In the infancy of astronomy the moon and all the planets of our solar system were supposed to be gliding along over the smooth blue firmament like a boat upon smooth water or a sleigh upon ice.  The blue vault was a solid substance; hence the word firmament.  In this vault were set the “fixed” stars, and of course the moon or any planet passing across it might run straight into the constellation Leo or some other dreadful beast; and this explained why direful things happened to this world, which was supposed to be the only world in the universe.  As the moon has always been the most observed of all the heavenly bodies, and as she passes most rapidly across the constellations of the zodiac, it is easy to understand that her phases should excite profound wonder, and that strange effects should be predicated upon these phases, called “changes” from time immemorial.  In fact, however, the moon is not “changing” at one time any more than at another.  She is continually passing in and out of the earth’s shadow as she revolves around the earth, and the width of this shadow, with the state of being in the full light of the sun, constitutes her phases or changes.  She does not “enter” any sign of the zodiac in the sense of entering, as understood by the illiterate; and if she did, the signs Cancer, Leo, Virgo, have no comprehensible relation, to plants or parts of the human body.  Again, if the moon or sun, or any of the planets, are said to “enter” these signs, they are not now the same as the constellations known as the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin.  They did correspond some two thousand or more years ago, when the zodiacal belt was divided into twelve parts and named; but at present, on account of the nutation or gyratory motion of the poles of the earth, the signs of the zodiac (not the constellations) are drifting westward at the rate of one degree in about seventy-one years.  This movement is known in astronomy as the precession or recession of the equinoxes.  It happens, therefore, that when the astrologer consults his tables, and finds that, at, the time of the birth of a person whose horoscope he is going to cast, Venus was in Cancer—­a terrible condition of things for happiness in love—­Venus is in reality passing the constellation Gemini or the Twins, which ought to make everything all lovely.  The development of the Copernican system did a great deal of damage to the interests of astrology, but it was not until the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes that this venerable and pretentious art received its death-blow.  To be sure, “the fools are not all dead yet,” for certain people still pay five dollars to have their horoscopes cast, and not a few rustics consult the moon or the almanac before planting beans or weaning calves.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Romance of the English Stage. 
  By Percy Fitzgerald. 
  Philadelphia:  J.B.  Lippincott
  & Co.