The first week in September is more often calm on an average than the last of August, hence the well known proverb :

September blow soft till the fruit 's in the loft.

Autumnal Twilight. A Sonnet.

I stood at sunset on a little hill,

O'erbung and garlanded with tall Beech trees;
The West was clothed in gold, and not a breeze
Disturbed the scene-all was unearthly still;
And pleasant was the air, though somewhat chill,
As wont upon a clear September eve,

Methought 'twas then impossible to grieve,
For placid thought o'ercame the sense of ill,
And a deep Lethe o'er the senses brought.

I gazed upon the waters-on the flowers-
The sky-the stirless woods-the silent leaves-
These, and the fieldbird's cry amid the sheaves,
Flashed back departed boyhood on my thought,
And all the joys that then, loved friend, were ours.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.

September 5. St. Laurence Justinian Bishop and Confessor. St. Bertin Abbot. St. Alto of Ireland, Abbot.

rises at v. 20'. and sets at vi. 40.

NONAE.-Rom. Cal.

CHRONOLOGY.-The beautiful Catherine Parr died in 1548. Jonas Hanway died in 1786. A public monument was raised to his memory in Westminster Abbey by voluntary subscription. It had been advised and thought appropriate to have planted a tree on his grave, which would have been nourished with the manure of his decaying corpse, and on the tree to place this inscription-A good tree bringeth forth good fruits: by their fruits ye shull know them. But the plan was never executed.

We are reminded by the above of a very interesting practice of the Persians respecting the ashes of the dead, which, as it is a curious subject, we shall relate in the words of Mr. T. L. Peacock, an elegant poet of our age, who alludes to it in his poem of the Philosophy of Melancholy. The descriptive nature of the poem, and the interesting subject of the subjoined narrative, will plead our apology for introducing so long a quotation :

On Media's hills the evening Sun was low,
The lake's wide surface flashed a golden glow,
When the still clouds their crimson glory gave
In full reflection from the trembling wave;
The little surge scarce murmured on the shore,
Far on the air Araxes rolled his roar;

The soft breeze waved the light Acacia's bower,
And wafted fragrance from the Citron flower.
His pensive path Abdallah chanced to take,
Along the margin of that beauteous lake:
Thus while he roamed with contemplative mind,
Some unknown herbs with curious search to find,
The turning rock disclosed a wonderous scene,
A Myrtle grove in Summer's loveliest green;
A blossomed lawn, a hermit's cave beside,
A central tree in solitary pride.

Even while he gazed on that strange plant he felt,
As if amidst its leaves some genius dwelt,
Some musing spirit, whose diffusive power
Shed deeper awe on placid evening's hour.
Then first an urn, with recent flowerets drest,
His gaze attracted, and his touch repressed,
On whose broad pedestal a Tablet said,

RESPECT THESE BRANCHES NOR PROFANE THE DEAD.
A while he paused, a sound then smote his ear,
He turned, and saw a greyhaired stranger near;
With deep, sublime tranquillity of soul,

That Fate shakes not, nor Time's supreme control,
He spoke; and mildly sweet his accents fell,
Sweet as the wafted note of evening bell,

Whose slow swing strikes the weary traveller's ear,
Awakes the thought of home, and tells of shelter near:
66 Stranger! the urn those solemn branches shade
Nursed that fair tree, now monarch of the glade ;
Within its boughs a spirit dwells enshrined,
And sheds blest influence on the musing mind.
"In early youth I lost my hallowed sire;
I laid his body on the funeral pyre,

Placed in that urn the ashes of his clay,
And left them free to Mithra's holy ray.

The warm ray fell, the Summer dews came down,
The forest verdure changed to russet brown;
The dry leaves dropped, the Wintry tempest past,
When Spring's mild gale dispelled the freezing blast,
That solemn plant, my ever sacred trust,
Sprang from my heavenloved parent's genial dust;
Not long that narrow urn its strength could rear,
I raised it from its bed and fixed it here;
Sweet was the task to watch its spreading stem,
And every infant bud's expanding gem.

"Oh, stranger! oft, beneath its shade reclined,
I hear my father, on the evening wind,
Breathe in pure accents of celestial truth
The sacred love that trained my tender youth.
Soon by his urn shall my old bones be laid,
And sweetly sleep in his protecting shade."*

• Peacock's Philosophy of Melancholy, ni fallit memoria.

September 6. St. Pambo of Nitria, Abbot. St. Eleutherius Abbot. St. Bees of Ireland, Virgin. St. Maculindus Bishop in Ireland.

Erebo.-Rom. Cal.

Erebus, in the ancient mythology, was a deity of the infernal regions. He was married to Night, by whom he had Light and Day. The word is often used for the shades, and particularly for the souls of the virtuous before their passing into the true Elysium. In this sense Erebus seems to correspond to the Christian purgatory. In this sense it is used by Virgil in the beginning of the fourth Aeneid, wherein Dido exclaims:

Vel Pater Omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
Pallentes umbras Erebi noctemque profundam.

And again, in the fourth Georgick, verse 471, speaking of the power of the song of Orpheus :

At cantu commotae Erebi de sedibus imis

Umbrae ibunt tenues, simulacraque luce carentum.

