'Just at beginning Saturn's cloudy eye

Causeth a very dark and cloudy skie.'

The modern falsehood is only different from being clothed in more lofty language.

The natural causes of Eclipses are now pretty generally known; and even the most ignorant of mankind, in civilized countries, have ceased to consider that they either produce or are prophetic of evil. The certainty with which their exact time can be calculated, is a beautiful exemplification of the truth of the great principles of the science of astronomy. In this work for 1828, the folly of any superstition arising out of eclipses was exhibited. Almanacs, even to our own day, attempt to keep up the popular delusion upon such subjects; and the following parallel instances will show the little variation in the cheat:

John Lord's Almanac and Prognosticator, for 1678.

John Partridge's Merlinus Liberatus, an
Almanac for 1829.

"The fourth eclipse of the moon on Oc- 'October, 1829. The late visible eclipse tober, the 19th day. This threateneth great of the Moon, which happened in the latter and rich men with loss of goods, or decay of part of the sign Pisces, may be considered substance, likewise death and diseases among to relate to Portugal and Spain, betokencattel, beasts and sheep, and such as chewing iusurrections, troubles, and discords, the cud; also dearness of corn and seed sown amongst the common people, with mutinies upon the earth; this will or may chiefly be- amongst the soldiers, &c.' long to Ireland, Russia, Polonia the Great, and such others as are under Taurus.'

Our ancestors had a great many ridiculous notions about the possibility of prognosticating the future condition of the weather, from the state of the atmosphere on certain festival days. The festival of the Circumcision (January 1) was thus supposed to afford an evidence of the weather to be expected in the coming year. For St. Vincent's day (Jan. 22) there is an ancient admonition to note down whether the sun shine. The Conversion of St. Paul (January 25) was considered throughout Europe as particularly ominous, not only of future weather, but of coming events; and there were some Latin rhymes of the middle ages to this effect, which the English prognosticators thus rendered:

"If St. Paul's day be faire and cleare,

It doth betide a happy yeare:
But if by chance it then should raine,
It will make deare all kinds of graine:

And if the clouds make dark the skie,
The neate and foule this yeare shall die :

If blustering winds do blow aloft,

Then wars shall trouble the realm full oft.'

Candlemas day (February 2) supplied another of these irrational inferences from the weather of one day to that of a distant period :

If Candlemas day be fair and bright,

Winter will have another flight:

But if Candlemas day be clouds and rain,
Winter is gone and will not come again.'

A few of these notions are still prevalent in remote districts. Mrs. Grant, in her account of the superstitions of the Highlands, says, that if the days between the 11th and 14th of February are particularly stormy, the prognostic for the weather of the coming year is most favorable. In many parts of Germany there is a belief that if St. Urban's day (May 25) be fair and calm, there will be a good vintage. The prognostications connected with St. Swithin's day (July 15) have kept the firmest hold upon the popular mind. A continuance of rainy weather generally takes place about this period; but the belief that if it rain on that day the rain will continue for forty days, is as absurd as any of the other prejudices we have mentioned. Ben Johnson laughs at the notion in one of his plays,* where a character, looking into his penny almanac (almanacs were sold at a penny then, as they are to this day at Hamburgh), says, O here, St. Swithin's, the 15th day, variable weather, for the most part rain, good! -for the most part rain? why, it should rain forty days after, more or less; it was a rule held afore I was able to hold the plough, and yet here are two days no rain; ha! it makes me muse.'

We have mentioned these silly notions of former times, to observe how very nearly they have become eradicated by the real knowledge produced by a wider diffusion of education. But it is not so with the weather prophecies of the almanacs. They still continue to be printed, as in the days of Lilly; and are still believed by hundreds and thousands of credulous farmers and country people, who have their hay and corn too often spoiled through their reliance on these false predictions. That they contain as little novelty as wisdom, may be seen from the follwing extracts for the month of JUNE:

A close air, with drisling showers. Fair Intervals of fair and clear, but soon it lowers.

