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Ju the almanacs of the Chinese, nearly as much diversity exists șa in those of western nations. But in one thing the Chinese alma- naos are all alike, and in this they resemble too the older almanacs of the west,—we mean, in the astrological ascription to each day of auspicious or baneful influences over the actions of men. In this character, the imperial almanacs, circulated by the government through all its dominions and tributary kingdoms, shares in common with books addressed to the most superstitious of the people. The government of China thus gives the full weight of its authority to the idle belief, that the planets, of which in its astronomical works it acknowledges the earth to be a companion, can exert so powerful and mysterious an influence over the world, as to affect the success of the undertakings and actions of every individual. It sanctions a belief, involving this absurdity, that two persons engaged in liko undertakings, having selected each the same auspicious period, and acting, consequently, under the same astral iufluences, may neverthe- leas come off, the one fully successful, the other utterly foiled. But the government has not alone given the weight of its own authority to such unreasonable notions; it has, when European astronomers were yet in employ at Peking, required of them to attach their signa- ture to the astrological (as well as to the astronomical) tables of the almanac. This was acknowledged by one of these Europeans to Mr. Barrow, when at Peking, during Lord Macartney's embassy, and de- rives confirmation from the fact, that much greater faith is placed by the Chinese in astrological predictions worked according to the “Eu- ropean method," than in any others, and that to a superiority of this nature several of the popular almanacs consequently pretend.
The imperial almanac contains, in its smaller form about twenty, in its farger form about fifty, leaves. Upon the first leaf of the farger edition, is a table of the twenty-four zodiacal periods observed by the Chinese, marking the moment of the sun's passage over the first and the fifteenth degrees of each sign of the Zodiac, calculated for the meridian of Peking. The second leaf is occupied by a table of the more important stellary aspects, as auspicious or the reverse, to particular acts or undertakings. Thus one is auspicious to all acts, and destructive of every baneful influence; a second is auspicious to the presenter of memorials, to the officer newly entering upon his duties, to the happy couple contracting a marriage; a third and a fourth are baneful to the same parties; a fifth is prejudicial to the bather; a sixth to the general who leads out his army; and a seventh to the gardener who plauts or grafts under its influences. The third
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