he words
are sufficiently ambiguous; but not so much so, as many other
"prophecies" of the same notable quack, happily constructed to shift
with changes in events, and so be made to fit them. Lilly was opposed by
Wharton, who saw in the stars as many good signs for the Royal Army; and
Lilly himself began to see differently as the power of Cromwell waned.
Among the hundreds of pamphlets poured from the press in the excited
days of the great civil wars in England, few are more curious than these
"strange and remarkable predictions," "Signs in the Sky," and "Warnings
to England," the productions of star-gazing knaves, which "terrified our
isle from its propriety."]

ALCHYMY.

Mrs. Thomas, the Corinna of Dryden, in her Life, has recorded one of the
delusions of alchymy.

An infatuated lover of this delusive art met with one who pretended to
have the power of transmuting lead to gold; that is, in their language,
the _imperfect_ metals to the _perfect one_. The hermetic philosopher
required only the materials, and time, to perform his golden operations.
He was taken, to the country residence of his patroness. A long
laboratory was built, and that his labours might not be impeded by any
disturbance, no one was permitted to enter into it. His door was
contrived to turn on a pivot; so that, unseen and unseeing, his meals
were conveyed to him without distracting the sublime meditations of the
sage.

During a residence of two years, he never condescended to speak but two
or three times in a year to his infatuated patroness. When she was
admitted into the laboratory, she saw, with pleasing astonishment,
stills, cauldrons, long flues, and three or four Vulcanian fires blazing
at different corners of this magical mine; nor did she behold with less
reverence the venerable figure of the dusty philosopher. Pale and
emaciated with daily operations and nightly vigils, he revealed to her,
in unintelligible jargon, his progresses; and having sometimes
condescended to explain the mysteries of the arcana, she beheld, or
seemed to behold, streams of fluid and heaps of solid ore scattered
around the laboratory. Sometimes he required a new still, and sometimes
vast quantities of lead. Already this unfortunate lady had expended the
half of her fortune in supplying the demands of the philosopher. She
began now to lower her imagination to the standard of reason. Two years
had now elapsed, vast quantities of lead had gone in, and nothin