of subserviency to their personal desires. What George would have been in the age of Henry it might be ungracious to suppose; but it may be asserted that Henry, had he been reserved for the close of the eighteenth century, would have a very different place in opinion and history as a king and as a man,--such are the beneficent, humanizing influences of knowledge, civilization, the spirit of religious tolerance, and laws mutually guarding and guarded by public liberty!" * * * * * AN ECLIPSE AT BOOSSA. (_From Landers' Travels, vol. ii._) "About ten o'clock at night, when we were sleeping on our mats, we were suddenly awoke by a great cry of distress from innumerable voices, attended by a horrid clashing and clattering noise, which the hour of the night tended to make more terrific. Before we had time to recover from our surprise, old Pascoe rushed breathless into our hut, and informed us with a trembling voice that 'the sun was dragging the moon across the heavens.' Wondering what could be the meaning of so strange and ridiculous a story, we ran out of the hut half dressed, and we discovered that the moon was totally eclipsed. A number of people were gathered together in our yard, in dreadful apprehension that the world was at an end, and that this was but the 'beginning of sorrows.' We learnt from them that the Mahomedan priests residing in the city, having personified the sun and moon, had told the king and the people that the eclipse was occasioned through the obstinacy and disobedience of the latter luminary. They said that for a long time previously the moon had been displeased with the path she had been compelled to take through the heavens, because it was filled with thorns and briers, and obstructed with a thousand other difficulties; and therefore that, having watched for a favourable opportunity, she had this evening deserted her usual track, and entered into that of the sun. She had not, however, travelled far up the sky, on the forbidden road, before the circumstance was discovered by the sun, who immediately hastened to her in his anger, and punished her dereliction by clothing her in darkness, forcing her back to her own territories, and forbidding her to shed her light upon the earth. This story, whimsical as it may seem, was received with implicit confidence in its truth by the king and queen and most of the people of Boossà; and the cause of the noises which we had heard, and which were still continuing with renewed vehemence, was explained to us by the fact that they were all 'assembled together in the hope of being able to frighten away the sun to his proper sphere, and leave the moon to enlighten the world as at other times.' This is much after the manner of many savage nations.