The Sage in Velvet Chair, here lolls at Ease
     To promise future Health for present Fees
     Then as from Tripod solemn Sham reveals
     And what the Stars know nothing of foretell. (Canto ii.)

The almanacs of Moore and Zadkiel continue to be published, and remain popular.  In London, sandwich men are to be met with carrying advertisements of Chaldeans and Egyptians who offer to tell your fortune by the stars.  Even in this country, astrology is still practiced to a surprising extent if one may judge from advertisements in certain papers, and from publications which must have a considerable sale.  Many years ago, I had as a patient an estimable astrologer, whose lucrative income was derived from giving people astral information as to the rise and fall of stocks.  It is a chapter in the vagaries of the human mind that is worth careful study.(33) Let me commend to your reading the sympathetic story called “A Doctor of Medicine” in the “Rewards and Fairies” of Kipling.  The hero is Nicholas Culpeper, Gent., whose picture is here given.  One stanza of the poem at the end of the story, “Our Fathers of Old,” may be quoted: 

     Wonderful tales had our fathers of old—­
     Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars—­
     The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,
     Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars. 
     Pat as a sum in division it goes—­
     (Every plant had a star bespoke)—­
     Who but Venus should govern the Rose? 
     Who but Jupiter own the Oak? 
     Simply and gravely the facts are told
     In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.

(33) It is not generally known that Stonewall Jackson practiced astrology.  Col.  J. W. Revere in “Keel and Saddle” (Boston, 1872) tells of meeting Jackson in 1852 on a Mississippi steamer and talking with him on the subject.  Some months later, Revere received a letter from Jackson enclosing his (Revere’s) horoscope.  There was a “culmination of the malign aspect during the first days of May, 1863—­both will be exposed to a common danger at the time indicated.”  At the battle of Chancellorsville, May 9, 1863, Revere saw Jackson mortally wounded!

James J. Walsh of New York has written a book of extraordinary interest called “The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries.”  I have not the necessary knowledge to say whether he has made out his case or not for art and for literature.  There was certainly a great awakening and, inspired by high ideals, men turned with a true instinct to the belief that there was more in life than could be got out of barren scholastic studies.  With many of the strong men of the period one feels the keenest mental sympathy.  Grosseteste, the great Clerk of Lincoln, as a scholar, a teacher and a reformer, represents a type of mind that could grow only in fruitful soil.  Roger Bacon may be called the first of the moderns—­certainly the first to appreciate the extraordinary possibilities