Harry nodded. "Well, what for?" I "Look here, George- I can't help it. must see her again! I do not believe that she likes that man: it was all her father's doing. She will be sacrificed to him!" There was a queer smile curling the lips of his friend, and he stopped. "Do you know her well enough to answer for the attractions of a title, you stupid boy?" "Title!" repeated Harry, contemptuously. "You do, or at least you think you do. Well, and what good can you do by going down to Leighton Wood ?" "I don't know; but I must do it." "As keeper- there, now, be quiet, and I'll tell you what for. Thinking over Mr. Rutherford's story, did it never oecur to you that the elder-brother may have left a child, or children ?" "I don't know. I may have thought of it but Mr. Rutherford would have found them if so; and he distinctly said there was no trace except the one that assured him of his brother's death." "They may exist, nevertheless." "I don't see what good that would do me," said Harry, discontentedly. "Why, if Miss Rutherford were no heiress, you would at least be on equal terms with her as to fortune." A momentary gleam came into Harry's eye as he looked up at the speaker; but he did not answer. Well, would your love for this heiress lead you to dispossess her; That is the question." "It is no question at all. You are merely trying my temper by supposing improbable chances. I wish you would not do it, George." His mentor looked at him for a moment, and then took up the oratorical position on the rug. "Harry, my boy, I have no intention of trying your temper, and it is no improbable chance which I suggested. On the contrary, if I had not been persuaded that the thing is not only probable but nearly certain, I should never have spoken to you about it." "Do you mean- have you discovered anything?" "I believe I have. You know that I am constitutionally lazy, nevertheless, I have taken some trouble about all this since I heard your tale; and, having once put my fingers into your pie, I don't mean to rest till I have found the bottom of it." "Tell me what you have found out." "Not yet. Now listen to me. You think, and I know, that the engagement between Sir Miles and Miss Rutherford is a mere matter of £ s. d. Sir Miles would be as likely to eat his own finger-nails as to marry Miss Rutherford if she were poor-I happen to know that for a fact. The contract was made on the mutual benefit system between her father and the young baronet. Sir Miles wants money, Rutherford, and the Rutherford pride, wanted increase of consequence, and the mortgage on the Bellenden estate is to be paid off by the Rutherford wealth, on condition that the name should be henceforth Bellenden Rutherford." "How can you possibly know that?" Very simply. Cecil Bellenden is a great friend of mine-but I did not get it all from him. Never mind asking questions-I always thought, you know, that I was a good lawyer spoilt! Well, of course the appearance of a legal claimant to the estate would destroy all that. But now look here, Harry; the question is, would Miss Rutherford rather part with all her wealth than marry Sir Miles ?" "I cannot answer that." "Some women would. I think, from your description of her, that she might be one." "I don't see that that affects it at all," said Harry, gloomily. Justice ought to be done." "But no one made you or me judges that we should interfere. Besides this, the suspected heir is in happy unconsciousness; and, after all, my conviction may be a wrong one. One often sees a checkmate balked by an unexpected move; therefore you and I, Harry, having a certain interest in this heiress, would not make ourselves busybodies and meddlers to her injury." "And, after all this, are you going to let her be sacrificed to that man, whom you know she must hate, title and all ?" "No. I am just going to find out whether she does hate the title, and whether she would rather pay the price of freedom or wear it." 66 Georgs, you are a brick! But how?" "I will tell you: but I must have no jealousy and nonsense. It may be all very well, and lover-like, to wish to do this yourself; but you cannot, and for this simple reason-Sir Miles has conceived a violent prejudice against you; I don't know why, unless it is the instinct which scents an enemy. Now I am a tame, harmless animal, to whom he has no objection; Harry assented, but his assent was not enthusiastic. This was bringing the thing down to a prosaic level. He would have liked to rush off to Bellenden and beard the lion in his den. He persuaded himself that, if Sir Miles had been a man likely to make her happy, he could have given Marie up cheerfully-that he only wanted to save her from certain misery; but he would have liked, as George said, to do it himself. "We shall at least gain something," said Burford, putting his hand on Harry's arm. "Well ?" "It seems to me that you cannot cure yourself here. Now, if we fail, or if you see that the title, &c.