mythical. "A cave in the neighbourhood of Dunskey ought also to be mentioned, on account of the great veneration in which it is held by the people. At the change of the moon (which is still considered with superstitious reverence), it is usual to bring, even from a great distance, infirm persons, and particularly ricketty children, whom they often suppose bewitched, to bathe in a stream which pours from the hill, and then dry them in the cave." 382

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Those who are in danger of apoplexy, or other cerebral disease, through indulgence too freely in various liquids, vinous and spirituous, should cherish Bacon's sapient deliverance: "It is like that the brain of man waxeth moister and fuller upon the full of the moon; and therefore it were good for those that have moist brains, and are great drinkers, to take sume of lignum aloes, rosemary, frankincense, etc., about the full of the moon. It is like, also, that the humours in men's bodies increase and decrease as the moon doth; and therefore it were good to purge some day or two after the full; for that then the humours will not replenish so soon again." 383 All this sounds so unphilosophical that it is almost incredible that the learned Bacon believed what he wrote. Darker superstitions, however, still linger in our land. "In Staffordshire, it is commonly said, if you want to cure chin-cough, take out the child and let it look at the new moon; lift up its clothes and rub your right hand up and down its stomach, and repeat the following lines (looking steadfastly at the moon, and rubbing at the same time):--

'What I see, may it increase;
What I feel, may it decrease;

[paragraph continues] In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.'" 384 There is a little ambiguity here. What is felt is the child's stomach. But the desire is not that that may decrease, but only the whooping cough, which is felt, we take it, by proxy. A lady, writing of

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the southern county of Sussex, says: "A superstition lingering amongst us, worthy of the days of paganism, is that the new May moon, aided by certain charms, has the power of curing scrofulous complaints." 385

As the cutting of hair, finger-nails, and corns has some relation to health and comfort, we may here mention that in Devonshire it is said that hair and nails should always be cut in the waning of the moon, thereby beneficial consequences will result. If corns are cut after the full moon, some say that they will gradually disappear. In the British Apollo we have the following request for advice:

"Pray tell your querist if he may
Rely on what the vulgar say,
That when the moon's in her increase,
If corns be cut they'll grow apace
But if you always do take care
After the full your corns to pare,
They do insensibly decay
And will in time wear quite away.
If this be true, pray let me know,
And give the reason why 'tis so." 386

The following passage is worth quoting, without any abbreviation, as an excellent summary of wisdom and sense regarding the moon's influence on health: "There is much reason for regarding the moon as a source of evil, yet not that she herself is so, but only the circumstances which attend her. With us it happens that a bright moonlight night is always a cold one. The absence of cloud allows the

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out haste, but with solemn deliberation, and when be repeats-

'Blessed is thy Former, Blessed is thy Maker,
Blessed is thy Possessor, Blessed is thy Creator,'

he is to meditate on the initials of the four Divine epithets, which form 'Jacob'; for the moon, which is called 'the lesser light,' is his emblem or symbol, and he is also called 'little' (see Amos vii. 2). This he is to repeat three times. He is to skip three times while repeating thrice the following sentence, and after repeating three times forwards and backwards: thus (forwards)--'Fear and dread shall fall upon them by the greatness of thine arm; they shall be as still as a stone'; thus (backwards)--'Still as a stone may they be; by the greatness of thine arm may fear and dread fall on them'; he then is to say to his neighbour three times, 'Peace be unto you,' and the neighbour is to respond three times, 'Unto you be peace.' Then he is to say three times (very loudly), 'David, the King of Israel, liveth and existeth!' and finally, he is to say three times, 'May a good omen and good luck be upon us and upon all Israel! Amen!'" 396

That the ancient Germans held the moon in similar regard we know from Cæsar, who, having inquired why Ariovistus did not come to an engagement, discovered this to be the reason: "that among the Germans it was the custom for their matrons to pronounce from lots and divination, whether it were expedient that the battle should be engaged in or not; that

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they had said, 'that it was not the will of heaven that the Germans should conquer, if they engaged in battle before the new moon.'" 396*

Halliwell has reproduced an illustration of British superstition of the same sort. "A very singular divination practised at the period of the harvest moon is thus described in an old chap-book. When you go to bed, place under your pillow a prayer-book open at the part of the matrimonial service 'with this ring I thee wed'; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust of bread, and the following cards:--the ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and the ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief of gauze or muslin, and on getting into bed, cross your hands, and say:--

'Luna, every woman's friend,
To me thy goodness condescend
Let me this night in vision see
Emblems of my destiny.'

[paragraph continues] If you dream of storms, trouble will betide you; if the storm ends in a fine calm, so will your fate; if of a ring or the ace of diamonds, marriage; bread, an industrious life; cake, a prosperous life; flowers, joy; willow, treachery in love; spades, death; diamonds, money; clubs, a foreign land; hearts, illegitimate children; keys, that you will rise to great trust and power, and never know want; birds, that you will have many children; and geese, that you will marry more than once." 397 Such ridiculous absurdities would be rejected

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as apocryphal if young ladies were not still in the habit of placing bits of wedding cake under their pillows in the hope that their dreaming eyes may be enchanted with blissful visions of their future lords.

Hone tells us that in Berkshire, "at the first appearance of a new moon, maidens go into the fields, and, while they look at it, say:--

'New moon, new moon, I hail thee!
By all the virtue in thy body.
Grant this night that I may see
He who my true love is to be.'

[paragraph continues] Then they return home, firmly believing that before morning their future husbands will appear to them in their dreams." 398

In Devonshire also "it is customary for young people, as soon as they see the first new moon after midsummer, to go to a stile, turn their back to it, and say:--

'All hail, new moon, all hail to thee!
I prithe, good moon, reveal to me
This night who shall my true love be
Who is he, and what he wears,
And what he does all months and years.'" 399

Aubrey says the same of the Scotch of his day, and the custom is not yet extinct. "In Scotland (especially among the Highlanders) the women doe make a curtsey to the new moon; I have known one in England doe it, and our English woemen in the country doe retain (some of them) a touch of this gentilisme still, e.g.:--

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'All haile to thee, moon, all haile to thee
I prithe, good moon, declare to me,
This night, who my husband must be.'

