finer perception given us of etherial existences. The Rosicrucian | decided on this hour for the liberation of the sylphs and gnomes of the upper air, that had during the day been confined in the earthy abodes of the lower. Pythagoras stated that at sundown the metempsychosis or infusion of souls that had departed from bodies commenced. But the most beautiful, and perchance the most poetical belief, was that of the Arabian Theosophists, who, in writing of the band of aerial gold which at certain seasons of the year encircles the sun, as he approaches the western horizon, imagined it to be the gorgeous chariots of those emancipated spirits that had just departed from earth, and were being thus conveyed to the regions of eternal happiness. This-which moderns have since termed the zodiacal light-is one of the most beautiful phenomena presented to us by twilight. The tranquil repose, the softened illusions, and the peaceful serenity that pervades all nature, is a fit prelude to the majestic and unfathomable glories of night, when star by star pierces through the azure ambient, and sways the mortal destinies of mankind. It is the assimilation of the natural to the supernatural-the daily recurring emblem of the gloom which precedes our future state of bliss. It is the hour of contemplation both in the fields and at the fireside; we seem to have drawn nearer to our final bourne; but, above all, it is the hour when hearts pulse and throb with the dearest tributes of affection, and love reigns lord of all. The last ruddy line of light trembles in the west, the zephyr rustles the closing flowers, the roseate hue deepens into a sombre greyit is night!

A NIGHT WITH THE STARS. "Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!"-BYRON. "WHAT arguments can you adduce in favour of the planets being inhabited?" was asked of us the other day; and, judging not alone unto him was the gift of inquiry given, we bid the youthful votary of the celestial art enter our study, and we will unite the tutor with the sage. There! throw open the window; and, whilst the cool radiance of yon orbs pours down upon us, listen. We will take yon bright particular star for our first example, and watch him flinging his trembling ray of dusky red through the unclouded atmosphere. That is the fiery Mars," and right well hath he earned the appellation. Now it is well known that, when examined by a sufficiently powerful telescope, all the features of light and shade visible on its surface appear and disappear in a little more than four-and-twenty hours, from which it is evident that this period is the time occupied by its diurnal revolution. Having day and night, therefore-that wise provision of the Omnipotent for preserving the due balance of labour and rest to us on earth-we are fully justified in concluding that such a beneficent arrangement was not motiveless, but that it was ordained to afford the inhabitants of the planet Mars an opportunity of participating in the same privileges which we ourselves enjoy. If, now, we find that sea and land are also accompanied there by an atmosphere, and thus in every way adapted to the exigences of humanity, the supposition becomes still stronger; and here Sir John Herschel has enabled us to speak with certainty. This indefatigable astronomer has been able to distinguish with remarkable accuracy the boundaries of both continents and ocean. The land is peculiar for its reddish hue, which imparts to Mars its singularly ruddy appearance. This redness Herschel ascribes to the red sandstone, which is the prevailing quality in its soil, and the seas of Mars have a greenish cast, similar to those in our own. The axis of Mars is inclined to the perpendicular at an angle of about thirty degrees, and the period of his revolution round the sun is six hundred and eighty-seven

days, being very nearly the period of two of our years; consequently, during that period, the poles lean one twelvemonth from that luminary, and the other period towards it, causing the polar winter to be of one year's duration. The presence of snow at the pole is now to be considered; and such has, in fact, been observed. A small but intensely white spot around the pole of Mars is seen during its twelvemonths' winter, which gradually becomes less as the pole approaches the sun, and as regularly reappears when the pole again recedes. Here, therefore, we have irrefragable proofs that the planet enjoys the alternation of summer and winter, that seed-time and harvest-time are there known as to us; and wherein, then, lies the improbability that man should also be there to enjoy it?