-well, well, you know what I mean-in that case, I say, you will come back another man: the knowledge will work its own cure." "You are mistaken,' said Harry, passionately, "Nothing will cure me, if cure you call it. But George, I say -" "What now?” Harry pulled out a note-book, and looked at it dismally. "Let me see-plenty for all you will want," said Burford, composedly. "As for anything extra, you don't suppose I began this business without counting the cost. When you are rich I'll call upon you for payment-if there is any thing to pay." LUNAR OBSERVATION S. BY MRS. C. A. WHITE. "The poets have feigned strange things of the moon; and the ancients went so far into the whimsies, as to be guilty of idolatry, by paying divine honours to the moon."-Rev. Thomas Dyche's Dictionary. With all respect for the once reverend schoolmaster of Stratford-le-Bow, to whose curious learning we owe at least as much amusement as instruction, the above paragraph, to read correctly, requires transposition; for the sacred poets feigned nothing of the kind, and before Homer the moon had her place in the theogony of eastern nations, and Solomon the pervert of a Sidonian devotee (or a score of them) had crowned the Mount of Olives with a temple to Ashtaroth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns."* It is, indeed, only by referring to those dim times, and remembering that the opening lines of Manfred's address to the sun, "Glorious orb, thou wert a worship ere The mystery of thy being was revealed,” are equally applicable to the sister luminary, that it is possible to throw a light on the strange superstiitons and customs, not yet quite exploded, in connection with Azara, or the White Goddess, as Strabo tells us she was called by those descendants of the ancient Egyptians, the Copts. Hear Horace in his secular hymn (Chorus of Virgins), "Oh moon, thou horned Queen of stars and such chants had been sung to her from the beginning; for "there is little doubt," says Gebelin, "that the Fête of the New Moon was the first to be observed by all antique nations.' It does not require much imagination to conceive how in the beginning those people to whom the God of Abraham did not reveal himself, save through his works, perceiving within themselves, not only their individual dependence, but that of the times and seasons, upon some unseen Power, should have embodied this perception in Nature-worship, of which the sun and moon were the centres. From the very first, we find them associated, in the religious history of the most ancient nations, as presiding deities-the gods from whom light, and heat, coolness and rest, with all the accessory blessings of existence, proceded Husbandry, the principal source of wealth to primitive peoples, depended wholly on the sun's motions; while the value of moonlight to persons ignorant of artificial lights has not so long been unknown to civilized countries as to render our fathers oblivious of it. "Nota Bene, the moon will be up ;" or "N.B., it will be moonlight," has been the suggestive postcript to many a provincial playbill, within the last century, in England. But moonlight subsequent to the period when Bottom the Weaver played "The man in the moon," with a lantern; and moonlight in times previous to those in which flambeaux (easily extinguished by wind or rain) were its only substitute, are two different conditions of the same thing. The changes of the moon, more frequent and striking than those of the sun, and the rapidity of its apparent motions, caused it to have been regarded even before the sun's revolutions were attended to; hence the reckoning of time by the moon's motions, and following the lunar instead of the solar year. The ancient Saxons followed this primitive and simple mode of calculating the year by the course of the moon. They commenced the new year always on the night of the 25th of December, which was called "Modra-nect," the mother of the nights. Tacitus says of the Germans, that they counted their days by the nights; the nights they said brought forth the days. We still retain vestiges of this mode of calculating time, in the phrases, se'nnight, (seven nights,) fortnight, &c. The moon was regarded by the ancients either as the wife or sister of the sun, and presided over the night as the sun presided over the day. With the Egyptians, the word Rhé, which meant the sun, had a feminine termination, Rhea, pronounced by the Hebrews, Irhe, or Irha, which signified the moon and the month. And to this day, the word Re in Irish means the moon, and time; a fact which