This they doe sitting astride on a gate or stile the first evening the new moon appears. In Herefordshire, etc., the vulgar people at the prime of the moon say, '`Tis a fine moon, God bless her.'" 400 " In Ireland, at the new moon, it is not an uncommon practice for people to point with a knife, and after invoking the Holy Trinity, to say:--

'New moon, true morrow, be true now to me,
That I ere the morrow my true love may see.'

The knife is then placed under the pillow, and silence strictly observed, lest the charm should be broken." 401

Dr. Charles Mackay quotes from Mother Bridget's Dream and Omen Book the following prescription for ascertaining the events of futurity. "First new moon of the year. On the first new moon in the year take a pint of clear spring water, and infuse into it the white of an egg laid by a white hen, a glass of white wine, three almonds peeled white, and a tablespoonful of white rose-water. Drink this on going to bed, not making more nor less than three draughts of it; repeating the following verses three several times in a clear distinct voice, but not so loud as to be overheard by anybody:--

'If I dream of water pure
  Before the coming morn,
'Tis a sign I shall be poor,
  And unto wealth not born. p. 216
If I dream of tasting beer,
Middling, then, will be my cheer--
Chequered with the good and bad,
Sometimes joyful, sometimes sad;
But should I dream of drinking wine,
Wealth and pleasure will be mine.
The stronger the drink, the better the cheer--
Dreams of my destiny, appear, appear!'" 402

The day of the week on which the moon is new or full, is a question that awakens the most anxious concern. In the north of Italy Wednesday is dreaded for a lunar change, and in the south of France the inauspicious day is Friday. 403 In most of our own rural districts Friday's new moon is much disliked

"Friday's moon,
Come when it wool,
It comes too soon."

Saturday is unlucky for the new, and Sunday for the full moon. In Norfolk it is said:--

"Saturday's new and Sunday's full,
Never was good, and never wull."

An apparently older version of the same weather-saw runs:--

"A Saturday's change, and a Sunday's prime,
Was nivver a good mune in nea man's time."

In Worcestershire, a cottager near Berrow Hill told Mr. Edwin Lees, F.L.S., that as the new moon had fallen on a Saturday, there would follow twenty-one days of wind or rain; for

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"If the moon on a Saturday be new or full,
There always was rain, and there always wüll."

One rustic rhyme rehearsed in some places is:--

"A Saturday moon,
If it comes once in seven years,
  Comes once too soon."

Next to the day, the medium through which the new moon is first beheld, is of vital moment. In Staffordshire it is unlucky to see this sight through trees. A correspondent in Notes and Queries (21st January, 1882) once saw a person almost in tears because she looked on the new moon through her veil, feeling convinced that misfortune would follow. Henderson cites a canon to be observed by those who would know what year they would wed. "Look at the first new moon of the year through a silk handkerchief which has never been washed. As many moons as you see through the handkerchief (the threads multiplying the vision), so many years will pass ere you are married." 404 Hunt tells us, what in fact is widely believed, that "to see the new moon for the first time through glass, is unlucky; you may be certain that you will break glass before that moon is out. I have known persons whose attention has been called to a clear new moon hesitate. 'Hev I seed her out o' doors afore?' if not, they will go into the open air, and, if possible, show the moon 'a piece of gold,' or, at all events, turn their money." 405 Mrs. Latham says: "Many of our Sussex superstitions are probably of Saxon origin; amongst which may be

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the custom of bowing or curtseying to the new or Lady moon, as she is styled, to deprecate bad luck. There is another kindred superstition, that the Queen of night will dart malignant rays upon you, if on the first day of her re-appearance you look up to her without money in your pocket. But if you are not fortunate enough to have any there, in order to avert her evil aspect, you must immediately turn head over heels! It is considered unlucky to see the new moon through a window-pane, and I have known a maidservant shut her eyes when closing the shutters lest she should unexpectedly see it through the glass. Do not kill your pig until full moon, or the pork will be ruined." 406 In Suffolk, also, "it is considered unlucky to kill a pig in the wane of the moon; if it is done, the pork will waste in boiling. I have known the shrinking of bacon in the pot attributed to the fact of the pig having been killed in the moon's decrease; and I have also known the death of poor piggy delayed, or hastened, so as to happen during its increase." 407

The desirability of possessing silver in the pocket, and of turning it over, when the new moon is first seen, is a point of some interest. Forbes Leslie says, "The ill-luck of having no silver money--coins of other metals being of no avail--when you first see or hail a new moon, is still a common belief from Cornwall to Caithness, as well as in Ireland." 408 And Jamieson writes: "Another superstition, equally ridiculous and unaccountable, is still regarded by

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some. They deem it very unlucky to see the new moon for the first time without having silver in one's pocket. Copper is of no avail." 409 We venture to think that this is not altogether unaccountable. The moon at night, in a clear sky, reflects a brilliant whiteness. The two Hebrew words used of this luminary in the Bible, mean "pale light" and "white." "Hindooism says that the moon, Soma, was turned into a female called Chandra--'thc White or Silvery One.'" 410 The Santhals of India call the sun Chando, which means bright, and is also a name for the moon. Now pure silver is of a very white colour and of a strong metallic lustre. It was one of the earliest known metals, and used as money from the remotest times. Its whiteness led the ancient astrologers, as it afterwards led the alchemists, to connect it with the moon, and to call it Diana and Luna, names previously given to the satellite. For Artemis, the Greek Diana, the Ephesian craftsmen made silver shrines. The moon became the symbol of silver; and to this day fused nitrate of silver is called lunar caustic. It was natural and easy for superstition to suppose that silver was the moon's own metal; and to imagine that upon the reappearance of the lunar deity or demon, its beams should be propitiated by some argentine possession. We find that silver was exclusively used in the worship of the moon in Peru.

