favour of all our young gallants, who have got a custom of expressing anything that is nowhere but in fiction by the name of “Mrs. O——­’s husband.”  For my life I cannot beat into their heads a passion that must be subject to no decay, an even perfect kindness that must last perpetually, without the least intermission.  They laugh to hear me say that one unkind word would destroy all the satisfaction of my life, and that I should expect our kindness should increase every day, if it were possible, but never lessen.  All this is perfect nonsense in their opinion; but I should not doubt the convincing them if I could hope to be so happy as to be

Yours.

Letter 65.—­Of William Lilly, a noted and extraordinary character of that day, the following account is taken from his own Life and Times, a lively book, full of amusing lies and astrological gossip, in which the author describes himself as a student of the Black Art.  He was born in 1602 at Diseworth, an obscure town in the north of Leicestershire.  His family appear to have been yeomen in this town for many generations.  Passing over the measles of his infancy, and other trivial details of childhood, which he describes minutely, we find him as a boy at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, where he is the pupil of one Mr. John Brinsley.  Here he learned Latin and Greek, and began to study Hebrew.  In the sixteenth year of his age he was greatly troubled with dreams concerning his damnation or salvation; and at the age of eighteen he returned to his father’s house, and there kept a school in great penury.  He then appears to have come up to London, leaving his father in a debtor’s prison, and proceeded in pursuit of fortune with a new suit of clothes and seven shillings and sixpence in his pocket.  In London he entered the service of one Gilbert Wright, an independent citizen of small means and smaller education.  To him Lilly was both man-servant and secretary.  The second Mrs. Wright seems to have had a taste for astrology, and consulted some of the quacks who then preyed on the silly women of the city.  She was very fond of young Lilly, who attended her in her last illness, and, in return for his care and attention, she bequeathed to him several “sigils” or talismanic seals.  Probably it was the foolishness of this poor woman that first suggested to Lilly the advantages to be gained from the profession of astrology.  Mr. Wright married a third wife, and soon afterwards died, leaving his widow comfortably off.  She fell in love with Lilly, who married her in 1627, and for five years, until her death, they lived happily together.  Lilly was now a man of means, and was enabled to study that science which he afterwards practised with so much success.  There were a good many professors of the black art at this date, and Lilly studied under one Evans, a scoundrelly ex-parson from Wales, until, according to Lilly’s own account, he discovered Evans to be the cheat he undoubtedly was.  Lilly,