Court de Gebelen alludes to, and which the present writer has tested. The word is one with the Greek Héra, which designated the true Juno; but Juno, according to the author of the "Monde Primitif," was herself the moon, to whom as Queen of Heaven the new moons were always sacred. Dr. Smith tells us that Hera was called Juno by the Romans, and he regards her as one with the great Goddess of Nature, everywhere worshipped from the earliest times. True he does not identify her with the moon; but if one with the Asiatic goddess Rhea, the "great mother," "mother of the Gods and Queen of Heaven," Astarte, whom the Sidonians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews worshipped, then is she none other than the moon herself, by whatever name she is veiled. In varying mythologies, she is found under many others; for, true to her changeful nature, her attributes are as diverse as her phases-Juno, Ino, Io, Isis, Helene, Silene, Lucina, Diana, Athené, celestial Venus, Athyr, Phoebe, Latona, Moneta, Mena, Mona, Luna, Allilat, Lucan, Hecate, Lebanah, and many others; yet all are one with the great Artemis, and Ashtaroth, who made the Israelites to sin. Her personifications are infinite, separate, and distinct, and yet in all she is specially identifiedDiana on earth, Luna in Heaven, Hecate in hell. But under every form and title, she is the patronesss and protectress of women, she is about them from infancy to their death-bed, and through all phases of their lives-at birth, at marriage, in child-bed-the great mother, under one or other of her many names, supports and aids them. "Hence," says Dr. Smith, "she bore the special surnames Virginalis and Matrona ;" and all these names (with few exceptions) how soft and sweet and musical they are! from the Egyptian Io, which it is more like a sigh than a sound, to the laughing Arab Allilat, and the sadness of our Anglo-Saxon Mona. Listen to Horace, whom Augustus employed to compose hymns for the secular feasts, where in the third chant he invokes Diana. 66 Illythie, Lucine, Genetylle (all names of Diana), by whatever name thou art called, Goddess, who bringest all things to maturity, protect our mothers of families, give them numerous offspring, bless the decrees of the senate in favour of marriages, &c., &c." The subdivision of the great mother, by the individualizing of her attributes, appears to have followed the division of time into the twelve months of the year which her motions regulated. The sun and moon were naturally supposed to preside over the whole twelve months, six of which were thought to be governed by the moon, while the other six were under the dominion of the sun. Ancient peoples painted in the calender six moons and six suns, or six men and six women, to describe this division, representing each with a different emblem, symbolical of the character of the month, and the work to be done in it. With the Romans, of whom we Europeans know more than of any other ancient people, the six protectresses of the months were, Juno, Minerva, Venus, Ceres, Diana, and Vesta. Juno, Queen of the Gods and of Heaven, was the moon of January, the first month in the year. The March moon was sacred to Minerva, the protectress of art and industry. Venus, mother of love, was the moon of April, in which nature renews the whole earth with fresh verdure and new generations. Ceres, the bright-haired goddess of harvest, was the August moon. Diana, the deity of the chase, was the November moon. And Vesta, goddess of fire, the moon of December. " The Hebrews called the moon Lebanah, or white; and gave the same name, says Gebelin, to Mount Lebanon, because of the snow that covered it. But as they sacrificed to the moon and all the Hosts of Heaven," on the high places, may there not be a closer affinity between the name of the mountain and that of the ancient goddess? It seems not unnatural, considering the solemnity of the Feast of New Moons, ordained by the Mosaical law, and which was celebrated with a pomp and in a manner far exceeding the ceremonial of the Sabbath, that the Jews should have fallen into the error of the heathen, and have offered incense, and kissed their hands to the moon. *The Arabians call a white horse a moon-coloured horse. Let my readers observe that action which a verse in Job has preserved for us, for I shall have to recall it. "If," he exclaims, in his protestation of integrity-" if I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart had been secretly enticed, or my mouth had kissed my hand, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied the God that is above." Doubtless such was the salutation of the Jewish women, who kneaded dough to make sacrificial cakes to the Queen of Heaven;' cakes of honey and fine flour, such