In a book published in the earlier part of last century, and attributed to Daniel Defoe, we read;[paragraph continues]

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"To see a new moon the first time after her change, on the right hand, or directly before you, betokens the utmost good fortune that month; as to have her on your left, or behind you, so that in turning your head back you happen to see her, foreshows the worst; as also, they say, to be without gold in your pocket at that time is of very bad consequence." 411 The mistake in substituting gold for silver here is easily explained. As among the Romans æs meant both copper and money; and among the French argent means both silver and money in general; so in England gold is the common expression for coin of any substance. Silver being money, the word gold was thus substituted; the generic for the specific. Other superstitions besides those above noticed are found in different parts of our enlightened land. Denham says, "I once saw an aged matron turn her apron to the new moon to insure good luck for the ensuing month." 412 And Halliwell mentions a prayer customary among some persons:--

"I see the moon, and the moon sees me.
God bless the moon, and God bless me." 413

In Devonshire it is lucky to see the new moon over the right, but unlucky to see it over the left shoulder; and to see it straight before is good fortune to the end of the month. "In Renfrewshire, if a man's house be burnt during the wane of the moon, it is deemed unlucky. If the same misfortune take place

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when the moon is waxing, it is viewed as a presage of prosperity. In Orkney, also, it is reckoned unlucky to flit, or to remove from one habitation to another, during the waning of the moon." 414 A recent writer tells us that in Orkney "there are superstitions likewise associated with the moon. The increase, and full growth, and wane of that satellite are the emblems of a rising, flourishing, and declining fortune. No business of importance is begun during the moon's wane; if even an animal is killed at that period, the flesh is supposed to be unwholesome. A couple to think of marrying at that time would be regarded as recklessly careless respecting their future happiness Old people in some parts of Argyllshire were wont to invoke the Divine blessing on the moon after the monthly change. The Gaelic word for fortune is borrowed from that which denotes the full moon; and a marriage or birth occurring at that period is believed to augur prosperity." 415

Kirkmichael, says another writer on the Highlands of Scotland, hath "its due proportion of that superstition which generally prevails over the Highlands. Unable to account for the cause, they consider the effects of times and seasons as certain and infallible. The moon in her increase, full growth, and in her wane, are with them the emblems of a rising, flourishing, and declining fortune. At the last period of her revolution they carefully avoid to engage in any business of importance; but the first and the middle they seize with avidity, presaging the most

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auspicious issue to their undertakings. Poor Martinus Scriblerus never more anxiously watched the blowing of the west wind to secure an heir to his genius, than the love-sick swain and his nymph for the coming of the new moon to be noosed together in matrimony. Should the planet happen to be at the height of her splendour when the ceremony is performed, their future life will be a scene of festivity, and all its paths strewed over with rosebuds of delight. But when her tapering horns are turned towards the north, passion becomes frost-bound, and seldom thaws till the genial season again approaches. From the moon they not only draw prognostications of the weather, but according to their creed also discover future events. There they are clearly portrayed, and ingenious illusion never fails in the explanation. The veneration paid to this planet, and the opinion of its influences, are obvious from the meaning still affixed to some words of the Gaelic language. In Druidic mythology, when the circle of the moon was complete, fortune then promised to be most propitious. Agreeably to this idea, rath, which signifies in Gaelic a wheel or circle, is transferred to signify fortune." 416

Forbes Leslie writes: "The influence which the moon was supposed to exercise on mankind, as well as on inanimate objects, may be traced in the practice of the Druids. It is not yet extinct in Scotland; and the moon, in the increase, at the full, and on the wane, are emblems of prosperity, established success, or declining fortune, by which many

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persons did, and some still do, regulate the period for commencing their most important undertakings." 417 And yet once more, to make the induction most conclusive; we are told that "the canon law anxiously prohibited observance of the moon as regulating the period of marriage; nor was any regard to be paid to certain days of the year for ceremonies. If the Lucina of the ancients be identified with Diana, it was not unreasonable to court the care of the parturient, by selecting the time deemed most propitious. The strength of the ecclesiastical interdiction does not seem to have prevailed much in Scotland. Friday, which was consecrated to a northern divinity, has been deemed more favourable for the union. In the southern districts of Scotland, and in the Orkney Islands, the inhabitants preferred the increase of the moon for it. Auspicious circumstances were anticipated in other parts, from its celebration at full moon. Good fortune depended so much on the increase of that luminary, that nothing important was undertaken during its wane. Benefit even accrued to the stores provided during its increase, and its effect in preserving them is still credited." 418 To what, but to this prevalent belief in lunar influence on fortune can Shakespeare allude, when Romeo swears:

"Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--
  Jul. Oh, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." 419

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Upon the physiological influence of the lunar rays in the generation or aggravation of disease, we have but little to add to what has been already written. It is a topic for a special treatise, and properly belongs to those medical experts whose research and practice in this particular branch of physics qualify them to speak with plenary authority. Besides, it has been so wisely handled by Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his admirable monograph on Light, that inquirers cannot follow a safer guide than his little book affords. Dr. Winslow accounts for the theory of planetary influence partly by the action of the moon in producing the tides. He says: "Astronomers having admitted that the moon was capable of producing this physical effect upon the waters of the ocean, it was not altogether unnatural that the notion should become not only a generally received but a popular one, that the ebb and flow of the tides had a material influence over the bodily functions. The Spaniards imagine that all who die of chronic diseases breathe their last during the ebb. Southey says, that amongst the wonders of the isles and city of Cadiz, which the historian of that city, Suares de Salazar, enumerates, one is, according to p. Labat, that the sick never die there while the tide is rising or at its height, but always during the ebb. He restricts the notion to the isle of Leon, but implies that the effect was there believed to take place in diseases of all kinds, acute as well as chronic. 'Him fever,' says the negro in the West Indies, 'shall go

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when the water come low; him always come not when the tide high.' The popular notion amongst the negroes appears to be that the ebb and flow of the tides are caused by a 'fever of the sea,' which rages for six hours, and then intermits for as many more." 420 Dr. Winslow then subjoins a long list of learned authorities, several of whose writings he subjects to a brief analysis. He disapproves of the presumption that the subject is altogether visionary and utopian; and affirms that it has not always been pursued by competent observers. Periodicity is noted as an important symptom in disease; a feature in febrile disturbance which the present writer himself had abundant opportunity of marking and measuring during an epidemic of yellow fever in the city of Savannah in the year 1876. This periodicity Dr. Winslow regards as the foundation of the alleged lunar influence in morbid conditions. Some remarkable cases are referred to, which, if the fact of the moon's interference with human functions could be admitted, would go a long way to corroborate and confirm it. The supposed influence of the moon on plants is not passed over, nor the chemical composition of lunar light as a possible evil agency. Still considering the matter sub judice, Dr. Winslow then proceeds to the alleged influence of the moon on the insane; a question with which he was pre-eminently competent to cope. After alluding to the support given to the popular belief by poets and philosophers of ancient and modern times, the question of periodicity, or[paragraph continues]

