Note 47 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.

Eclipses are of evil omen. Gloucester sums up the matter:47 “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us; though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities mutinies; in countries discord; in palaces treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father.” The Hindu authority48 writes much to the same effect. “Eclipses usually portend or cause grief; but if rain without unusual symptoms fall within a week of the eclipse, all baneful influences come to nought.”