to make us believe in the omen of a Saturday Moon. But, as we have said of the Poughkeepsie Seer, the thing is very curious whether true or false. Whence comes this universal proverb--and a hundred others--while the meteorological observer {323} cannot, when he puts down a long series of results, detect any weather cycles at all? One of our correspondents wrote us something of a lecture for encouraging, he said, the notion that _names_ could influence the weather. He mistakes the question. If there be any weather cycles depending on the moon, it is possible that one of them may be so related to the week cycle of seven days, as to show recurrences which are of the kind stated, or any other. For example, we know that if the new moon of March fall on a Saturday in this year, it will most probably fall on a Saturday nineteen years hence. This is not connected with the spelling of Saturday--but with the connection between the motions of the sun and moon. Nothing but the Moon can settle the question--and we are willing to wait on her for further information. If the adage be true, then the philosopher has missed what lies before his eyes; if false, then the world can be led by the nose in spite of the eyes. Both these things happen sometimes; and we are willing to take whichever of the two solutions is borne out by future facts. In the mean time, we announce the next Saturday Moon for the 18th of August." How many coincidences are required to establish a law of connection? It depends on the way in which the mind views the matter in question. Many of the paradoxers are quite set up by a very few instances. I will now tell a story about myself, and then ask them a question. So far as instances can prove a law, the following is proved: no failure has occurred. Let a clergyman be known to me, whether by personal acquaintance or correspondence, or by being frequently brought before me by those with whom I am connected in private life: that clergyman does not, except in few cases, become a bishop; but _if_ he become a bishop, he is sure, first or last, to become an arch-bishop. This has happened in every case. As follows: 1. My last schoolmaster, a former Fellow of Oriel, was {324} a very intimate college friend of Richard Whately[692], a younger man. Struck by his friend's talents, he used to talk of him perpetually, and predict his future eminence. Before I was sixteen, and before Whately had even given his Bampton Lectures, I was very familiar with his name, and some of his sayings. I need not say that he became Archbishop of Dublin.