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The Terrible Year at Hand.

The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.
-Mother Shipton's Prophecy.

It would be difficult to describe all the sinister predictions that have, as by common consent, been concentrated upon the coming year. The soothsayers, diviners, oracle makers, astrologers and wizards seem to have combined to cast their spell upon it. Superstitious people of every sort, and some who are not willing to admit that they are superstitious, regard the year 1881 with more or less anxious expectation and dread.

As the earth, on New Year's Day, swings out into another round about the sun, it will go to meet a host of evil omens. It will go cursed by theomancy and bibliomancy. Aeromancy and meteoromancy will glare at it from comets and shooting stars. Oneiromancy will intercept its path with visions of evil, and nomancy will shake the ominous, backward-reading numerals "1881" before it. It will be beset with scarecrow figures by arithmancy, and with menacing phrases by stichomancy. Yet there is no reason why persons of good digestion should not go to sleep on New Year's night confident that, after having encountered the average quantity of storm and sunshine, the one-horse ball that we call the world will bring them safe through the perils of its five-hundred-million-mile flight round to the starting point again.

Timid persons first began to look forward with some alarm to the year that is about to open, when, several years ago, the key to the so-called prophetic symbolism of the Great Pyramid of Egypt was made public, backed by the name and reputation of the British astronomer, Piazzi Smyth. Others, using Mr. Smyth's observations and measurements, have gone much further than he did in drawing startling inferences; but no one can read his book without perceiving how powerfully it must affect those who have the slightest leaning toward superstition or credulity. Besides, this record of explorations and experiences in the heart of Egypt's greatest marvel has all the charm and interest of Dr. Schliemann's descriptions of his discoveries in Homer's Troy. Such a book could not well be neglected by the world of readers; and by the nature of the human mind, many of its readers were sure to be imbued with its ominous dogmas. So the belief, or at least the suspicion, spread that the secret chambers of the Great Pyramid, under Divine guidance by the most mystical character in all history, Melchisedek, King of Salem, foretell, among other things, that the Christian era will end in 1881.

Mother Shipton's so-called prophecy fixes upon the same date for the end of the world. The ominous jingle of her rhymes has probably done at least as much to disturb the equanimity of credulous persons as the more elaborate vaticinations of the pyramid interpreters. Moreover, Mother Shipton is represented as foretelling that in the latter days England will accept a Jew. As England has, with considerable emphasis and more than once, accepted the remarkable son of old Isaac Disraeli for her Prime Minister, this has been taken as a fulfilment of the prophecy. So Lord Beaconsfield's dramatic personality is made a principal figure in the murky cloud of evil prophecy that hangs over 1881.

As if the evil eye of Mother Shipton and the mystical menace of the Great Pyramid were not enough for one poor twelvemonth to bear, the "horrors of the perihelia" have been denounced upon the coming year. About two years ago certain pamphlets were circulated about the country, purporting to be written by men of science, and predicting that awful consequences to mankind would result from all the great planets reaching their perihelia, or nearest points to the sun, together. According to these prophets the sinister effects of the perihelia were to begin making their appearance this fall, when Jupiter passed his perihelion, and next year the scythe of death was to be put to the harvest in the far east, and to sweep westward with a swathe as broad as the continents, until it reached the Pacific Ocean. The narrow Atlantic was to be no more than a brooklet in the path of this terrible harvester. Plagues, famines, pestilences, fire, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes were to scourge the human race until only a few remained, like Noah and his family, to repeople the earth with a sturdier and more God-fearing race.

So much alarm was caused by this hocus-pocus of pretended science and prophecy, that some real men of science—Mr. Proctor among others—were at the pains to show that so far as these predictions professed to rest upon scientific facts they were baseless. The great planets will not all be in perihelion in 1881, and they will not all be in perihelion together at any time. It is true that several of the chief planets will reach their perihelia within a few years, and that it is rare for them to be grouped so close together as they will be at one time next year. It is also true that remarkable coincidences have been observed between the existence of great storms on the sun, that produce electrical disturbances and possibly meteorological changes upon the earth, and the presence of Jupiter near his perihelion. Astronomers have also suspected that the influence of some of the other great planets upon the earth can be perceived, but they have never discovered any reason to believe that the combined forces of all the planets could, under any circumstances, produce upon the earth a thousandth part of the evil effect ascribed to them by the astrologers, if indeed they produced any evil effect whatever.

Still the astrological almanacs for next year are repeating substantially the same predictions of evil things to begin, if not to culminate, in 1881. Because, as they say, the ravages of the Black Death in the middle ages followed the nearly coincident perihelia of four great planets, they predict similar consequences from the configuration of the planets now. But neither in their premises nor their inferences does science recognize any validity.

In truth, however, the astrologers, not less than the astronomers and all star gazers, will have plenty of phenomena in the heavens to occupy their attention for the next twelve months. The sky will not present such brilliant pageants again this century. There will be a remarkable series of conjunctions, and double and triple conjunctions. The most interesting of these is the great twenty-year conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in April. This conjunction is one of the strongholds of the astrologers. As it occurs in the sign Taurus, which they say rules Turkey and Ireland, they feel safe, on account of recent occurrences, in predicting very momentous effects in those countries from the conjunction. There will also be conjunctions of Jupiter and Mars, Venus and Jupiter, Saturn and Venus, and the far-away giants Uranus and Neptune will play a part in this remarkable planetary levee.

Venus will reach her greatest brightness in the spring, and will be so brilliant as to be visible at noonday. Her delicate crescent will be a favorite object in the amateur astronomer's telescope. Saturn will open still wider its wonderful rings and will be one of the chief attractions of the evening sky for several months. Jupiter will not lose much of his present brilliancy before he becomes a morning star in April. Mars will begin to brighten in the latter part of the year, and then his snowy poles and shadowy continents will again become the admiration of those who gaze through telescopes. In short, there will be no end of attractions in the starry heavens, and all the prognostications of the soothsayers will not be able to darken the sky of 1881.—N. Y. Sun, Dec. 22.