the books of Ptolemy and the other wise masters, who have laboured therein. The other manner of divining is by soothsayers, sorcerers and wizzards. Some take their tokens from birds or from the fate-word; others cast lots; others see visions in water, or in crystal, or in a mirror, or in the bright sword blade; others frame amulets; others prognosticate by the head of a dead man or of a beast, or by the palm of the hand of a child, or of a maiden. These ribalds, and such as are like them, are wicked men and lewd impostors; and manifold evils arise from their deeds: therefore we will not allow any of them to dwell in our dominions. The royal Astrologer had little reason to deride the soothsayer: he never profited by the science, if he sought it as a guide. But there was a witchery in the illusion which could not easily be withstood even by a powerful mind. With respect to the works which he bestowed upon his age, it must be recollected that Astrology, though not discredited, was only a secondary object with the Arabian and Jewish mathematicians.' Many of the treatises which we have noticed have scarcely a symptom of the perversion of science. They are sober and intelligible, and contain a fund of knowledge then unattainable from any other source, and which the Semitic tribes could alone impart to Christendom. In the Book of the Sphere' there are few chapters devoid of real utility. The oriental observers gave the method of determining the rising of the star, of taking the altitude of the sun, and of drawing the meridian line they enabled the student to solve all the practical problems of astronomy. In the intellectual genealogy of man they may claim to be the progenitors of Kepler and of Newton; and the calculations of the Alfonsines are the remote but efficient causes of the perfection of modern astronomy.

Time was, when the astrologer acted no inconsiderable part in the world of politics: but yielding to the stern decree of fate, his occupation now is gone. Jacob's staff is broken. The brazen astrolabe is green and cankered. Dust and cobwebs cover the tomes of Ptolemy and Haly; and the garrets of Spitalfields and the Seven Dials are untenanted by the Seers, who whilome dealt out their awful prognostications of changes in Church and State, and who scowling alike at Rome and at Constantinople, ensured the downfal of the Turk, and the confusion of the Scarlet Harlot of the Seven Hills. So far we seem to have gained a victory over the superstitions of the middle ages; but our superiority, in some respects, exists rather in apprehension than in reality; and we have only changed the appearance of the disease. Those who would have been misled in ancient times are equally deceivable in modern days. Human folly is as immortal as the race; and though we have dragged the astrologer out of his arm-chair, there are others who

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have succeeded to his contemned honours, for he was guided in his lucubrations by an unperishable instinct. Doleful Saturn and lucid Jupiter now meet unheeded in the same constellation: but the Sage who would heretofore have comforted the hearts of the citizens of London with the pleasing expectations of plague and pestilence, and war and bloodshed, as he gazed on the threatening conjunction in the Zodiac, now acquires the same popularity by deducing the calamities of this nether world from the assemblage of monarchs at a congress; and, instead of watching the orbit of the planet, he fulfils his duty by reporting the course of the minor star, which glitters on the breast of the plenipotentiary.

The most flourishing era of astrology in this country must be placed in the busy, feverish reigns of the first three Stuarts. Whilst Ashmole lived, the Astral fraternity was yet numerous and respectable and, according to our laudable English custom of uniting eating and drinking with all other sciences and pursuits, they had a grand dinner once a year, a usage which we do not trace amongst the astrologers of any other nation. William Lilly furnishes ns with a curious gallery of portraits of such of the professors as flourished in London about his time. He has drawn them with more accuracy than charity, and our ideas respecting his own honesty are unluckily elucidated by the minute delineation of the sins which he ascribes to his rivals and contemporaries.

