occurrence, both in the heavens and on the earth--and to the history of which our next chapter is devoted. CHAPTER XIII. THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY. Our study of the opinions of the ancients on the various phenomena of astronomy, leads us inevitably to the discussion of their astrology, which has in every age and among every people accompanied it--and though astrology be now no more as a science, or lingers only with those who are ignorant and desirous of taking advantage of the still greater ignorance of others--yet it is not lacking in interest as showing the effect of the phenomena of the heavens on the human mind, when that effect is brought to its most technical and complete development. We must distinguish in the first place two kinds of astrology, viz., natural and judicial. The first proposed to foresee and announce the changes of the seasons, the rains, wind, heat, cold, abundance, or sterility of the ground, diseases, &c., by means of a knowledge of the causes which act on the air and on the atmosphere. The other is occupied with objects which would be still more interesting to men. It traced at the moment of his birth, or at any other period of his life, the line that each must travel according to his destiny. It pretended to determine our characters, our passions, fortune, misfortunes, and perils in reserve for each mortal. We have not here to consider the natural astrology, which is a veritable science of observation and does not deserve the name of astrology. It is rather worthy to be called the meteorological calendar of its cultivators. More rural than their descendants of the nineteenth century, the ancients had recognised the connection between the celestial phenomena and the vicissitudes of the seasons; they observed these phenomena carefully to discover the return of the same inclemencies; and they were able (or thought they were) to state the date of the return of particular kinds of weather with the same positions of the stars. But the very connection with the stars soon led the way to a degeneracy. The autumnal constellations, for example, Orion and Hercules, were regarded as rainy, because the rains came at the time when these stars rose. The Egyptians who observed in the morning, called Sirius "the burning," because his appearance in the morning was followed by the great heat of the summer: and it was the same with the other stars. Soon they regarded them as the cause of the rain and the heat--although they were but remote witnesses. The star Sirius is still connected with heat--since we call it the dog-star--and the hottest days of the year, July 22nd to August 23rd, we call dog-days. At the commencement of our era, the morning rising of Sirius took place on the earlier of those days--though it does not now rise in the morning till the middle of August--and 4,000 years ago it rose about the 20th of June, and preceded the annual rise of the Nile.