An atmosphere is necessary, according to the formation of earthly humanity, for human existence. Now, all planets_have atmospheres; for the difference of opinion regarding the lunar atmosphere is not sufficient to induce us even to omit that from our assertion. It is somewhat unnecessary now to recapitulate the advantages of atmospherical influence; but a few words on beneath the horizon, the transition from light to darkness would, the subject will not be thrown away. When the sun had sunk if we had no atmosphere, be instantaneous; and the same, at the time of the sun's rising, would be the transit from darkness to light. Twilight there would be none, and the inconvenience felt would, consequently, be universal. Without an atmosphere we could have no clouds, little or no warmth, and sound would be intercepted, every word falling dead upon the listener's ear. Endowed with the full powers of hearing and speaking, we should still be, to all useful purposes, deaf and dumb. An atmosphere thus supplies the chief wants and enjoyments of sentient beings. In Venus-that bright orb which lovers and poets have so often apostrophised-the existence of an atmosphere is as palpable to sight as our own. It often appears so loaded with clouds as to render its real surface invisible. Mercury often exhibits the same peculiarity; Mars, though with an atmosphere of perhaps less density, is observed to dim the lustre of stars during occultation; Jupiter's entire surface is diversified by lights and shadows, produced by the intervention of clouds; Saturn, although at the distance of eight hundred and fifty millions of miles, is streaked with belts of alternate light and shade, as decided and distinct as those of Jupiter, and so of the rest. Possessing atmospheres, why, then, should we deny the possibility of planets being the abodes of living, thinking, and rational beings like ourselves? We may pursue this train of reasoning still further. Wherever an atmosphere exists there must be clouds, there rain must fall, there hail must descend, there evaporation must take place, there water must be found, and there electricity, with all its train of kindred phenomena, must be generated. In each planet, therefore, there are the same laws of active and inert matter which exist upon our own. Everything seems analogous to what we may observe on earth. They are worlds similarly constituted in every way-furnished with the same alternation of light and darkness, cold and heat-diversified by the same agreeable variation of climate, distinguished by the same geographical distribution of land and water, and subject to the same casualties that affect this very earth on which we "live, move, and have our being." Why, then, should we hesitate to grant the rest?

The apostrophe of Dr. Beattie is so apposite to our present discourse that we cannot refrain from concluding with the quotation. He says, speaking of the magnificence of the solar system, "What a fabric is our solar system! wherein bodies of such enormous magnitude accomplish their revolutions through spaces immense, and with a regularity than which nothing can be more perfect. The distance of the planets from the sun, and their several magnitudes, are determined with the utmost wisdom, and according to the nicest geometrical proportion. The central orb, whether we consider its glorious appearance, its astonishing greatness, or the beneficial influence of its light and heat, is such an object as no rational being can contemplate without adoring the Creator. We have good reason to believe that there are thousands of other suns and systems of worlds more glorious, perhaps, and more extensive, than ours; which form such a stupendous whole, that the human soul, labouring to comprehend it, loses sight of itself and of all sublunary things, and is totally overwhelmed with astonishment and veneration. With such thoughts in our view, we are apt to forget the wonders that lie immediately around us,

and that the smallest plant or animal body amounts to a demonstration of the Divine existence. But God appears in all his works, in the least as well as in the greatest; and there is not, in the whole circle of human sciences, any one truth confirmed by so many irresistible proofs as the existence of the Deity.

"The diurnal motion of the planets is the easiest way possible of exposing all their parts to the influence of light and heat. Their globular form is the fittest for motion, and for the free circulation of atmosphere around them, and at the same time snpplies the most capacious surface. The principle of gravitation, prevailing through the whole system, and producing innumerable phenomena, is a most amazing instance of unbounded variety, united with the strictest uniformity and proportion. But it is impossible in a few pages to give such an enumeration of particulars as would do any justice to the subject. The man who should suppose a large city, consisting of a hundred thousand palaces, all furnished with the greatest elegance and variety of ornament, and with all sorts of books, pictures, and statues, executed in the most ingenious manner, to have been produced by the accidental blowing of winds and rolling of sands, would justly be accounted irrational. But to suppose the universe, or our solar system, or this earth, to be the work of undesigning chance, is an absurdity incomparably greater." Whether the inhabitants of the planets are constituted as we are, or whether some hidden bodily and mental peculiarities are peculiar to them, is a branch of inquiry for which, of course, we cannot, as in the fact of their being there at all, reason by analogy. Some have thought, in the midst of those speculations which man must often indulge in, that planets are the abodes of those whose deeds on earth have entitled them to admission into a world of bliss; and others have gone so far as to apportion to each planet a section of the good or evil. Leaving out of the question these crude imaginings, there is yet no great absurdity in the belief, and though the mystery of the grave is closed upon us, speculation upon the world beyond is not forbidden. He who hath looked abroad into the starry world at midnight, and seen the stars like golden beads strung upon an azure thread above him, can readily lend his credulous ear to the suggestions of fancy. His mind forgets the dull confines of earth, and he lives in a world of dreams, from which it were cruelty to evoke him. There would we too slumber.