Doctor Simon Forman, a personage of some celebrity, studied and took his medical degree beyond the seas; he had good success in resolving questions about marriage:' this qualification will be duly estimated when we recollect his participation in the intrigues of the libidinous Countess of Essex. In other questions, it is exultingly stated by Lilly, he was very moderate.' So indeed it seems, from his own journal. Being in bed one morning,' he says, I was desirous to know whether I should ever be a Lord, Earl, or Knight.' So he cast a figure, and thereupon he concluded that within two years' time, he should be a Lord.' 'But before the two years were expired, the Doctors put me in Newgate, and nothing came.' Doctor Forman underwent this persecution from the other Doctors,' because he presumed to carry on his warfare under colour of his Leyden degree of medicine, and without being duly authorized to exterminate his fellow-subjects by virtue of a regular license from the London College of Physicians. He also predicted that his scholar, Doctor Napper of Lindford, would be a great dunce; and yet, adds Lilly, in continuance of time he proved a singular astrologer and physician;' a consummation which, in those days, might perhaps approach to an accomJishment of the prophecy.

William Bredon, Vicar of Thornton in Buckinghamshire, was 'abso

absolutely the most polite person for Nativities, and he had also the merit of strictly adhering to Ptolemy,' whom he well understood. This polite and profound astrologer had, however, one trifling failing, though it did not impeach his judgment: he was so given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco The would cut up the bell ropes and smoke them.'

Astrology was a fold which afforded a refuge to stragglers from all professions. Captain Bubb, who lived in Lambeth, resolved horary questions astrologically: he was a proper handsome man, well spoken, but withal covetous.' The Captain's destiny was mainly influenced by a certain butcher, who, having been robbed at a fair of forty pounds, applied to the Captain to discover the thief, which he agreed to do for 'ten pounds paid in ready money.' The querist was directed to wait at a certain place at midnight, when the thief would appear; he did so, and at the witching hour, somebody came riding fiercely at full gallop. The butcher immediately knocked the rider down, and unluckily he proved to be no other than John,' the Captain's own servant. In consequence of this mistake, poor Captain Bubb' was indicted and suffered upon the pillory,' as it is tenderly expressed by Lilly, and ended his day's in great disgrace.

Alexander Hart the Philomath,' a comely man of good aspect,' had also been a soldier. This worthy sage professed questionary astrology, and a little of physic; but as he had seen good service in the wars, his chief skill was to elect young gentlemen fit times to play, that they might win or get money.' A rustical fellow,' to whom he had promised a conference with a spirit, brought him to the bar of the Old Bailey. The Aldermen sentenced him also to be set upon the pillory,' but he was rescued from this infliction by the loving kindness of John Taylor the water poet, who being his great friend, got the Lord Chief Justice Richardson to bail him, and being so enlarged,' he very wisely ran away. William Poole, whom Lilly calls a nibbler at astrology,' but whom we suspect, from the expression used in his will, to have been rather an aspiring competitor, had nearly attained a greater elevation. Poole's evil destiny led him to a tavern where a silver cup was lost. Justice Jay' forthwith issued a warrant for his apprehension, and he took refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster, where he remained until the Justice was dead and buried; he then issued forth from his concealment, and revenged himself by writing verses upon the Justice's grave..

It was thus that astrology incurred the vengeance of the law: Lilly himself was summoned before the awful bar of Hick's Hall, where he appeared to an indictment upon which, if he had been found guilty, he would have suffered,' like his friend the Captain.