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"lucid intervals," is again discussed, this time in its mental aspect, and the hygienic or sanatory influence of light is allowed its meed of consideration. The final result of the investigation is that the matter is held to be purely speculative, and it is esteemed wise to hold in reserve any theory in relation to the subject that may have been formed. With this conclusion we are greatly disappointed. Dr. Winslow's aid in the inquiry is most valuable, and if he, after his careful review of pathological literature on lunar influence, coupled with his own extended experience, holds the question in abeyance, who will venture upon a decision? We however believe, notwithstanding every existing difficulty, that the subject will be brought into clear light ere long, and all superstition end in accurate science. Meanwhile, many, even of the enlightened, will cling to the unforgotten fancy which gave rise to the word lunatic, and in cases of mental derangement will moralize with young Banks in the Witch of Edmonton (1658), "When the moon's in the full, then wit's in the wane."

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MOON INHABITATION.
SCIENCE having practically diminished the moon's distance, and rendered distinct its elevations and depressions, it is natural for " those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things " to urge the inquiry, Is the moon inhabited? This question it is easier to ask than to answer. It has been a mooted point for many years, and our wise men of the west seem still disposed to give it up, or, at least, to adjourn its decision for want of evidence. Of "guesses at truth" there have been a great multitude, and of dogmatic assertions not a few; but demonstrations are things which do not yet appear. We now take leave to report progress, and give the subject a little ventilation. We do not expect to furnish an Ariadne's thread, but we may hope to find some indication of the right way out of this labyrinth of uncertainty. Veritas nihil veretur nisi abscondi: or, as the German proverb says, "Truth creeps not into corners"; its life is the light.

But before we advance a single step, we desire to preclude all misunderstanding on one point, by distinctly

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avowing our conviction that the teachings of Christian theology are not at all involved in the issue of this discussion, whatever it may prove. Infinite harm has been done by confusing the religion of science with the science of religion. Religion is a science, and science is a religion; but they are not identical. Philosophy ought to be pious, and piety ought to be philosophical; but philosophy and piety are two quantities and qualities that may dwell apart, though, happily, they may also be found in one nature. Each has its own faculties and functions; and in our present investigation, religion has nothing more to do than to shed the influence of reverence, humility, and teachableness over the scientific student as he ponders his problem and works out the truth. In this, and in kindred studies, we may yield without reluctance what a certain professor of religion concedes, and grant without grudging what a certain professor of science demands. Dr. James Martineau says, "In so far as Church belief is still committed to a given kosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to scientific refutation"; and again, "The whole history of the Genesis of things Religion must unconditionally surrender to the Sciences." 421 In this we willingly concur, for science ought to be, and will be, supreme in its own domain. Bishop Temple does "not hesitate to ascribe to Science a clearer knowledge of the true interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, and to scientific history a truer knowledge of the

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great historical prophets. Science enters into Religion, and the believer is bound to recognise its value and make use of its services." 422 Then, to quote the professor of science, Dr. John Tyndall says. "The impregnable position of science may be described in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from Theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory." 423 We wish the eloquent professor all success. It was not the spirit of primitive Christianity, but the spirit of priestly ignorance, intolerance, and despotism, which invaded the territory of natural science; and if those who are its rightful lords can recover the soil, we bid them heartily, God speed! We have been driven to these remarks by a twofold impulse. First, we can never forget the injury that has been inflicted on science by the oppositions of a headless religion; any more than we can forget the injury which has been inflicted on religion by the oppositions of a heartless science. Secondly, we have seen this very question of the inhabitation of the planets and satellites rendered a topic of ridicule for Thomas Paine, and an inviting theme for raillery to others of sophistical spirit, by the way in which it has been foolishly mixed up with sacred or spiritual concerns. Surely, the object of God in the creation of our terrestrial race, or the benefits of the death of Jesus Christ, can have no more to do with the habitability of the moon, than the doctrine of the Trinity has to do with the multiplication table and the rule of three, or

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the hypostatical union with the chemical composition of water and light. Having said thus much of compulsion, we return, not as ministers in the temple of religion so much as students in the school of science, to consider with docility the question in dispute, Is the moon inhabited?

Three avenues, more or less umbrageous, are open to us; all of which have been entered. They may be named observation, induction, and analogy. The first, if we could pursue it, would explicate the enigma at once. The second, if clear, would satisfy our reason, which, in such a matter, might be equivalent to sight. And the third might conduct us to a shadow which would "prove the substance true." We begin by dealing briefly with the argument from observation. Here our data are small and our difficulties great. One considerable inconvenience in the inquiry is, of course, the moon's distance. Though she is our next-door neighbour in the many-mansioned universe, two hundred and thirty-seven thousand miles are no mere step heavenward. Transit across the intervenient space being at present impracticable, we have to derive our most enlarged views of this "spotty globe" from the "optic glass." But this admirable appliance, much as it has revealed, is thus far wholly inadequate to the solution of our mystery. Robert Hooke, in the seventeenth century, thought that he could construct a telescope with which we might discern the inhabitants of the moon life-size-seeing them as

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plainly as we see the inhabitants of the earth. But, alas! the sanguine mathematician died in his sleep, and his dream has not yet come true. Since Hooke's day gigantic instruments have been fitted up, furnished with all the modern improvements which could be supplied through the genius or generosity of such astronomers as Joseph Fraunhofer and Sir William Herschel, the third Earl of Rosse and the fourth Duke of Northumberland. But all of these worthy men left something to be done by their successors. Consequently, not long since, our scientists set to work to increase their artificial eyesight. The Rev. Mr. Webb tells us that "the first 'Moon Committee' of the British Association recommended a power of 1,000." But he discourages us if we anticipate large returns; for he adds: "Few indeed are the instruments or the nights that will bear it; but when employed, what will be the result? Since increase of magnifying is equivalent to decrease of distance, we shall see the moon as large (though not as distinct) as if it were 240 miles off, and any one can judge what could be made of the grandest building upon earth at that distance." 424 If therefore we are to see the settlement of the matter in the speculum of a telescope, it may be some time before we have done with what Guillemin calls "the interesting, almost insoluble question, of the existence of living and organized beings on the surface of the satellite of our little earth." 425 Some cynic may interpose with the quotation,--

