The primitive religion of the Assyrians appears to have been a form of Sabæanism. It appears to have consisted in the worship of the sun—not as the Deity, but as an emblem of the Deity—as the greatest, most glorious, and most beneficent of His works in the eye of man, and the mystery of whose unbeholdable splendours not unaptly symbolised the presence of Him “who dwelleth in light that is inaccessible and full of glory.” But the peculiar part of the Chaldean faith or philosophy was the influence which it ascribed to the planets over the life and fortunes of men. The belief in astrology is one of the oldest, if not absolutely the very oldest, which one meets with in the history of postdiluvian mankind. It was not confined to any one nation, or any one era of the world. It has lived from the earliest times, down through several thousand years, to the middle ages of Europe, and still lingers even at the present day. To take the last spots in the world where one is likely to find old-world notions lingering—“Raphaels” and “Zadkiels” are to be found even in the capitals of England and France, where astrological almanacs are at this moment yearly published, containing predictions of the future—one of which modern Magi boasts that he correctly predicted the death of the “hero of Waterloo,” and both of whom, we believe, prophesied two years ago that 1854 is to be the death-year of Louis Napoleon! But the East is the native land of astrology; and there, to this day, it is believed in as firmly as if it belonged to the domain of the positive sciences. It is curious to know that one of the causes of the disastrous issue of the last battle (August 5) between the Turks and Russians in Asia, was the obstinate adhesion of the Turkish general to an astrological crotchet. The Russians had detached a division of their army to Bayazid, where they surprised and defeated a Turkish corps; but no sooner did General Guyon learn of this movement, than he counselled the Turkish commander, Zarif Pasha, immediately to advance and attack the main body of the Russians while thus weakened. The Pasha, however, while assenting to the plan, would not move at the time required, alleging that neither that day nor the morrow would do for the attack, “because the stars were unpropitious.” Eight-and-forty hours were thus lost, big with the fortunes of the campaign; and the consequence was, that when the Turks did at last advance, they found not only that the Russian detachment had rejoined the main body, but that the Russian general had been fully apprised by his spies of the meditated night-march of his enemies.