n changed into a feminine, and sun into a masculine. It was a
most unlucky assertion which Mr. Harris made in his _Hermes_, that all
nations ascribe to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a feminine
gender.(3) In Gothic moon is _mena_, which is a masculine. For month we
have in A.-S. _monadh_, in Gothic _menoth_, both masculine. In Greek we
find _men_, a masculine, for month, and _mene_, a feminine, for moon. In
Latin we have the derivative _mensis_, month, and in Sanskrit we find
_mas_ for moon, and _masa_ for month, both masculine.(4) Now this _mas_ in
Sanskrit is clearly derived from a root _ma_, to measure, to mete. In
Sanskrit, I measure is _ma-mi_; thou measurest, _ma-si_; he measures,
_ma-ti_ (or _mimi-te_). An instrument of measuring is called in Sanskrit
_ma-tram_, the Greek _metron_, our metre. Now if the moon was originally
called by the farmer the measurer, the ruler of days, and weeks, and
seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord of their festivals, and the
herald of their public assemblies, it is but natural that he should have
been conceived as a man, and not as the love-sick maiden which our modern
sentimental poetry has put in his place.

It was the sailor who, before intrusting his life and goods to the winds
and the waves of the ocean, watched for the rising of those stars which he
called the Sailing-stars or _Pleiades_, from _plein_, to sail. Navigation
in the Greek waters was considered safe after the return of the Pleiades;
and it closed when they disappeared. The Latin name for the _Pleiades_ is
_Vergiliae_, from _virga_, a sprout or twig. This name was given to them by
the Italian husbandman, because in Italy, where they became visible about
May, they marked the return of summer.(5) Another constellation, the seven
stars in the head of Taurus, received the name of _Hyades_ or _Pluviae_ in
Latin, because at the time when they rose with the sun they were supposed
to announce rain. The astronomer retains these and many other names; he
still speaks of the pole of heaven, of wandering and fixed stars,(6) but
he is apt to forget that these terms were not the result of scientific
observation and classification, but were borrowed from the language of
those who themselves were wanderers on the sea or in the desert, and to
whom the fixed stars were in full reality what their name implies, stars
driven in and fixed, by which they might hold fast on the deep, as by
heavenly anchors.

But although histo