dity and
the most palpable ignorance of the nature of things; still, in the midst
of the light of science which the present century has shed upon the
world, the astrologer meets with a rich support[32] even in the
metropolis of Great Britain; and soothsayers, if not astrologers, get
great gain by their craft in various portions of the United States. The
extensive annual sale of hundreds of thousands of copies of almanacs
that abound in astrological predictions in the United Stales and in
Great Britain, and the extent to which they are consulted, affords a
striking proof of the belief which is still attached to the doctrines of
this fallacious science, and of the ignorance and credulity from which
such a belief proceeds.

[32] See Appendix to Dick's Improvement of Society, p. 338.

Shooting stars, fiery meteors, lunar rainbows, and other atmospherical
phenomena, have likewise been considered by some as ominous of impending
calamities, but they are regarded in a very different light by
scientific observers. The most sublime phenomenon of shooting stars of
which the world has furnished any record was witnessed throughout the
United States on the morning of the 13th of November, 1833. This
astonishing exhibition covered no inconsiderable portion of the earth's
surface. The first appearance was every where that of fire-works of the
most imposing grandeur, covering the entire vault of heaven with myriads
of fire-balls resembling sky-rockets; but the most brilliant sky-rockets
and fire-works of art bear less relation to the splendors of this
celestial exhibition than the twinkling of the most tiny star to the
broad glare of the noonday sun. Their coruscations were bright,
gleaming, and incessant, and they fell thick as the flakes in the early
snows of December. The whole heavens seemed in motion, and suggested to
some the awful grandeur of the image employed in the Apocalypse upon the
opening of the sixth seal, when "the stars of heaven fell unto the
earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken
of a mighty wind."

While these scenes of grandeur were viewed with unspeakable delight by
enlightened scientific observers, the ignorant and superstitious were
overpowered with horror and dismay. The description which a gentleman of
South Carolina gave of the effect produced by this phenomenon upon his
ignorant blacks will apply well to many hardly better informed white
persons. "I was suddenly awaken