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"But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen." 426

True, but it remains to be shown that there is nothing to be seen beyond what we see. We are not prepared to deny the existence of everything which our mortal eyes may fail to trace. Four hundred years ago all Europe believed that to sail in search of a western continent was to wish "to see what is not to be seen"; but a certain Christopher Columbus went out persuaded of things not seen as yet, and having embarked in faith he landed in sight. The lesson must not be lost upon us.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Because we cannot now make out either habitations or habitants on the moon, it does not necessarily follow that the night will never come when, through some mightier medium than any ever yet constructed or conceived, we shall descry, beside mountains and valleys, also peopled plains and populous cities animating the fair features of this beautiful orb. One valuable auxiliary of the telescope, destined to play an important part in lunar discovery, must not be overlooked. Mr. Norman Lockyer says, "With reference to the moon, if we wish to map her correctly, it is now no longer necessary to depend on ordinary eye observations alone; it is perfectly clear that by means of an image of the moon, taken by photography, we are able to fix many points on the lunar surface." 427[paragraph continues]

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With telescopic and photographic lenses in skilled hands, and a wealth of inventive genius in fertile brains, we can afford to wait a long while before we close the debate with a final negative.

In the meantime, eyes and glasses giving us no satisfaction, we turn to scientific induction. Speculation is a kind of mental mirror, that before now has anticipated or supplemented the visions of sense. Not being practical astronomers ourselves, we have to follow the counsel of that unknown authority who bids us believe the expert. But expertness being the fruit of experience, we may be puzzled to tell who have attained that rank. We will inquire, however, with due docility, of the oracles of scientific research. It is agreed on all sides that to render the moon habitable by beings at all akin with our own kind, there must be within or upon that body an atmosphere, water, changing seasons, and the alternations of day and night. We know that changes occur in the moon, from cold to heat, and from darkness to light. But the lunar day is as long as 291 of ours; so that each portion of the surface is exposed to, or turned from, the sun for nearly 14 days. This long exposure produces excessive heat, and the long darkness excessive cold. Such extremities of temperature are unfavourable to the existence of beings at all like those living upon the earth, especially if the moon be without water and atmosphere. As these two desiderata seem indispensable to lunar inhabitation, we may chiefly consider the question, Do these conditions

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exist? If so, inductive reasoning will lead us to the inference, which subsequent experience will strengthen, that the moon is inhabited like its superior planet. But if not, life on the satellite similar to life on the earth, is altogether improbable, if not absolutely impossible.

The replies given to this query will be by no means unanimous. But, for the full understanding of the state of the main question, and to assist us in arriving at some sort of verdict, we will hear several authorities on both sides of the case. The evidence being cumulative, we pursue the chronological order, and begin with La Place. He writes: "The lunar atmosphere, if any such exists, is of an extreme rarity, greater even than that which can be produced on the surface of the earth by the best constructed air-pumps. It may be inferred from this that no terrestrial animal could live or respire at the surface of the moon, and that if the moon be inhabited, it must be by animals of another species." 428 This opinion, as Sir David Brewster points out, is not that the moon has no atmosphere, but that if it have any it is extremely attenuated. Mr. Russell Hind's opinion is similar with respect to water. He says: "Earlier selenographists considered the dull, grayish spots to be water, and termed them the lunar seas, bays, and lakes. They arc so called to the present day, though we have strong evidence to show that if water exist at all on the moon, it must be in very small quantity." 429 Mr. Grant tells us that "the

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question whether the moon be surrounded by an atmosphere has been much discussed by astronomers. Various phenomena are capable of indicating such an atmosphere, but, generally speaking, they are found to be unfavourable to its existence, or at all events they lead to the conclusion that it must be very inconsiderable." 430 Humboldt thinks that Schroeter's assumptions of a lunar atmosphere and lunar twilight are refuted, and adds: "If, then, the moon is without any gaseous envelope, the entire absence of any diffused light must cause the heavenly bodies, as seen from thence, to appear projected against a sky almost black in the day-time. No undulation of air can there convey sound, song, or speech. The moon, to our imagination, which loves to soar into regions inaccessible to full research, is a desert where silence reigns unbroken." 431 Dr. Lardner considers it proven "that there does not exist upon the moon an atmosphere capable of reflecting light in any sensible degree," and also believes that "the same physical tests which show the non-existence of an atmosphere of air upon the moon are equally conclusive against an atmosphere of vapour." 432 Mr. Breen is more emphatic. He writes: "In the want of water and air, the question as to whether this body is inhabited is no longer equivocal. Its surface resolves itself into a sterile and inhospitable waste, where the lichen which flourishes amidst the frosts and snows of Lapland would quickly wither and die, and where no animal with a drop of blood in its veins could exist." 433 The anonymous

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author of the Essay on the Plurality of Worlds announces that astronomers are agreed to negative our question without dissent. We shall have to manifest his mistake. His words are: "Now this minute examination of the moon's surface being possible, and having been made by many careful and skilful astronomers, what is the conviction which has been conveyed to their minds with regard to the fact of her being the seat of vegetable or animal life? Without exception, it would seem, they have all been led to the belief that the moon is not inhabited; that she is, so far as life and organization are concerned, waste and barren, like the streams of lava or of volcanic ashes on the earth, before any vestige of vegetation has been impressed upon them; or like the sands of Africa, where no blade of grass finds root." 434 Robert Chambers says: "It does not appear that our satellite is provided with an atmosphere of the kind found upon earth; neither is there any appearance of water upon the surface. . . . These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can be at present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem to declare that it never can become so." 435 Schoedler's opinion is concurrent with what has preceded. He writes: "According to the most exact observations it appears that the moon has no atmosphere similar to ours, that on its surface there are no great bodies of water like our seas and oceans, so that the existence of water is doubtful. The whole physical condition of the lunar surface must, therefore, be so different