as the Egyptians and the women of ancient Rome offered to her representatives; cakes round like herself, which Bede speaks of. was The Phoenicians celebrated the new moons very nearly in the same way as the Greeks: they set forth tables before their doors, and in the vestibules of their houses, as well as in the public thoroughfares and cross-roads, in honour of Menè or Astarte, one with the moon; and in this custom originated the Roman usage during the Lectisternia, of placing the images of the Gods on tables or beds. The Phoenicians, and most other peoples, lit on these occasions great fires, over which they and their children leaped, with an idea that it purified them. These fires were transmitted by tradition to Christian times, and were insensibly abolished by the councils. The Romans also observed the Neomines. Horace says, "If at the time of the new moon you raise your suppliant hands to Heaven, and appease the household gods with incense, fruits, and a ravening swine, your corn and vines shall be saved from blight, and your flocks suffer no evil." Most savage nations observe some sort of ceremony on the appearance of the new moon. Negroes kiss their hands to her, and ask that their happiness may increase with her quarters. Others salute her on their knees, and wish that their lives may be renewed like hers. The Mexicans, Peruvians, Caribbians, and other people of South America, are said by Gebelin, to greet her appearance, as did the ancient Romans, with cries, howling, and a great noise. They are more moderate, according to this writer, in Asia: the Javanese break forth into songs of joy on beholding her, and the people of Bengal receive her with acclamations and dances. On the Feast of New Moons the Hebrews offered two male oxen, a sheep, and seven lambs as a sacrifice, with cakes made of flour and oil, and aspersions of wine, besides a ram for the expiation of sin; this sacrifice accompanied by the sound of trumpets, and many hymns and prayers. The new moon was announced by the blowing of horns, and there were persons appointed to give notice the moment she rose, for it was from the instant of her apparition, and not from that of her renewal, that they counted the beginning of the month. With the Greeks the new moon was equally sacred: Plutarch calls it the most sacred of days. The Athenians offered sacrifices in the Citadel, accompanied by prayers for the public felicity during the course of the month. Children emplored the gods for their parents, and cakes mixed with honey were given to a sacred serpent. They placed in the cross-roads tables covered with bread for the poor, who took it away, when it was said that Hecate had eaten it. On the night preceding the new moon the In the Highlands of Scotland, Aubrey tells us people ran into the streets and cross-roads, and that the women make a curtsey to the new called on Hecate seven times, howling and sing-moon; and our English women, he says, have a ing mournful songs, in memory of Ceres and Proserpine. Hecate, thus envoked on the vigil of the new moon, and called up by their cries from Hades, was regarded as queen of the dead and of the lower world. She kept the ghosts of those whose bones remained unburied on this side Styx a hundred years, and wandered about at night, with a spectral train of phantoms and demons. She presided over witchcraft and magic, and dwelt in tombs and places where two roads crossed, of which, under the name of Trivia, she was the titular divinity. Proserpine, or Hecate, was said to be the darkened moon, which disappeared for certain hours, and was said to have taken refuge in Hell, where she reigned as she had done in Heaven, and whence she was recalled by the people's cries. Dogs, lambs, and honey were offered to her. *May not some lingering of this superstition have given rise to the weird custom of burying suicides and murderers in the cross-roads, by which act they were as it were devoted to the infernal Gods, and their spirits condemned to wander about for a hundred years as is still believed in Ireland ? The Chinese consecrate both the new and full moons to the memories of their ancestors, and burn tapers before their images. touch of this, some of them sitting astride a gate or stile the first evening the new moon appears, and saying, "A fine moon, God bless her!" "The like," he adds, "I observed in Herefordshire." Homer, in the most lovely description of moonlight ever written, and which Pope has admirably translated, has these lines "The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." Another writer (informs us that in Yorkshire girls kneel on a ground-fast stone, while turning the head over the right shoulder, they invoke her thus "All hail to thee, Moon! all hail to thee! This night in my dreams, who my husband may be !" After which ceremony they go to bed as quickly as possible, in the hope of dreaming of the man whom they are to marry. In Dr. Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish language, we find that in Scotland the invocation ran thus "O new Moon, I hail thee! And gif I'm ere to marry man, Or man to marry me, His face turn'd this way fast ye can, This blessed night." And turning from the Doctor's pages to an Irish girl close at hand, she gives me the following version of the traditional rhymes still in use among the Limerick lace-workers, and peasant-maidens of Munster. "New Moon, true Moon, tell to me If -s bride I am to be, If his ring I am to wear, If his children I'm to bear: Bright and merry may he be, Next time that I do him see, to differ." This superstition seems widely spread in England. Brand, Halliwell, and other writers on the subject, mention it; one observes that showery weather, about the time of the new moon, which might keep the spectator indoors, and make him see her crescent first bad prognostic for the month. And this sugthrough a window, might fairly be considered a gestion throws a partial light on the subject; but on the weather side of it only, to which we shall presently come. While the popularity of the superstitious objection leads rather to the inference, that it had probably a religious origin, and is a tradition of the times when the appearances of the orb herself were ominous, and men and women watched her first appear ing with special reference to their individual exigencies, and the significance of her aspect to In his working-clothes with his face turned to me." themselves. Harken to the sacred Pilot in the "New Moon, true Moon, tell to me If his wife I'm not to be, If his ring I'm not to wear, In his Sunday-clothes, with his back turned to me." In these three rhythmical invocations we find the moon appealed to in the two-fold character of Juno, who presided over marriage, and Hecate, the mistress of enchantments. A friend in Ireland informs me that the following doggrel, which preserves the traditional custom of blessing it, or uttering a short prayer, is still sung by children, on first seeing the new moon "I see the moon, The moon sees me; Grace in the kitchen The grace of God above us all." All Irish catholics, observes my correspondent, or almost all the poor, and even middle classes, make the sign of the cross, and utter some pious ejaculation, at the first sight of the new moon. The sign of the cross may possibly have been used as a counter-charm, in days when a belief of the moon's magic still lurked in the hearts of the early Christians; and the prayer may have been prescribed to them, in contrariety to those formerly addressed to the luminary herself. This lady inquired of several old people, why they prayed when they saw the new moon? but without receiving any satisfactory reply; the only reason given, "because it was always the custom!" "Here," continues my friend, "it is considered very unlucky to see the new moon for the first time through glass, and a quarrel is said without fail to be the consequence of one person's showing it to another: no matter how close their previous friendship, before that moon goes out, that is within the lunar month, they are certain Pharsalia, with Cæsar and his fortunes on board his storm-tossed boat. "Nor rose the silver Queen of Night serene: There is a passage in Mungo Park's travels In the Highlands even at the present day, to see her for the first time after her change on your right hand, or directly before you, is accounted good for a month's bright fortune; but if on the left hand or behind, so that on looking back she meets you, it is just the reverse. We can easily imagine therefore, that in the old times, when men accounted her divine, it was a happy presage to meet her at her revolution, cloudless and in the open, where no object could intervene between the adoring kiss and the fair object to which it was given-an act still innocently perpetuated by mothers and nurses, when they lift up the little ones in their arms, and bid them "kiss hands to the moon." In trials for witchcraft, this action is not unfrequently alluded to, as confirmatory evidence of the guilt of the suspected sorceress; for was not the moon, as Hecate, mistress of magic, charms, and enchantments? and did not this act acknowledge fealty to her? for long after the worship had passed, the rites were remembered. it is some scruple on account of her fabled Perhaps witchery that makes it considered unlucky in Ireland to have a woman in the house who knows much of the moon's changes; and mothers amongst the peasantry do not like to hear their daughters express admiration of its beauty, |