And now, my frionds, you may again expect winds, thunder, and showers of rain. But now again it seems the air is moderate, serene, and clear. Sultry and hot some days together. But then comes some windy weather. But at this time the case is plain, we shall have pleasant showers of rain. But the air clears up and is fair again.

weather.

A moist atmosphere, attended with rain and thunder in many places.

Fair & hot; charming weather for forwarding vegetation.

According to these several prophecies of 1678, 1771, and 1829, rain and thunder invariably take place from the 10th to the 20th of June. It is perfectly impossible that these predictions can be any thing but mere guesses; often, of course, very false guesses, and guesses certainly not applicable, if they even approached the truth, to all parts of the kingdom, for it may rain in a mountainous country, and be fine in the neighbouring

* Every Man out of his Humor,' Act I, Scene 1.

plain, on the same day. We know from scientific observation, that in the month of June the atmosphere is at its highest point of dryness, and that the average number of days on which rain falls is lower than the average of any other month of the year. With these established facts to contradict the prophecy, it is predicted by Moore's Almanac, that from the 10th to the 20th of June in the year 1829, the atmosphere will be moist, with rain and thunder in many places. If any farmer believe this nonsense, it is highly probable that from the 10th to the 20th of June he may lose some days of actual fine weather, in the dread of the rain which the almanac predicts, and thus his hay will remain on the ground, instead of being safely in the rick; and, further, that when he hopes for the fine weather which the same almanac ensures, from the 24th to the end of the month, he may experience a heavy rain, and be driven on to the periodical rains of the middle of July, with no consolation for his losses but the conviction that it is better to trust to common sense and experience, than to false predictions, expressly manufactured to impose upon the ignorant.

The Astrological Predictions of Mundane Affairs,' with which the most popular of our almanacs are still illuminated, are not more distinguished for veracity than their predictions of the weather. We do not suppose that many persons seriously believe in these absurdities; yet when they are perused by many thousands, as they still are, it is impossible that the mind should be able wholly to resist the influence of the deception; and in proportion as such thoughts find a place in the mind, will sound knowledge and a pure love of truth be shut out. As a matter of curious interest, we shall again give a specimen from the almanacs before us of the little variation which has prevailed for one hundred and fifty years in the language of imposture:

Andrews' News from the

Stars, 1678, July. Sudden fears possess some places-Jupiter turns retrograde, and Mars comes to conjunction with Saturn at the month's end. Weighty matters under consideration in some parts of Europe. Flying reports from beyond sea. Those places under Gemini again concerned. The influence both of Saturn and Mars they are perhaps now sensible of, to their detriment or disturbance.

Moore's Almanac, 1771,

July.

There is some bustle in the world about this time, and where armies are blows must be expected. Jove affronts both the Sun and Mercury, and some sly contrivance brought to light. I hope no holy plot. Some good news from abroad about this time; and some ships despaired of likely to come home safe.

Moore's Almanac, 1829,
July.

[In this month there are no less than five conjunctions, three of which happen in the ascendant of Rome, the very focus of papal powers, and a fourth on the very verge of that sign. Here is a concatenation of circumstances; the effects of which may be expected to produce serious events in the Catholic church -perhaps the death of his Holiness.

It cannot fail to be perceived, that the tone of these predictions is not in the slightest degree altered by the progress of knowledge. The prophecy for 1829 would read just as consistently in the Almanac of 1678; and that of 1771 would be just as reasonable and true, if transposed to 1829. Indeed we have observed, in our inquiries into this subject, that the very slightest changes fit the predictions of a past year for revival, in some

future attempt at delusion. It is really wonderful, that such a clumsy imposture should so long have held a place amongst a thinking people. Several gross improprieties, however, have within the last year been removed from the old almanacs; and it is observable, that their attempts at delusion are very much softened. It is to be desired, that all astrological predictions should be removed from these productions; and they may then fairly be considered as amongst the most useful works of reference. We earnestly desire to see them become instruments of good, instead of continuing vehicles of evil.

