at the first hour of the morning; she remains till the latest of night. In sunshine or in storm, she is pacing along that rugged beach, to console and be consoled.

Eleven months have thus been passed, when Lucy is persuaded by her husband to go to Owthorpe to see her children.

"When the time of her departure came, she left with a very sad and ill-presaging heart.” In a few weeks John Hutchinson is laid in the family vault in that Vale of Belvoir.

Lucy Hutchinson sits in holy resignation in the old sacred home. She has a task to work out. She has to tell her husband's history, for the instruction of her children :-"I that am under a command not to grieve at the common rate of desolate women, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and if it were possible, to augment my love, can, for the present, find out none more just to your dear father, nor consolatory to myself, than the preservation of his memory."

ASTROLOGICAL ALMANACS.

THE stormy period from the rupture of Charles I. with his Parliament to the Revolution, was the golden age of astrology in England. James I., "the wisest fool in Christendom," did little more for "the art" than to grant the monopoly of promulgating its absurdities in almanacs to the Universities and the Stationers' Company. As a matter of state craft, this was a politic measure. Almanacs have always had a considerable influence upon the opinions of the common people; and it was, therefore, prudent to secure the compliance of a powerful body of men with the wishes of the ruling authority. The French government, half a century earlier, had forbidden the almanac-makers to prophesy at all: but it was a more subtle device to render the liberty of prophesying profitable to those who would take especial care that their “old men should dream dreams" after that holy and legitimate fashion which should give "the right divine of kings" the last and best varnish of superstition, wherewith it might shine and look lovely in the eyes of the ignorant multitude. The Universities, to their honour be it spoken, grew ashamed of their participation in this pious work; but they were not ashamed of the lucre which their share of

the monopoly produced. They sold their right to the Stationers' Company; and that company earned their title to this and other privileges so fully, that in the next century they had the honour of being called "the literary constables to the Star Chamber, to suppress all the science and information to which we owe our freedom."

But Charles I. did even more than his sapient father. He not only encouraged astrology, but he affected to believe in it. He raised up Lilly and Gadbury from the low condition in which they were born, to publish the 'Royal Horoscope,' and to threaten disobedient subjects with malignant aspects of the stars. But Charles could not secure even the loyalty of the astrologers. The Stationers' Company always had especial reason for being on the side of the ruling power. They could always see clearly, "by the help of excellent glasses," who would be lord of the ascendant. They prophesied for Cromwell as they had prophesied for Charles; they sang 'Te Deum' for the Restoration, as they had done for the Protectorate; and although they dated their little books from the year "of our deliverance by King William from popery and arbitrary government, they had not forgotten to invoke the blessings of the planets upon the last of the Stuarts; and to prognosticate all the evils of comets and eclipses upon those who resisted his paternal sway.

Lilly was unquestionably the prince of the powers of the air in those glorious days of horo

scopes and witch-burnings. He was originally a domestic servant; but he was not satisfied to tell fortunes to the wenches of the kitchen, or to predict the recovery of a stolen spoon. In 1633 he boldly published the horoscope of Charles I., at the period when that unfortunate prince was crowned king of Scotland. Charles had either too much weakness or too much cunning to put the impostor in the pillory, as one might have expected from the friend of Strafford and the patron of Rubens. The astrologer was for years in the habit of giving counsel to the monarch. Whether he predicted evil or good in their private moments we are not informed; but the presumption is that astrologers could flatter as well as lords of the bedchamber. It is doubtful whether Charles found as much truth in the predictions of Lilly, as when he consulted the Sortes Virgiliana, with Falkland, at Oxford. The old impostor, however, was not content to be cabinet counsellor of the king. In 1644 he began to prophesy for the ear of the whole world; and he went onward through good report and evil report till he acquired a considerable fortune, bought an estate at Hersham, near Walton-upon-Thames, and died there in 1681. In his old age he became cautious in his prophecies; and was fearful, according to his own words, "of launching out too far into the deep, lest he should give offence." There is no doubt, however, of his semi-belief in his art. He deluded others till he was himself deluded.

Gadbury, who was originally the pupil of Lilly, became eventually his arch-rival and enemy; and when the one published his 'Merlinus Anglicus,' the other had his Anti-Merlinus.' Lilly, some three or four years before he was removed to learn the value of all attempts to penetrate into futurity, from the lessons of "the great teacher Death," thought fit to contradict "all flying reports" of his decease, "spread abroad for some years past." The astrologers of that day had a wicked trick of vilifying each other, by anticipating the summons of the Fates; and thus Lilly himself, when he could not write down Gadbury, announced to the world that his disciple, whom he proscribed as a monster of ingratitude, had perished in the passage to Barbadoes. But Gadbury outlived his master ten years, very much to his own satisfaction. He had a narrow escape in the days of Titus Oates, for he was a staunch Catholic, and had no belief in the "horrid, popish, jacobite plot," from the epoch of which Partridge dated to our own day. Partridge hated Gadbury as much as Gadbury hated Lilly; and when Gadbury died, Partridge published the history of what he called "his Black Life." But though Gadbury was dead, the Stationers, according to their most indubitable privilege in all such cases, continued to publish his almanacs, till another Gadbury (Job) succeeded to the honours and emoluments of his worthy relative, and prophesied through another generation of most credulous dupes.

Swift has conferred an immortality upon John