NOTES.

If it be true, as a writer in the February Gossip says, that "it is what Mr. Mill has omitted to tell us in his Autobiography, quite as much as what he has there told us, that excites popular curiosity," the following anecdote told by John Neal, one of Jeremy Bentham's secretaries, may be found interesting. The father of John Stuart Mill, it seems, was in the habit of borrowing books of Bentham, and was even allowed the privilege of carrying them away without asking permission—a courtesy so well utilized that from five to seven hundred volumes found their way in time from Bentham's library into the study of the elder Mill. He was a more conscientious borrower, however, than most of his class are, for he had a case made for these books, kept them carefully locked up, and carried the key in his pocket. This put the owner to some trouble occasionally when he wanted to consult his books. In one instance he begged Mr. Mill to leave the key when the latter was going out of town. In vain, however, for Mill marched off to the country carrying the key with him, and Bentham had to wait a whole month for a peep at his own books. If we could know all the facts, doubtless it would be found that Mill knew too well the careless habits of the philosopher to trust him to such an extent. It is not prudent to decide until the evidence is all in. It is that these books—two or three thousand dollars' worth, according to Neal—were, on the death of Mr. Bentham, all recovered by his heir.

Quarritch, a London bookseller, lately advertised for sale a Chinese book from the library of the emperor Khang-Hi, bearing the following title: Yu Sionan Row-wen youen kien—that is, "Mirror of the Profound Resources of Ancient Literature," being extracts from those profound resources arranged chronologically in the order of their production; but the singular thing about the book is its typography. It is printed in inks of four different colors. All the articles dating from the time of Confucius (B.C. 550) to the Mongol dynasty (A.D. 1260) are printed in black, with punctuations in red. All names of persons and places are upon scrolls, to distinguish them from the ordinary text. Observations upon the emperor Khang-Hi (who annotated the whole book autographically) are printed in yellow, the color of the reigning dynasty; those upon scholars and authors living at the time of the publication of the book are printed in red, the color of the living; those upon persons deceased in blue, the mourning color of China. The work is in twenty-five volumes, preserved in four cases. It was printed in 1685.

In the infancy of astronomy the moon and all the planets of our solar system were supposed to be gliding along over the smooth blue firmament like a boat upon smooth water or a sleigh upon ice. The blue vault was a solid substance; hence the word firmament. In this vault were set the "fixed" stars, and of course the moon or any planet passing across it might run straight into the constellation Leo or some other dreadful beast; and this explained why direful things happened to this world, which was supposed to be the only world in the universe. As the moon has always been the most observed of all the heavenly bodies, and as she passes most rapidly across the constellations of the zodiac, it is easy to understand that her phases should excite profound wonder, and that strange effects should be predicated upon these phases, called "changes" from time immemorial. In fact, however, the moon is not "changing" at one time any more than at another. She is continually passing in and out of the earth's shadow as she revolves around the earth, and the width of this shadow, with the state of being in the full light of the sun, constitutes her phases or changes. She does not "enter" any sign of the zodiac in the sense of entering, as understood by the illiterate; and if she did, the signs Cancer, Leo, Virgo, have no comprehensible relation, to plants or parts of the human body. Again, if the moon or sun, or any of the planets, are said to "enter" these signs, they are not now the same as the constellations known as the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin. They did correspond some two thousand or more years ago, when the zodiacal belt was divided into twelve parts and named; but at present, on account of the nutation or gyratory motion of the poles of the earth, the signs of the zodiac (not the constellations) are drifting westward at the rate of one degree in about seventy-one years. This movement is known in astronomy as the precession or recession of the equinoxes. It happens, therefore, that when the astrologer consults his tables, and finds that, at, the time of the birth of a person whose horoscope he is going to cast, Venus was in Cancer—a terrible condition of things for happiness in love—Venus is in reality passing the constellation Gemini or the Twins, which ought to make everything all lovely. The development of the Copernican system did a great deal of damage to the interests of astrology, but it was not until the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes that this venerable and pretentious art received its death-blow. To be sure, "the fools are not all dead yet," for certain people still pay five dollars to have their horoscopes cast, and not a few rustics consult the moon or the almanac before planting beans or weaning calves.