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from that of our earth, that beings organized as we are could not exist there." 436 Another German author says: "The observations of Fraunhofer (1823), Brewster and Gladstone (1860), Huggins and Miller, as well as Janssen, agree in establishing the complete accordance of the lunar spectrum with that of the sun. In all the various portions of the moon's disk brought under observation, no difference could be perceived in the dark lines of the spectrum, either in respect of their number or relative intensity. From this entire absence of any special absorption lines, it must be concluded that there is no atmosphere in the moon, a conclusion previously arrived at from the circumstance that during an occultation no refraction is perceived on the moon's limb when a star disappears behind the disk." 437 Mr. Nasmyth follows in the same strain. Holding that the moon lacks air, moisture, and temperature, he says, "Taking all these adverse conditions into consideration, we are in every respect justified in concluding that there is no possibility of animal or vegetable life existing on the moon, and that our satellite must therefore be regarded as a barren world." 438 A French astronomer holds a like opinion, saying: "There is nothing to show that the moon possesses an atmosphere; and if there was one, it would be perceptible during the occultations of the stars and the eclipses of the sun. It seems impossible that, in the complete absence of air, the moon can be peopled by beings organized like ourselves, nor is there any sign of vegetation or

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of any alteration in the state of its surface which can be attributed to a change of seasons." 439 On the same side Mr. Crampton writes most decisively, "With what we do know, however, of our satellite, I think the idea of her being inhabited may be dismissed summarily; i.e. her inhabitation by intelligent beings, or an animal creation such as exist here." 440 And, finally, in one of Maunder's excellent Treasuries, we read of the moon, "She has no atmosphere, or at least none of sufficient density to refract the rays of light as they pass through it, and hence there is no water on her surface; consequently she can have no animals like those on our planet, no vegetation, nor any change of seasons." 441 These opinions, recorded by so many judges of approved ability and learning, have great weight; and some may regard their premisses and conclusions as irresistibly cogent and convincing. The case against inhabitation is certainly strong. But justice is impartial. Audi alteram partem.

Judges of equal erudition will now speak as respondents. We go back to the seventeenth century, and begin with a work whose reasoning is really remarkable, seeing that it is nearly two hundred and fifty years since it was first published. We refer to the Discovery of a New World by John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester; in which the reverend philosopher aims to prove the following propositions:--"1. That the strangeness of this opinion (that the moon may be a world) is no sufficient reason why it should be rejected; because

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other certain truths have been formerly esteemed as ridiculous, and great absurdities entertained by common consent. 2. That a plurality of worlds does not contradict any principle of reason or faith. 3. That the heavens do not consist of any such pure matter which can privilege them from the like change and corruption, as these inferior bodies are liable unto. 4. That the moon is a solid, compacted, opacous body. 5. That the moon hath not any light of her own. 6. That there is a world in the moon, hath been the direct opinion of many ancient, with some modern mathematicians; and may probably be deduced from the tenets of others. 9. That there are high mountains, deep valleys, and spacious plains in the body of the moon. 10. That there is an atmosphœra, or an orb of gross vaporous air, immediately encompassing the body of the moon. 13. That 'tis probable there may be inhabitants in this other world; but of what kind they are, is uncertain." 442 We go on to 1686, and listen to the French philosopher, Fontenelle, in his Conversations with the Marchioness. "'Well, madam,' said I, 'you will not be surprised when you hear that the moon is an earth too, and that she is inhabited as ours is.' 'I confess,' said she, 'I have often heard talk of the world in the moon, but I always looked upon it as visionary and mere fancy.' 'And it may be so still,' said I. 'I am in this case as people in a civil war, where the uncertainty of what may happen makes them hold intelligence with the opposite party; for though I verily

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believe the moon is inhabited, I live civilly with those who do not believe it; and I am still ready to embrace the prevailing opinion. But till the unbelievers have a more considerable advantage, I am for the people in the moon.'" 443 Whatever may be thought of his philosophy, no one could quarrel with the Secretary of the Academy on the score of his politeness or his prudence. A more recent and more reliable authority appears in Sir David Brewster. He tells us that "MM. Mädler and Beer, who have studied the moon's surface more diligently than any of their predecessors or contemporaries, have arrived at the conclusion that she has an atmosphere." Sir David himself maintains that "every planet and satellite in the solar system must have an atmosphere." 444 Bonnycastle, whilom professor of mathematics in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, writes: "Astronomers were formerly of opinion that the moon had no atmosphere, on account of her never being obscured by clouds or vapours; and because the fixed stars, at the time of an occultation, disappear behind her instantaneously, without any gradual diminution of their light. But if we consider the effects of her days and nights, which are near thirty times as long as with us, it may be readily conceived that the phenomena of vapours and meteors must be very different. And besides, the vaporous or obscure part of our atmosphere is only about the one thousand nine hundred and eightieth part of the earth's diameter, as is evident from observing the clouds, which

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are seldom above three or four miles high; and therefore, as the moon's apparent diameter is only about thirty-one minutes and a half, or one thousand eight hundred and ninety seconds, the obscure part of her atmosphere, supposing it to resemble our own, when viewed from the earth, must subtend an angle of less than one second; which is so small a space, that observations must be extremely accurate to determine whether the supposed obscuration takes place or not." 445 Dr. Brinkley, at one time the Astronomer-Royal of Ireland, writes: "Many astronomers formerly denied the existence of an atmosphere at the moon; principally from observing no variation of appearance on the surface, like what would take place, did clouds exist as with us; and also, from observing no change in the light of the fixed stars on the approach of the dark edge of the moon. The circumstance of there being no clouds, proves either that there is no atmosphere similar to that of our earth, or that there are no waters on its surface to be converted into vapour; and that of the lustre of the stars not being changed, proves that there can be no dense atmosphere. But astronomers now seem agreed that an atmosphere does surround the moon, although of small density when compared with that of our earth. M. Schroeter has observed a small twilight in the moon, such as would arise from an atmosphere capable of reflecting the rays at the height of about one mile." 446 Dr. Brinkley is inaccurate in saying that astronomers are agreed as to

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the lunar atmosphere. Like students in every other department of inquiry, spiritual as well as physical, they fail at present to see "eye to eye"; which is not surprising, seeing that the eye is so restricted, and the object so remote.

