figures drawn on the earth, is still
extensively practised in Asiatic countries, but is almost unknown in
Europe.

AUGURY, from the flight or entrails of birds, so favourite a study among
the Romans, is, in like manner, exploded in Europe. Its most assiduous
professors, at the present day, are the abominable Thugs of India.

DIVINATION, of which there are many kinds, boasts a more enduring
reputation. It has held an empire over the minds of men from the earliest
periods of recorded history, and is, in all probability, coeval with time
itself. It was practised alike by the Jews, the Egyptians, the Chaldeans,
the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans; is equally known to all modern
nations, in every part of the world; and is not unfamiliar to the
untutored tribes that roam in the wilds of Africa and America. Divination,
as practised in civilised Europe at the present day, is chiefly from
cards, the tea-cup, and the lines on the palm of the hand. Gipsies alone
make a profession of it; but there are thousands and tens of thousands of
humble families in which the good-wife, and even the good-man, resort to
the grounds at the bottom of their tea-cups, to know whether the next
harvest will be abundant, or their sow bring forth a numerous litter; and
in which the young maidens look to the same place to know when they are to
be married, and whether the man of their choice is to be dark or fair,
rich or poor, kind or cruel. Divination by cards, so great a favourite
among the moderns, is, of course, a modern science; as cards do not yet
boast an antiquity of much more than four hundred years. Divination by the
palm, so confidently believed in by half the village lasses in Europe, is
of older date, and seems to have been known to the Egyptians in the time
of the patriarchs; as well as divination by the cup, which, as we are
informed in Genesis, was practised by Joseph. Divination by the rod was
also practised by the Egyptians. In comparatively recent times, it was
pretended that by this means hidden treasures could be discovered. It now
appears to be altogether exploded in Europe. Onomancy, or the foretelling
a man's fate by the letters of his name, and the various transpositions of
which they are capable, is a more modern sort of divination; but it
reckons comparatively few believers.

The following list of the various species of divination formerly in use,
is given by Gaule in his _Magastromancer_, and quoted in Hone's
_Y