The ingenious author of the "Plurality of Worlds" ridicules the Chinese, because, says he, they see a thousand stars fall at once into the sea. It is very likely that the Emperor Kamhi ridiculed this notion as well as Fontenelle. Some Chinese almanac-maker had, it would seem, been good-natured enough to speak of these meteors after the manner of the people, and to take them for stars. Every country has its foolish notions. All the nations of antiquity made the sun lie down in the sea, where for a long time we sent the stars. We have believed that the clouds touched the firmament, that the firmament was a hard substance, and that it supported a reservoir of water. It has not long been known in our towns that the Virgin-thread (_fil de la vierge_) so often found in the country, is nothing more than the thread spun by a spider. Let us not laugh at any people. Let us reflect that the Chinese had astrolabes and spheres before we could read, and that if they have made no great progress in astronomy, it is through that same respect for the ancients which we have had for Aristotle. It is consoling to know that the Roman people, _populus late rex_, were, in this particular, far behind Matthew Lansberg, and the Lame Messenger, and the astrologers of China, until the period when Julius Cæsar reformed the Roman year, which we have received from him and still call by his name--the _Julian Calendar_, although we have no _calends_, and he was obliged to reform it himself. The primitive Romans had, at first, a year of ten months, making three hundred and four days; this was neither _solar_ nor _lunar_, nor anything except barbarous. The Roman year was afterwards composed of three hundred and fifty-five days--another mistake, which was corrected so imperfectly that, in Cæsar's time, the summer festivals were held in winter. The Roman generals always triumphed, but never knew _on what day_ they triumphed. Cæsar reformed everything; he seemed to rule both heaven and earth. I know not through what complaisance for the Roman customs it was that he began the year at a time when it does not begin--that is, eight days after the winter solstice. All the nations composing the Roman Empire submitted to this innovation; even the Egyptians, who had until then given the law in all that related to almanacs, received it; but none of these different nations altered anything in the distribution of their feasts. The Jews, like the rest, celebrated their _new moons_; their _phase_ or _pascha_, the fourteenth day of the moon of March, called _the red-haired moon_, which day often fell in April; their _Pentecost_, fifty days after the _pascha_; the _feast of horns_ or _trumpets_, the first day of July; that of _tabernacles_ on the fifteenth of the same month, and that of _the great sabbath_, seven days afterwards.