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He had the good fortune to be acquitted, owing, no doubt, to the favourable aspect of Justice Hooker, 'the oracle of all the Justices of the Peace in Middlesex,' who, by Lilly's entreaty, was present at the trial. Lilly was one of those men who, by dint of plain, persevering, consistent, unblushing roguery, acquire a decent reputation, convince themselves that they are honest, put money in their purses, and in due time are comfortably buried, as he was, under a nice black marble stone, inscribed with a record of deceased virtue in English and in Latin. The shrewd shock-pated knave came up from Diseworth with the Leicester carrier, and was bound 'prentice to Gilbert Wright of Newgate Market. His enemies maintained that Gilbert was a taylor. Lilly repels the taunt with great energy. 'I write this,'-quoth he, that the world may know that he was no taylor, or myself of that or any other profession: my work was to go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad; to make clean his shoes; sweep the streets; help to drive bucks when we washed; fetch water in a tub from the Thames, I have helped to carry eighteen tubs of water in one morning; weed the garden; scrape trenchers, and so forth. If I had any profession, it was of this nature. I should never have denied my being a taylor had I been one.'-Diligent he surely was; and his master rewarded him by an annuity of twenty pounds, Gilbert Wright being gathered to his fathers, his widow, who had been twice married to' old men, was now resolved to be cozened no more.' To her maid, Lilly's fellow-servant,' the lusty dame frequently observed, that she cared not, if she married a man that would love her, though he had never a penny:' after a few tender hints of this kind, Lilly became bold; and one day after dinner, when all her talk was about husbands,' he 'saluted her :' she spoke lovingly; he obtained her hand, which, six years afterwards, was snatched from him by death, she leaving him one thousand pounds as a reward for all his services. Lilly now throve apace; he married a second wife; she was of the nature of Mars,' and brought him five hundred pounds as a portion; and, with this addition to his fortune, he fairly embarked himself in the study of astrology, the black art, alchemy, and all other occult sciences.'

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Lucrative as these pursuits may have been, he carried them on in conjunction with other professions of a less occult nature. According to his own confession Lilly was a pimp. True it is, that when he ordered the fair Lady from Greenwich to go at such a day and see a play at Salisbury Court, which she did, and within one quarter of an hour the young Lord came into the same box wherein she was;' the conjunction between the fair Greenwich Lady and the young Lord was effected, not by human means, but by the ministry of the angels Uriel, Raphael and Zadkiel, and the Pentacle

Pentacle of Solomon. But all is vanity: I grew weary,'-he exclaims, of such employments, and since have burned my books which instructed these curiosities.'-Lilly picked pockets and stole papers; but these feats were performed out of pure friendship, and for the purpose of helping Mr. Pennington.' And in addition to these honourable exertions of science, Lilly was an intelligencer,' or, in plain English, a spy, for which he received a pension from the Council of State under the Commonwealth. In his more avowed calling of an astrologer, there is no doubt but that his 'Mercurius Anglicus' was a useful ally to the Roundheads. He tells us, with much satisfaction, that, during one of Cromwell's battles, a soldier stood, with the Almanac in his hand, exclaiming as the troops passed by him-Lo! hear what Lilly saith; you are in this month promised victory; fight it out, brave boys! and then read that month's prediction.' Lilly was a very prudent astrologer. Until the cause of the King began to decline rapidly he tells us that he was more cavalier than roundhead.' Subsequently he could still discern that the configurations of the planets boded no certainty to the prevailing party, and, to use his own words, I engaged body and soul in the cause of Parliament; but still with much affection unto his Majesty's person, and unto monarchy, which I loved and approved beyond any government whatever.' The same prescience created an instinctive antipathy between him and the Presbyterians, and therefore, when Cromwell became Protector, Lilly felt himself in favour, and he could 'write as freely and satirically' as he chose. Using these expressions, he could scarcely intend to conceal the secret that his astrology was merely the vehicle of the opinions which he was paid to favour.

A history of Court Astrologers would form an amusing volume, particularly if we could trace the effects of the advice of such an irresponsible ministry. Wallenstein depended much upon the counsels of Giovan Baptista Seni of Genoa, whom he engaged through the intervention of his confidant Pioroni the Florentine. Seni willingly promised his services at the rate of five-and-twenty crowns per month, Nay,' exclaimed Wallenstein, when the terms were made known to him,' I should be ashamed to hire a wise man at such a price; he shall have two thousand crowns a-year, paid in advance, and a coach and six besides.' So liberal a salary probably secured agreeable predictions.

In our times recourse has been had to astrology to support the cause of the Revolution. The astrological predictions of Thomas Joseph Moult, a seer of great repute amongst the French peasantry, and who is said to have flourished at Naples under Frederic Barbarossa, were reprinted with due adaptations favouring the cause of the