The first of November was with the Druids a night full of mystery, in which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world. A terrible rite was connected with this; for the Druidess nuns were obliged at this time to pull down and rebuild each year the roof of their temple, as a symbol of the destruction and renovation of the world. If one of them, in bringing the materials for the new roof, let fall her sacred burden, she was lost. Her companions, seized with a fanatic transport, rushed upon her and tore her to pieces, and scarcely a year is said to have passed without there being one or more victims. On this same night the Druids extinguished the sacred fire, which was kept continually burning in the sacred precincts, and at that signal all the fires in the island were one by one put out, and a primitive night reigned throughout the land. Then passed along to the west the phantoms of those who had died during the preceding year, and were carried away by boats to the judgment-seat of the god of the dead. (Plate V.) Although Druidism is now extinct, the relics of it remain to this day, for in our calendar we still find November 1 marked as All Saints' Day, and in the pre-Reformation calendars the last day of October was marked All Hallow Eve, and the 2nd of November as All Souls'; indicating clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing in the evening, and originally regulated by the Pleiades--an emphatic testimony how much astronomy has been mixed up with the rites and customs even of the English of to-day. In former days the relics were more numerous, in the Hallowe'en torches of the Irish, the bonfires of the Scotch, the _coel-coeth_ fires of the Welsh, and the _tindle_ fires of Cornwall, all lighted on Hallowe'en. In France it still lingers more than here, for to this very day the Parisians at this festival repair to the cemeteries, and lunch at the graves of their ancestors. If the extreme antiquity of a rite can be gathered from the remoteness of the races that still perform it, the fact related to us by Prescott in his _History of the Conquest of Mexico_ cannot fail to have great interest. There we find that the great festival of the Mexican cycle was held in November, at the time of the midnight culmination of the Pleiades. It began at sunset, and at midnight as that constellation approached the zenith, a human victim, was offered up, to avert the dread calamity which they believed impended over the human race. They had a tradition that the world had been previously destroyed at this time, and they were filled with gloom and dismay, and were not at rest until the Pleiades were seen to culminate, and a new cycle had begun; this great cycle, however, was only accomplished in fifty-two years. It is possible that the festival of lanthorns among the Japanese, which is celebrated about November, may be also connected with this same day, as it is certain that that nation does reckon days by the Pleiades.