tenacity of tradition and the inconvenience of changing a widely accepted name, is needed to account for the human and animal names of the stars. The Greeks received from the dateless past of savage intellect the myths, and the names of the constellations, and we have taken them, without inquiry, from the Greeks. Thus it happens that our celestial globes are just as queer menageries as any globes could be that were illustrated by Australians or American Indians, by Bushmen or Peruvian aborigines, or Esquimaux. It was savages, we may be tolerably certain, who first handed to science the names of the constellations, and provided Greece with the raw material of her astronomical myths— as Bacon prettily says, that we listen to the harsh ideas of earlier peoples as they come to us "blown softly through the flutes of the Grecians." The first moment in astronomical science arrives when the savage, looking at a star, says, like the child in the nursery poem, "How I wonder what you are!" The next moment comes when the savage has made his first rough practical observations of the movements of the heavenly body. His next step is to explain these to himself. Now science cannot advance any but a fanciful explanation beyond the sphere of experience. The experience of the savage is limited to the narrow world of his tribe, and of the beasts, birds, and fishes of his district. His philosophy, therefore, accounts for all phenomena on the supposition that the laws of the animate nature he observes are working everywhere. But his observations, misguided by his crude magical superstitions, have led him to believe in a state of equality and kinship between men and animals, and even inorganic things. He often worships the very beasts he slays; he addresses them as if they understood him; he believes himself to be descended from the animals, and of their kindred. These confused ideas he applies to the stars, and recognises in them men like himself, or beasts like those with which he conceives himself to be in such close human relations. There is scarcely a bird or beast but the Red Indian or the Australian will explain its peculiarities by a myth, like a page from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It was once a man or a woman, and has been changed to bird or beast by a god or a magician. Men, again, have originally been beasts, in his philosophy, and are descended from wolves, frogs or serpents, or monkeys. The heavenly bodies are traced to precisely the same sort of origin; and hence, we conclude, come their strange animal names, and the strange myths about them which appear in all ancient poetry. These names, in turn, have curiously affected human beliefs. Astrology is based on the opinion that a man's character and fate are determined by the stars under which he is born. And the nature of these stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear should have been found in the horoscope of Dr. Johnson. When Giordano Bruno wrote his satire against religion, the famous Spaccio della bestia trionfante, he proposed to banish not only the gods but the beasts from heaven. He would call the stars not the Bear, or the Swan, or the Pleiads, but Truth, Mercy, Justice, and so forth, that men might

be born, not under bestial, but moral influences. But the beasts have had too long possession of the stars to be easily dislodged, and the tenure of the Bear and the Swan will probably last as long as there is a science of Astronomy. Their names are not likely again to delude a philosopher into the opinion of Aristotle that the stars are animated.

This argument had been worked out to the writer's satisfaction when he chanced to light on Mr. Max Müller's explanation of the name of the Great Bear. We have explained that name as only one out of countless similar appellations which men of every race give to the stars. These names, again, we have accounted for as the result of savage philosophy, which takes no great distinction between man and the things in the world, and looks on stars, beasts, birds, fishes, flowers, and trees as men and women in disguise. M. Müller's theory is based on philological considerations. He thinks that the name of the Great Bear is the result of a mistake as to the meaning of words. There was in Sanskrit, he says (Lectures on Language, pp. 359, 362), a root ark, or arch, meaning to be bright. The stars are called riksha, that is, bright ones, in the Veda. "The constellations here called the Rikshas, in the sense of 'the bright ones,' would be homonymous in Sanskrit with the Bears. Remember also that, apparently without rhyme or reason, the same constellation is called by Greeks and Romans the Bear. . . . There is not the shadow of a likeness with a bear. You will now perceive the influence of words on thought, or the spontaneous growth of mythology. The name Riksha was applied to the bear in the sense of the bright fuscous animal, and in that sense it became most popular in the later Sanskrit, and in Greek and Latin. The same name, 'in the sense of the bright ones,' had been applied by the Vedic poets to the stars in general, and more particularly to that constellation which in the northern parts of India was the most prominent. The etymological meaning, 'the bright stars,' was forgotten; the popular meaning of Riksha (bear) was known to every one. And thus it happened that, when the Greeks had left their central home and settled in Europe, they retained the name of Arktos for the same unchanging stars; but, not knowing why those stars had originally received that name, they ceased to speak of them as arktoí, or many bears, and spoke of them as the Bears."