Dr. Dick, whose productions have done much to popularize the study of the heavens, and to promote its reverent pursuit, says: "On the whole it appears most probable that the moon is surrounded with a fluid which serves the purpose of an atmosphere; although this atmosphere, as to its nature, composition, and refractive power, may be very different from the atmosphere which surrounds the earth. It forms no proof that the moon, or any of the planets, is destitute of an atmosphere, because its constitution, its density, and its power of refracting the rays of light are different from ours. An atmosphere may surround a planetary body, and yet its parts be so fine and transparent that the rays of light, from a star or any other body, may pass through it without being in the least obscured, or changing their direction. In our reasonings on this subject, we too frequently proceed on the false principle, that everything connected with other worlds must bear a resemblance to those on the earth." 447 Mr. Neison, who has written one of the latest contributions to the science of selenography, says, "Of the present non-existence of masses of water upon the surface of the moon, there remains no doubt, though no evidence of its entire absence from the lunar crust can be adduced; and similarly, many

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well-established facts in reference to the moon afford ample proof of the non-existence of a lunar atmosphere, having a density equal to, or even much less than, that of the earth; but of the absence of an atmosphere, whose mass should enable it to play an important part in the moulding of the surface of the moon, and comparable almost to that of the terrestrial atmosphere, in their respective ratios to the masses of their planets, little, if any, trustworthy evidence exists." On another page of the same work, the author affirms "that later inquiries have shown that the moon may possess an atmosphere that must be regarded as fully capable of sustaining various forms of vegetation of even an advanced type; and, moreover, it does not appear how it can justly be questioned that the lunar surface in favourable positions may yet retain a sufficiency of moisture to support vegetation of many kinds; whilst in a very considerable portion of the entire surface of the moon, the temperature would not vary sufficiently to materially affect the existence of vegetable life." 448 Some of these writers may appear to be travelling rather too fast or too far, and their assumptions may wear more of the aspect of plausibility than of probability. But on their atmospheric and aqueous hypothesis, vegetation in abundance is confessedly a legitimate consequence. If a recent writer has liberty to condense into a sentence the conclusion from the negative premiss in the argument by saying, "As there is but a little appearance of water or air upon

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the moon, the conclusion has been inferred that there exists no vegetable or animal life on that globe," 449 other writers, holding opposite views of the moon's physical condition, may be allowed to expatiate on the luxuriant life which an atmosphere with water and temperature would undoubtedly produce. Mr. Proctor's tone is temperate, and his language that of one who is conscious with Hippocrates that "art is long and life is short." He says, in one of his contributions to lunar science, "It may safely be asserted that the opportunities presented during the life of any single astronomer for a trustworthy investigation of any portion of the moon's surface, under like conditions, are few and far between, and the whole time so employed must be brief, even though the astronomer devote many more years than usual to observational research." 450 This prepares us to find in another of the same author's works the following suggestive sentence: "With regard to the present habitability of the moon, it may be remarked that we are not justified in asserting positively that no life exists upon her surface. Life has been found under conditions so strange, we have been so often mistaken in assuming that here certainly, or there, no living creatures can possibly exist, that it would be rash indeed to dogmatise respecting the state of the moon in this respect." 451 Narrien, one of the historians of the science, may be heard, though his contribution might be cast into either scale. He writes: "The absence of those variations of light and shade which

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would be produced by clouds floating above her surface, and the irregularities of the ground, visible at the bottom and on the sides of her cavities, have given reason to believe that no atmosphere surrounds her, and that she is destitute of rivers and seas. Such are the opinions generally entertained concerning the moon; but M. Schroeter, a German astronomer, ventures to assert that our satellite is the abode of living and intellectual beings; he has perceived some indications of an atmosphere which, however, he admits, cannot exceed two miles in height, and certain elevations which appear to him to be works of art rather than of nature. He considers that a uniformity of temperature must be produced on her surface by her slow rotation on her axis, by the insensible change from day to night, and the attenuated state of her atmosphere, which is never disturbed by storms; and that light vapours, rising from her valleys, fall in the manner of a gentle and refreshing dew to fertilize her fields." 452 Dr. H. W. M. Olbers is fully persuaded "that the moon is inhabited by rational creatures, and that its surface is more or less covered with a vegetation not very dissimilar to that of our own earth." Dr. Gruithuisen, of Munich, maintains that he has descried through his large achromatic telescope "great artificial works in the moon erected by the lunarians," which he considers to be "a system of fortifications thrown up by the selenitic engineers." We should have scant hope of deciding the dispute by the dicta of the ancients,

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were these far more copious than we find them to be. Yet reverence for antiquity may justify our quoting one of the classic fathers. Plutarch says, "The Pythagoreans affirme, that the moone appeereth terrestriall, for that she is inhabited round about, like as the earth wherein we are, and peopled as it were with the greatest living creatures, and the fairest plants." Again, "And of all this that hath been said (my friend Theon) there is nothing that doth proove and show directly, this habitation of men in the moon to be impossible." 453 Here we close the argument based on induction, and sum up the evidence in our possession. On the one hand, several scientific men, whose names we need not repeat, having surveyed the moon, deny it an atmosphere, water, and other conditions of life. Consequently, they disbelieve in its inhabitation, solely because they consider the fact undemonstrable; none of them being so unscientific as to believe it to be absolutely impossible. On the other hand, we have the valuable views of Mädler and Beer, whose lunar labours are unsurpassed, and whose map of the moon is a marvel and model of advanced selenography. They do not suppose the conditions on our satellite to be exactly what they are on this globe. In their own words, the moon is "no copy of the earth, much less a colony of the same." They merely believe her to be environed with air, and thus habitable. And when we recall our own Sir David Brewster, Professor Bonnycastle, Dr. Brinkley, Dr. Dick, Mr. Neison, and Mr. Proctor;

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and reckon with them the continental astronomers, Dr. Gruithuisen, Dr. Olbers, and Schroeter, all of whom attempted to fix the idea of planetary inhabitation on the popular mind, we must acknowledge that they, with their opponents, have a strong claim on our attention. The only verdict we are able just now to render, after hearing these conflicting testimonies, is the Scotch one, Not proven. We but append the legal indorsement ignoramus, we do not know. The subject must remain sub judice; but what we know not now, we hope to know hereafter.