In conclusion, apart from doctrinal points, we may arrive at this-that the planets are tenanted by beings in every way as capable of fulfilling the high ordinances for which they have been created; that the succession of day and night, and the progression of the seasons, is the same as with us; and that the sun exercises the same influence upon their surfaces as upon earth. We have far from exhausted the subject, but our intention was merely to throw open a field for philosophical investigation, and endeavour to show the probabilities that existed in support of such arguments as those we have adduced. If one reader has been induced to ponder more deeply on the structure of those glorious orbs, the object of the writer has been answered, and the sole purpose for which this was penned fulfilled.

CURIOUS SPECULATIONS ON DREAMS.

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AVICEN makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence, moving the moon in the midst of that light with which the fancies of men are illuminated while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause of them to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes places it in the imagination. Democritus ascribes it to little images, or representations, separated from the things themselves. Plato, among the specific and concrete notions of the soul. Albertus, to the superior influences which continually flow from the sky, through many specific mediums. And some physicians attribute the cause of them to vapours and humours, and the affections and cares of persons predominant when awake; for, say they, by reason of the abundance of vapours, which are exhaled in consequence of immoderate feeding, the brain is so stuffed by it, that monsters and strange chimera are formed, of which the most inordinate eaters and drinkers furnish us with sufficient

instances. Some dreams, they assert, are governed partly by the temperature of the body, and partly by the humour which mostly abounds in it; to which may be added, the apprehensions which have preceded the day before, which are often remarked in dogs and other animals, which bark and make a noise in their sleep. In dreams, they observe, proceeding from the humours and temperature of the body, we see the choleric dream of fire, combats, yellow colours, &c.; the phlegmatic, of water, baths, of sailing on the sea, &c.; the melancholic, of thick fumes, deserts, fantasies, hideous faces, &c.; the sanguine, of merry feasts, dances, &c. They that have the hinder part of their brain clogged with viscous humours, called by physicians ephialtes incubus, or, as it is termed, nightmare, imagine, in dreaming, that they are suffocated. And those who have the orifice of their stomach loaded with malignant humours are affrighted with strange visions by reason of those venomous vapours that mount to the brain and distemper it. Cicero tells a story of two Arcadians, who, travelling together, came to Megara, a city of Greece, between Athens and Corinth, where one of them lodged in a friend's house, and the other at an inn. After supper the person who lodged at the private house went to bed, and, falling asleep, dreamed that his friend at the inn appeared to him, and begged his assistance, because the innkeeper was going to kill him. The man immediately got out of bed, much frightened at the dream; but, recovering himself and falling asleep again, his friend appeared to him a second time, and desired that, as he would not assist him in time, he would take care, at least, not to let his death go unpunished; that the innkeeper, having murdered him, had thrown his body into a cart, and covered it with dung, he therefore begged that he would be at the city gate in the morning, before the cart was out. Struck with this new dream, he went early to the gate, saw the cart, and asked the driver what was in it; the driver immediately fled, the dead body was taken out of the cart, and the innkeeper apprehended and executed.

SONGS OF THE STARS.

TO ABRUCCABAK. Thou little star, that in the purple clouds Hang'st like a dew-drop, in a violet bed; First gem of evening, glittering on the shrouds, 'Mid whose dark folds the day lies pale and dead, As thro' my tears my soul looks up to thee, Loathing the heavy chains that bind it here, There comes a fearful thought that misery Perhaps is found, even in thy distant sphere. Art thou a world of sorrow and of sin,

The heritage of death, disease, decay? A wilderness, like that we wander in, Where all things fairest, soonest pass away? And are there graves in thee, thou radiant world, Round which life's sweetest buds fall withered, Where hope's bright wings in the dark earth lie furled, And living hearts are mouldering with the dead? Perchance they do not die, that dwell in thee, Perchance theirs is a darker doom than ours; Unchanging wo, and endless misery,

And morning that hath neither days nor hours. Horrible dream!-O dark and dismal path,

Where I now weeping walk, I will not leave thee. Earth has one boon for all her children-death Open thy arms, oh, mother! and receive me! Take off the bitter burthen from the slave,

Give me my birth-right! give-the grave, the grave!

MESMERISM.-Since the discovery of the art of printing, there has been nothing more vitally important to man opened to his view, than this astounding science offers. Whether we reflect on the new field it opens for medical science, or the metaphysical truths it promises to unfold and the light it offers to throw on the mysteries of mind, we must alike regard it as a new instance of the benevolence of Providence towards mankind.

LEAVES OF LEGENDARY LORE.