This is a very good example of the philological way of explaining a myth. If once we admit that ark, or arch, in the sense of "bright" and of "bear," existed, not only in Sanskrit, but in the undivided Aryan tongue, and that the name Riksha, bear, "became in that sense most popular in Greek and Latin," this theory seems more than plausible. There is a difficulty, however, in finding Riksha either in Latin or Greek. But the explanation does not look so well if we examine, not only the Aryan, but all the known myths and names of the Bear and the other stars. Professor Sayce, a distinguished philologist, says we may not compare non-Aryan with Aryan myths. We have ventured to do so, however, in this paper, and have shown that the most widely

severed races give the stars animal names, of which the Bear is one example. Now, if the philologists wish to persuade us that it was decaying and half-forgotten language which caused men to give the names of animals to the stars, they must prove their case on an immense collection of instances on Iowa, Kanekn, Murri, Maori, Brazilian, Peruvian, Mexican, Egyptian, Esquimaux instances. Does the philological explanation account for the enormous majority of these phenomena? If it fails, we may at least doubt whether it solves the one isolated case of the Great Bear among the Greeks and Romans. It must be observed that the philological explanation of M. Müller does not clear up the Arcadian story of their own descent from a she-bear who is now a star. Yet similar stories of the descent of tribes from animals are so widespread, that it would be difficult to name the race, or the quarter of the globe, where they are not found. And these considerations appear to be a strong argument for comparing not only Aryan, but all attainable myths. We shall often find, if we take a wide view, that the philological explanation which seemed plausible in a single case, is hopelessly narrow when applied to a large collection of parallel cases in languages of various families.

A. L.

45

The Man with the Red Hair.

I.

ABOUT a score of us-men, women, and children-were eating our breakfast at Toogood's place down in Suffolk, one September morning, when Toogood, who had been reading his letters, looked up, rubbing his bald head and frowning, as he does in moments of distress, and called out across the table to his wife, "I say, mother, Percival's coming tomorrow."

"Percival? Percival?" repeated Mrs. Toogood vaguely. "Oh, do you mean the man with the red hair? I am so sorry!"

The Toogoods are such extremely hospitable people that it is hardly possible to conceive such a thing as that either of them should feel sorry at the prospect of receiving an additional guest in their capacious house, and Florry Neville only made herself the spokeswoman of the entire company by asking in a tone of astonishment, "Why? Because he has red hair?"

"Well, yes; partly because of that," answered Mrs. Toogood with a sigh.

"Now mind, children," said Toogood in a loud voice; "not a word about red hair so long as Mr. Percival is here."

I don't know how many children Toogood has—I have never attempted to count them-but I do know that, if there was anything which I particularly wished to prevent them from alluding to, the very last course that I should adopt would be to tell them of it.

"The first child," continued Toogood resolutely, "who mentions the subject of red hair during Mr. Percival's visit will be whopped, or confined to the nursery, or made to learn the first six propositions of Euclid by heart according to age and sex. So now you know."

"What is to be

"And how about adults?" Miss Neville inquired. done to them if they hurt your carroty friend's feelings?"

"Oh, he'll look after the adults," answered Toogood rather gloomily; "I believe he half killed a man at Oxford, years ago, for calling him Carrots. I don't know what he'd do in the case of a lady, I'm sure; but I wouldn't try chaffing him, Miss Neville, if I were you-I wouldn't really."

Now that, again, is not the sort of thing that I should have said with a view to making sure of Florry's behaving herself; but dear old Toogood is always saying things that he ought not to say.

"Percival isn't a bad fellow," he continued pensively, "so long as

you don't rub him the wrong way; only, unfortunately, it takes very little to rub him the wrong way; and when he gets into one of his tempers-well, it's uncommonly disagreeable for everybody."

After that I suppose we all felt an increased curiosity to behold the man with the red hair; and I can answer for one of us who was not without hope that he might be attacked by some extraordinary fit of fury before he went away. I must confess that I take a great delight in seeing things broken (of course I don't mean my own things); and sincerely as I should have deplored the annihilation of Mrs. Toogood's best dessert-service, still, if such' a calamity was bound to take place, I should certainly have wished to be there to look on at it. I imagined the redoubtable Percival as a brawny giant with a flaming mane and beard, and after breakfast I found in one of the children's picture-books a representation of an ogre which seemed so exactly like what he ought to be that I pointed it out to Florry Neville, who was so kind as to say that she would take an early opportunity of showing it to him and telling him that I had supposed it to be his portrait.

However, when he did come, he turned out, like so many things that one has looked forward to, to be a disappointment—at all events so far as appearances went. He was not in the least like the ogre in the picture-book, nor like any ogre at all, but was a tall and well-made fellow of six or seven and twenty, whom nine people out of ten would have pronounced decidedly good-looking. Certainly his hair was red; but it was cut so short that its colour hardly attracted attention, and he wore neither beard nor moustache. It was just before dinner that we had our first view of him, and I scrutinised him then and throughout the evening rather narrowly without discovering anything about him different from the rest of the world, except that his eyes were a little restless, and that he spoke with a certain hurried excitability when he was interested in his subject. If he had been a horse, you would have said that he was a high-couraged animal, nothing more. At dessert the children stared at him with round eyes, and I could see that my feeling of disappointment was shared by them; but they made no dreadful remarks, nor was the harmony of the evening in any way disturbed. As for his manners, nothing could have been more pleasant. His voice was rather loud, but not disagreeable; he talked a good deal-chiefly about sport-and was very cheery and unaffected and ready to make friends with everybody.

After dinner Florry Neville took him away into a corner and began to flirt with him outrageously; but that I had known beforehand that she would do. I may mention that Florry is my cousin, and that I have been acquainted with her little ways for many years. Rufus appeared to be much taken with her. I don't know whether she chaffed him or not; but, if she did, her chaff must have been of a very mild order, for