Having interrogated sense and science, with the solution of our enigma anything but complete, we resort last of all to the argument from analogy. If this can illumine the obscurity, it will all be on the positive side of the inquiry. At present the question resembles a half-moon: analogy may show that the affirmative is waxing towards a full-orbed conviction. We open with Huyghens, a Dutch astronomer of note, who, while he thinks it certain "that the moon has no air or atmosphere surrounding it as we have," and "cannot imagine how any plants or animals whose whole nourishment comes from fluid bodies, can thrive in a dry, waterless, parched soil," yet asks, "What, then, shall this great ball be made for; nothing but to give us a little weak light in the night time, or to raise our tides in the sea? Shall not we plant some people there that may have the pleasure of seeing our earth turn upon its axis, presenting them sometimes with a prospect of Europe

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and Africa, and then of Asia and America; sometimes half and sometimes full?" 454 Ray was "persuaded that this luminary doth serve many ends and uses, especially to maintain the creatures which in all likelihood breed and inhabit there." 455 Swedenborg's ipse dixit ought to convince the most incredulous; for he speaks "from what has been heard and seen." Thus he says: "That there are inhabitants in the moon is well known to spirits and angels, and in like manner that there are inhabitants in the moons or satellites which revolve about Jupiter and Saturn. They who have not seen and discoursed with spirits coming from those moons still entertain no doubt but there are men inhabiting them, because they are earths alike with the planets, and wherever an earth is, there are men inhabitants; for man is the end for which every earth was created, and nothing was made by the great Creator without an end." 456 If any are still sceptical, Sir William Herschel, an intellectual light of no mean magnitude, may reach them. He writes: "While man walks upon the ground, the birds fly in the air, and fishes swim in water, we can certainly not object to the conveniences afforded by the moon, if those that are to inhabit its regions are fitted to their conditions as well as we on this globe arc to ours. An absolute or total sameness seems rather to denote imperfections, such as nature never exposes to our view; and, on this account, I believe the analogies that have been mentioned fully sufficient to establish the high probability

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of the moon's being inhabited like the earth." 457 The voice of Dr. Dwight, the American theologian, will not be out of harmony here. In discoursing of the starry heavens, he says of the planets: "Of these inferior worlds, the moon is one; and to us, far the most interesting. How many important purposes which are known does this beautiful attendant of our earth continually accomplish! How many more, in all probability, which are hitherto unknown, and which hereafter may be extensively disclosed to more enlightened, virtuous, and happy generations of men! At the same time, it is most rationally concluded that intelligent beings in great multitudes inhabit her lucid regions, being far better and happier than ourselves." 458 Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise will furnish us a fitting quotation. "The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are, circling about our own sun, six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature: besides our moon and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture, that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren:--that they are, like ours, occupied with organization, life, intelligence." 459 In a most eloquent passage, Dr. Chalmers, who will always be heard with admiration, exclaims: "Who shall assign a limit to the discoveries of future ages? Who shall prescribe to science her boundaries, or restrain the active and insatiable curiosity of man

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within the circle of his present acquirements? We may guess with plausibility what we cannot anticipate with confidence. The day may yet be coming when our instruments of observation shall be inconceivably more powerful. They may ascertain still more decisive points of resemblance. They may resolve the same question by the evidence of sense which is now so abundantly convincing by the evidence of analogy. They may lay open to us the unquestionable vestiges of art, and industry, and intelligence. We may see summer throwing its green mantle over those mighty tracts, and we may see them left naked and colourless after the flush of vegetation has disappeared. In the progress of years or of centuries, we may trace the hand of cultivation spreading a new aspect over some portion of a planetary surface. Perhaps some large city, the metropolis of a mighty empire, may expand into a visible spot by the powers of some future telescope. Perhaps the glass of some observer, in a distant age, may enable him to construct the map of another world, and to lay down the surface of it in all its minute and topical varieties. But there is no end of conjecture; and to the men of other times we leave the full assurance of what we can assert with the highest probability, that yon planetary orbs are so many worlds, that they teem with life, and that the mighty Being who presides in high authority over this scene of grandeur and astonishment has there planted the worshippers of His glory." 460

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How fine is this outburst of the great Scotch orator! He spoke as one inspired with prophetic foreknowledge; for in less than twenty years after this utterance, Beer and Mädler published their splendid Mappe Selenographica, or map of the moon; and photography offered its aid to the fuller delineation of our silvery satellite. Who can tell what the last fifteen years of this eventful century may develop in the same direction? Verily these intuitions of reason seem often favoured with an apocalypse of coming disclosures; and, if we may venture to adopt with slight alteration a sentence of Shelley, we will say: "It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age." The poets of science, in their analogies, are "the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present." 461 Equally noble with the language of Chalmers is a paragraph which we have extracted from a work by that scholarly writer, Isaac Taylor. He says: "There are two facts, each of which is significant in relation to our present subject, and of which the first has long been understood, while the

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latter (only of late ascertained) is every day receiving new illustrations; namely, that our planet is, in no sense, of primary importance in the general system, or entitled, by its magnitude, or its position, or its constitution, to be considered as exerting any peculiar influence over others, or as the object of more regard than any others. This knowledge of our real place and value in the universe is a very important consequence of our modern astronomy, and should not be lost sight of in any of our speculations. But then it is also now ascertained that the great laws of our own planet, and of the solar system to which it belongs, prevail in all other and the most remote systems, so as to make the visible universe, in the strictest sense, ONE SYSTEM--indicating one origin and showing the presence of one Controlling Power. Thus the law of gravitation, with all the conditions it implies, and the laws of light, are demonstrated to be in operation in regions incalculably remote; and just so far as the physical constitution of the other planets of our system can be either traced, or reasonably conjectured, it appears that, amid great diversities of constitution, the same great principles prevail in all; and therefore our further conjecture concerning the existence of sentient and rational life in other worlds is borne out by every sort of analogy, abstract and physical; and this same rule of analogy impels us to suppose that rational and moral agents, in whatever world found, and whatever diversity of form may distinguish them, would be