It seemed as if necessarily false false by an à priori principle, viz., that the possible differences in human fortunes, which are infinite, cannot be measured by the possible differences in the particular moments of birth, which are too strikingly finite. It strengthened me in this way of thinking, that subsequently I found the very same objection in Macrobius. Macrobius may have stolen the idea; but certainly not from me—as certainly I did not steal it from him ; so that here is a concurrence of two people independently, one of them a great philosopher, in the very same annihilating objection.

Now comes my one thought. Both of us were wrong, Macrobius and myself. Even the great philosopher is obliged to confess it. The objection truly valued is-to astrologers, not to astrology. No two events ever did coincide in point of time. Every event has, and must have, a certain duration; this you may call its breadth; and the true locus of the event in time is the central point of that breadth, which never was or will be the same for any two separate events, though grossly held to be contemporaneous. It is the mere imperfection of our human means for chasing the infinite subdivisibilities of time which causes us to regard two events as even by possibility concurring in their central moments. This imperfection is crushing to the pretensions of astrologers; but astrology laughs at it in the heavens; and astrology, armed with celestial chronometers, is true!

Suffer me to illustrate the case a little :-It is rare that a metaphysical difficulty can be made as clear as a pikestaff. This can. Suppose two events to occur in the same quarter of a minute-that is, in the same fifteen seconds; then, if they started precisely together, and ended precisely together, they would not only have the same breadth, but

this breadth would accurately coincide in all its parts or fluxions; consequently, the central moment, viz., the eighth, would coincide rigorously with the centre of each event. But suppose that one of the two events, A, for instance, commenced a single second before B, the other, then, because we are still supposing them to have the same breadth or extension, A will have ended in the second before B ends; and, consequently, the centres will be different, for the eighth second of A will be the seventh of B. The disks of the two events will overlap-A will overlap B at the beginning; B will overlap A at the end. Now, go on to assume that, in a particular case, this overlapping does not take place, but that the two events eclipse each other, lying as truly surface to surface as two sovereigns in a tight rouleau of sovereigns, or one dessert-spoon nestling in the bosom of another; in that case, the eighth or central second will be the centre for both. But even here a question will arise as to the degree of rigour in the coincidence; for divide the eighth second into a thousand parts or sub-moments, and perhaps the centre of A will be found to hit the 450th sub-moment, whilst that of B may hit the 600th. Or suppose, again, even this trial surmounted: the two harmonious creatures, A and B, running neck and neck together, have both hit simultaneously the true centre of the thousand sub-moments which lies half-way between the 500th and the 501st. All is right so far—" all right behind ;" but go on, if you please; subdivide this last centre, which we will call X, into a thousand lesser fractions. Take, in fact, a railway express-train of decimal fractions, and give chase to A and B; my word for it that you will come up with them in some stage or other of the journey, and arrest them in the very act of separating their centres-which is a dreadful crime in the eye of astrology; for it is utterly impossible

that the initial moment, or sub-moment, or sub-sub-moment of A and B should absolutely coincide. Such a thing as a perfect start was never heard of at Doncaster. Now, this severe accuracy is not wanted on earth. Archimedes, it is well known, never saw a perfect circle, nor even, with his leave, a decent circle; for, doubtless, the reader knows the following fact, viz., that if you take the most perfect Vandyking ever cut out of paper or silk, by the most delicate of female fingers, with the most exquisite of Salisbury scissors, upon viewing it through a microscope, you will find the edges frightfully ragged; but if you apply the same microscope to a case of God's Vandyking on the corolla of a flower, you will find it as truly cut and as smooth as a moonbeam. We on earth, I repeat, need no such rigorous truth. For instance, you and I, my reader, want little perhaps with circles, except now and then to bore one with an augre in a ship's bottom, when we wish to sink her, and to cheat the underwriters; or, by way of variety, to cut one with a centre-bit through shop-shutters, in order to rob a jeweller ;-so we don't care much whether the circumference is ragged or not. But that won't do for a constellation! The stars n'entendent pas la raillerie on the subject of geometry. The pendulum of the starry heavens oscillates truly; and if the Greenwich time of the Empyreum can't be repeated upon earth, without an error, a horoscope is as much a chimera as the perpetual motion, or as an agreeable income-tax. In fact, in casting a nativity, to swerve from the true centre by the trillionth of a centillionth is as fatal as to leave room for a coach and six to turn between your pistol shot and the bull's eye. If you haven't done the trick, no matter how near you've come to it. And to overlook this, is as absurd as was the answer of that Lieutenant M., who, being asked whether he had any connexion with

another officer of the same name, replied-" O yes! a very

?" "Why, you see, I'm and he's in the 49th :"

close one." "But in what way in the 50th regiment of foot, walking, in fact, just behind him? Yet, for all this, horoscopes may be calculated very truly by the stars amongst themselves; and my conviction is that they are. They are perhaps even printed hieroglyphically, and published as regularly as a nautical almanac ; only, they cannot be republished upon earth by any mode of piracy yet discovered amongst sublunary booksellers. Astrology, in fact, is a very profound, or, at least, a very lofty science; but astrologers are humbugs.

I have finished, and I am vain of my work; for I have accomplished three considerable things I have floored Macrobius; I have cured a lady of her headache; and lastly, which is best of all, I have expressed my sincere interest in the prosperity of a new-born Athenæum.

But our village post (a boy, in fact, who rides a pony) is mounting; and the chances are that this letter of mine will be too late :—a fact which, amongst all the dangers besetting me in this life, the wretched Pig forgot to warn me of.

Feb. 24, 1848.

NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.*

NOBODY in this generation reads The Spectator. There are, however, several people still surviving who have read No. 1; in which No. 1 a strange mistake is made. It is there asserted, as a general affection of human nature, that it is impossible to read a book with satisfaction, until one has ascertained whether the author of it be tall or short, corpulent or thin, and, as to complexion, whether he be a "black" man (which, in the Spectator's time, was the absurd expression for a swarthy man) or a fair man, or a sallow man, or perhaps a green man, which Southey affirmed to be the proper description of many stout artificers in Birmingham, too much given to work in metallic fumes; on which account the name of Southey is an abomination to this day in certain furnaces of Warwickshire. But can anything be more untrue than this Spectatorial doctrine ? Did ever the youngest of female novel-readers, on a sultry day, decline to eat a bunch of grapes until she knew whether the fruiterer were a good-looking man? Which of us ever heard a stranger inquiring for a "Guide

The Works of Walter Savage Landor. 2 vols.

"Southey affirmed:”—viz., in the "Letters of Espriella,” an imaginary Spaniard on a visit to England, about the year 1810.