No. II. THE ASTROLOGER'S BRIDE. By ANTIQUARIUS.

СНАР. І.

STEPNEY church-I mean Stepney in or near London-Stepney church is a strange antiquated building; but it wears an age that is unlovely-it has nothing of the rude magnificence, the sculptured pomp, or the coloured lights that crown the age of some fanes with a halo of dreams and glory-it has none of the poetry of the past, spite of the stone from Carthage embedded in its porch; its heavy, low-hung galleries and darkened aisles make it gloomy within, and without its spacious grave-yard is a ruin of ruins. Yet even here, to this seemingly barren spot, antiquity has bequeathed a singular legend-one of those pageants of the past, in which the simple and the wonderful, seen through the mists of time, figure like the story of another earth. outer wall of the church, on the east side, is a rudely sculptured device-a fish holding a ring in its mouth; beneath is an inscription, nearly effaced, but which, with the aid of tradition, reveals the following romantic tale :

On the

Sir Grey de Mervyn, knight, though he was living in troublous times, and thirty years had passed over his head, had, for a lengthened period, quitted the field and the tournament, to devote himself exclusively to what that age called learning; and night after night did the lamp burn almost till daylight in the garden tower of Bromley Pleasance, where the sage Sir Grey, as he was called, pored over the dreams of astrology, occasionally varied by the still more dazzling visions of alchymy. Save the occasional presence of an aged man, his preceptor in these sublime arts, his studies were pursued alone. It was a beautiful starlight night, and Sir Grey and his companion sat together in the tower, each deeply occupied with a mysteriously-lined and figured page. The latter was a withered-looking man, with small black eyes, and long grey hair; the knight young, fair, and of a beauty that would have been effeminate but for the lustrous and fiery dark eye, and the lofty, bnt too frequently frowning, brow. "Wonderful!" he exclaimed, as he compared the pro duct of their calculations; "and yet, father, not so, for truth .must be ever one. See how exactly they agree, even to a figure, and now, father, for the interpretation." The old man looked at both manuscripts, and, without reply, peered earnestly into the eyes of Sir Grey.

"You do not think I fear my fate ?" asked the knight, with a laugh somewhat forced.

"One answer, and I read it," returned the other, "and speak it freely. Sir knight, has the fair enemy of man yet made a lodgement in your heart-in short, are you, or have you been, what is called in love ?"

Sir Grey smiled proudly, almost scornfully: "No, father," he replied, "I have no fancy for chains, even of my own weaving; but what of that?"

"

"Sir Grey, you have lost your

Will any one think it surprising that, with the sage's warning perpetually ringing in his ears, the scenes from which it banished him were constantly present to the fancy of Sir Grey ?-will any wonder that within a month from it being given, one evening, just before the sun set, the knight stopped his horse beside the ford of the abbey mill, and looked around him with a mixture of The mill was at rest, and not a living being curiosity and awe. Once, at one of the narrow disturbed the silence of the scene. windows of the miller's dwelling, he thought he saw for one moment a face looking through, but it so quickly disappeared that he attributed it to his own excited fancy, and with a weakened faith in the verity of astrology he plunged into the stream. The ford was never very deep or dangerous, and now the water was so shallow that the knight's horse passed through it nearly dry-shod; the bank, however, on the opposite side was steep, and a recent fall of a part of it had made it still more so, and the horse required urging, both by the hand and heel of Sir Grey, even to attempt the ascent. The panting animal had reached the brink-one effort more was required to make the bank, when his foot slipped, and both horse and rider might have been precipitated with violence on the road, had not a hand suddenly seized the bridle. So slight an impetus was sufficient to determine the wavering balance of the horse; the next moment he stood safely on the bank, and Sir Grey had time to perceive that his opportune assistant was a young woman, about eighteen years of age, and, from her dress and appearance, a servant of the mill. In figure she was handsome, and there was about her a grace, perhaps, inseparable from a strong and light figure and an unsophisticated mind; but the only recommendations of her otherwise plain face were the clear and bright roses in her cheeks, and the animated expression of her countenance. Meeting Sir Grey's steadfast and earnest gaze, her. colour took a deeper hue, and courtesying lowly she dropped her folded hands before her, and cast her eyes to the ground. "I thank you, my good girl," at length said the knight; "your aid was prompt and effectual; many of the stronger sex might not have done it so readily and so well. Here," he continued, taking a gold piece from his purse, "here is something to remind you that you have served Sir Grey de Mervyn."

The girl looked up with a quick, bright glance, and drew back