The phenomena of the heavenly bodies, to an enlightened and intelligent mind, furnish the most grand and sublime spectacle in nature; to the ignorant and superstitious, the most awful. The common people of all countries, and in all ages, have considered the occasional privation of the light of the two great luminaries of heaven as the forerunners of some extraordinary event, whilst the more intelligent part of the community have turned these superstitious notions to their advantage. Thales is said to have been able to calculate the returns of eclipses six hundred years before the birth of Christ; of course, he was well acquainted with the causes by which they were produced; yet his countrymen were always filled with superstition and terror on the event of an eclipse. Plutarch has observed that Pericles learned from Anaxagoras to overcome the terrors which the various phenomena of the heavens inspired into those who knew not their causes; and he mentions a striking proof which he gave of this knowledge, on his expedition against Peloponnesus, when there happened an eclipse of the sun. The sudden darkness, being considered as an omen unfavourable to the object of the expedition, occasioned a general consternation. Pericles, observing the pilot of his own galley to be frightened and confused, took his cloak and placed it before his eyes, asking him at the same time if he found any thing alarming, or of evil presage, in what he then did? and upon his answering in the negative: "Where then is the difference," said Pericles, "between this covering and the other, except that something of greater extent than my cloak deprives us of the light of the sun?" Nor can it be doubted that Alexander when, on a like occasion, previous to the battle of Arbêla, he commanded a sacrifice to be made to the sun, the moon, and the earth, as being the three powers to which eclipses were owing, did it merely to appease the superstitious notions of his army. To suppose him ignorant of their causes, would be paying an ill compliment to his great master. Thus it might have been with regard to the Chinese government, which, whether through ignorance or policy, still continues to observe with the greatest solemnity the same ceremonies, or nearly so, on the event of an eclipse, which were in use among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, near two thousand years ago. When the moon was darkened by an eclipse, their drums and clarions and trumpets were sounded, under the notion that, by their shrill and loud noise, they might assist in relieving the labouring goddess. "A vast eclipse darkens the neighbouring planet, Sound there, sound all our instruments of war; Clarions and trumpets, silver, brass, and iron, And beat a thousand drums to help her labour."