Ovid in the Metamorphoses says:

Et Noctem, Noctisque deos Ereboque Chaoque
Convocat.

And again, in lib. v. 545:—

Ingemuit regina Erebi.

The reader may consult also Cicero de Natura Deorum, iii. 17.

FLORA. The Scarlet berries of the Mezereon which appeared in July, and whose pink flowers ornamented the early Spring, now fall off and are lost, and nothing remains on the shrub but the leaves.

CHRONOLOGY.-The beautiful Comet of the year 1769 first noticed in London on the night of this day.

September 7. ST. CLOUD Confessor. St. Reine V.M. St. Evurtius. St. Germana. St. Madelberte V. SS. Alchmund, &c. Eunan Bishop of Ireland. St. Eunurchus.

St. Cloud, in Latin Chlodoardus, is the first and most illustrious saint of the Royal Family of France. And the Fête de St. Cloud, at St. Cloud near Paris, is annually celebrated with great gaiety and splendour. A beautiful play of Waterworks still amuse the vast Parisian multitude at the Garden of the Palais on this day.

St. Evurtius was Bishop of Orleans, about the year 340, and was a submissive servant to the See of Rome. The

history of this saint affords no other information concerning him at all to be relied on. With legendary fables the memory of Evurtius is profusely embellished.

CHRONOLOGY.-Total eclipse of the Sun in 1820. During this eclipse the day became so dark that some birds actually went to roost, the thermometer fell several degrees, and there was a premature appearance of nightfall, after which the cocks crew.

On Eclipses. -Solar eclipses happen only when the Moon is in conjunction with the Sun, when she is also in the nodes, or near them, the limit being about 17' on each side a node; such eclipses only happening, as we have shown, when the latitude of the Moon, viewed from the Earth, is less than the sum of the apparent semidiameters of the Sun and Moon. In the nodes, when the Moon has no visible latitude, the occultation is total; with some continuance when the disk of the Moon in perigee appears greater than that of the Sun in apogee, and its shadow is extended beyond the surface of the Earth; and total, without continuance, when the point of the Moon's shadow barely covers the Earth. Lastly, out of the nodes, but within the limits, the eclipses are partial.

Lunar eclipses take place when the opposition of the Moon happens with the nodes, as they are caused by the Earth's intercepting the rays of the Sun from falling on the Moon.

The ancients held terrible ideas of the nature and predictions of eclipses. They made a noise with brazen instruments and raised loud shouts during eclipses of the Moon, as thinking thereby to ease her in labour: whence Juvenal, speaking of a talkative woman, says, " Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunae." Others attributed the eclipse of the Moon to the arts of magicians, who, by their enchantments, plucked her out of heaven, and made her skim over the grass. The natives of Mexico keep fast during eclipses; and particularly their women, who beat and abuse themselves, drawing blood from their arms, &c. They imagine the Moon has been wounded by the Sun, in some quarrel between them.

The Hindoos entertain strange opinions respecting the cause of an eclipse. They say that Rahoo one of the asoors stole a draught of the Amceta, at the churning of the ocean, and was discovered in the act by the Sun and Moon, who immediately revealed it to the soors. He was instantly cut in two by Narian: after which his head flew to the heavens, and continues to this day, endeavouring to eat the Sun and Moon, in revenge for telling of the theft. This causes the eclipse! When the eclipse begins, the people begin to shout and drum to frighten him away, lest he should

swallow the luminary. In 1797, during an eclipse, one of Mr. Fountain's missionary servants told him very seriously, he remembered, when a boy, that Rahoo had swallowed the Moon; but the people made such a great noise while he was getting the last bit into his mouth, that he was forced to let it go again.

To such notions the celebrated Milton alludes, in the first book of the Paradise Lost:—

As when the Sun new risen

Looks through the horizontal misty air,

Shorn of his beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.

And again in Lycidas, in allusion to the ill luck of things done during eclipses :

It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,

That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

The opinions of the Chinese with regard to eclipses are very similar to those of the Hindoos, and had, probably, the same origin. A knowledge of the nature of eclipses, and of the superstitious notions entertained of them was of considerable advantage to Christopher Columbus, when in 1493 he was driven on the island of Jamaica, and, distressed for want of provisions, was refused relief; but having threatened them with a plague, and foretelling an eclipse, as a token of it, which happened according to his prediction, the barbarians were so terrified, that they strove who should be the first in bringing supplies, at the same time imploring forgiveness.

In Lloyd's Stratagems of Jerusalem, 4to, 1602, p. 286, we read," At any eclipse of the Moone the Romans would take their brazen pots and pannes and beate them, lifting up many torches and linckes lighted, and firebrandes into the aire, thinking by these superstitious means to reclaime the Moone to her light.

"So the Macedonians were as superstitious as the Romans were at any eclipse of the Moone. Nothing terrified the Gentils more in their warres than the eclipse of the Sunne and the Moone."

We must refer to Ferguson's Astronomy for a catalogue of eclipses which have happened from time immemorial.

Halos Coronas, and other luminous phenomena about the Sun and Moon, were formerly regarded as ominous of particular events, though modern philosophy finds them only signs of weather, and discovers their causes in the refraction