THE QUEEN OF NIGHT.

I.

And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man; the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night altern.—MILTON.

He appointeth the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down.
PSALM Civ. 19.

I HAVE spoken of the reverence with which men in long past ages contemplated the sun. Even before it was known how much we owe to the sun, how he is the source of nearly all the forms of force existing upon the earth; and the delegated almoner of the Almighty's benevolence to His creatures in this and other worlds, men recognised in some sort the importance of the great luminary, and many nations worshipped him as a god. But with this worship there was commonly associated a subordinate worship of the moon; and among some nations the moon was esteemed the greater deity. It is not difficult to find a reason for moon-worship. When we watch the moon for any length of time-for an hour or two, even on a single night—we find that she is not at rest among the stars. She partakes, indeed, to a considerable degree in

that turning motion by which the whole starlit dome is
carried from east to west around its polar axis. But she
also has a motion of her own towards the east; so that if
at any
hour she be seen close to some conspicuous star, it
will be found that after an hour or two she has shifted
her position quite appreciably towards the left—that is,
eastwards as we face the southern heavens. And if her
position be noted on the following night, it will be seen
that she has passed far to the east of the star. We can
readily understand that these movements, although they
escape the attention of many in our time, who know little
even of those simple celestial motions which can be de-
tected in a few hours,' were quite early noticed by men
who lived much in the open air at night. The moon's
motions must, for instance, have been detected in very
early times by the Chaldæan shepherds who-

Watched, from the centres of their sleeping flocks,
Those radiant Mercuries, that seemed to move
Carrying through æther in perpetual round

Decrees and resolutions of the gods.

It was this motion of the moon, this apparent power in

1 The Astronomer Royal, remarking a few years ago on a work in which I endeavoured to show in a simple way how the star-vault varies in aspect from hour to hour, and from night to night, told me that he believed quite a considerable proportion of even well-educated persons were unfamiliar with the fact that the stars rise and set with the same sort of motion as the sun. It requires the actual light and heat of the sun, and the actual necessity of changing one's place if one would either remain in sunlight or in shade, as the case may be, to render well known the fact that the sun changes his place in the sky as the mid-day hours proceed.

her to shift her position, so as to view our earth, as it were, from new standpoints, which doubtless suggested to the ancients the idea of worshipping her as a deity. We see some trace of this fancy in the words of Job, when, making protestation of his integrity in the worship of God alone, he says, 'If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand'1 (that is, if he had worshipped these heavenly bodies), 'this also were an îniquity to be punished by the Judge; for I should have denied the God that is above.'

Although the moon does not render such important services to the earth as the sun does, yet even viewed in this aspect, there is much in the moon's action which may help to explain the worship once paid to her.

The moon has been appointed for seasons; the Almighty spake

Let there be Lights

High in th' expanse of Heaven, to divide

The day from night; and let them be for signs
For seasons, and for days, and circling years;
And let them be for lights, as I ordain

Their office in the firmament of Heav'n.

We had a curious illustration of this Eastern method of expressing reverence in the comments made upon the manner in which the Shah of Persia acknowledged the cheers of the Germans. An English writer described the action as scooping with the hand as if to lift water, which was forthwith carried to the mouth; and, oddly enough, this writer mistook the motion as intended to imitate our military salute. It really symbolised the act of one who lifts the hem of another person's garment to his lips in token of respect.

Our month, although not according with the lunar month, nevertheless had its origin in the study of the lunar motions, as indeed the name of this interval of time sufficiently indicates. I need hardly remind the reader, again, of the part which the moon takes in fixing the dates of the Jewish movable festivals, while our own movable festivals in like manner depend on the moon's motions, the Paschal full moon determining Easter Day, and the other movable feasts following accordingly.

The benefits rendered by the moon as a light-giver at night need hardly be insisted upon. Whewell has well remarked, in his Bridgewater Treatise, that a person of ordinary feelings, who on a fine moonlight night' (moonlit is the more correct expression) 'sees our satellite pouring her mild radiance on field and town, path and moor, will probably not only be disposed to "bless the useful light," but also to believe that it was "ordained" for that purpose.' The great mathematician Laplace adopted an opposite view. Setting himself boldly, one may say defiantly, against the wholesome belief that there is method and design in the works of the Creator, he sneers at the belief of those partisans of final causes who have imagined that the moon was given to the earth to afford light during the night.' This cannot be so,' he remarked, for we are often deprived at the same time of the light of the sun and the moon,' and he proceeds to show how the moon might so have been placed as to be always full,' in other words, always opposite the sun, so

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that the arrangement described by Milton as prevailing on the first day of the moon's existence might have continued for ever:

Less bright the moon,

But opposite in levell'd west was set

His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him; for other light she needed none

In that aspect; and still that distance keeps
Till night, then in the east her turn she shines
Revolv'd on Heav'n's great axle; and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appear'd
Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorn'd
With her bright luminaries that set and rose,

Glad evening and glad morn crown'd the fourth day.

In fact, Milton would seem to have entertained the belief that this state of things not only characterised the first day of the moon's creation, but continued until the Fall; for in the tenth book, after describing how the sun was. set 'so to move, so shine

As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable,'

he proceeds to indicate some change in the moon's motions

To the blank moon

Her office they prescribed―

a new office, so differing from her former office as to form fit part of

Growing miseries, which Adam saw
Already in part.

Laplace's device, however, involves the necessity of a