II. CALENDAR.

THE divisions of time are either natural or artificial. The natural divisions are the day, the lunar month, and the year. The artificial divisions are the week, hour, minute, and second The year is divided into 12 parts by the revolutions of the moon, with a remainder of about 11 days. How comes the day to be divided into 24 parts, called hours, rather than into any other number? and how happens it, that the hour is subdivided into 60 minutes, and the minute into 60 seconds? Having occasion for smaller portions of time than a day, this natural unit of duration was divided by man as nature had divided the year, by the revolutions of the moon; that is, the day properly so called, or the interval from sunrise to sunset, was divided into 12 parts, and the night into 12 parts; and as the month, or 12th part of the year, contained 60 such parts, namely, 30 days and 30 nights, so the hour, or 12th part of the day, was divided into 60 parts, called minutes, and the minute subdivided in a similar manner into 60 seconds. But the hour was formerly, among the Greeks, a 12th part of the interval from sunrise to sunset, and thus, instead of being a fixed and definite period, was of different lengths at different seasons. Indeed the hour, considered as the 24th part of the apparent entire revolution of the sun, would not be exactly the same through the year, since the days themselves, which are measured by the return of the sun to the same meridian, are unequal. They increase for a certain period from a few seconds to half a minute, and then decrease in a similar manner; so that we are obliged to strike a balance, or take an average of all the days in the year, and divide this average into 24 parts, in order to give to the hour a definite, fixed length. A good clock that goes uniformly, and is so regulated as to agree exactly with the sun at the beginning and end of the year, would indicate hours and minutes of a uniform length, according to the above method of taking an average But an accurate clock so adjusted, would differ from the sun in the course of the year about 16 minutes, or a little more than a quarter of an hour, being sometimes faster by this quantity, and sometimes slower. It would agree with the sun four times in the course of the year, namely,

or mean.

(at the present time) on the 15th of April, 15th of June, 1st of September, and 24th of December; and it would differ most from the sun about the middle of the intervening periods. The difference, however, between the clock and the sun, would not be the same in each case. The following are the differences in question, between the clock and sun at the time of their greatest departure from each other in the several periods above mentioned; 11th of February, 14' 36.6"; 15th of May, 3' 55.6′′; 26th of July, 6' 7.3"; 3d of November, 16' 16.8".

The want of equality in the length of the solar days may be thought to imply a want of uniformity in the apparent diurnal motion of the heavens, or in the real motion of the earth on its axis. This is not, however, the case. We have never been able to detect the slightest irregularity in these motions. The day, as measured by the return of a star to the meridian, or to the same point of the heavens, is always the same. It will naturally be asked, then, how it happens that the solar day, or period measured by the return of the sun to the meridian, should be different at different times of the year. This arises from two causes. If the sun's centre and a star were on the meridian at the same instant to-day, to-morrow when the star arrived at the meridian, the sun would be advanced towards the east about one degree, or two of its diameters, which would require, according to the uniform rate of the diurnal motion, about four minutes of time for it to reach the meridian. Thus a solar day is made up of a sidereal day, always the same, and a certain portion more. Now these additional portions are unequal. We have said that the sun will be found to have left the star, upon the return of the latter to the meridian, having departed from it toward the east. But these departures will be unequal, since the sun's apparent motion among the stars, produced by the real motion of the earth in her orbit, is alternately accelerated and retarded. This is one cause of the inequality of the solar days. Another is, that the sun's path among the stars is sometimes perpendicular to the meridian, and sometimes oblique. It is manifest, that if the sun, after coinciding with a star should move a degree north or south, instead of easterly, it would return to the meridian at the same time with the star, making a solar and sidereal day the same; and, according as the path of the sun approaches more and more to a perpendicular to the meridian, is the solar day increased, other things being the same. Now the sun's path is actually sometimes perpendicular to the meridian, and sometimes oblique. Its course among the stars is not exactly east, but is generally inclined, sometimes to the north and sometimes to the south, In this manner it happens that the days, as measured by the sun, alternately increase and decrease, and the time shown by the sun, as upon a dial, for instance, is called apparent time. On the other hand, the time furnished by a good clock, as above described, is called mean time. The difference, amounting, when greatest, to about 16 minutes, is called the equation of time.