ore could predict, with some approach to certainty, the events of
any man's career, his chance of success in life or in marriage, his
advance in favour of the great, or answer any other horary questions, as
they were termed, which he might be anxious to propound, provided always
he could supply the exact moment of his birth. This, in the sixteenth
and greater part of the seventeenth centuries, was all that was
necessary to enable the astrologer to erect a scheme of the position of
the heavenly bodies, which should disclose the life of the interrogator,
or Native, as he was called, with all its changes, past, present, and to
come.

Imagination was dazzled by a prospect so splendid; and we find that in
the sixteenth century the cultivation of this fantastic science was the
serious object of men whose understandings and acquirements admit of no
question. Bacon himself allowed the truth which might be found in a
well-regulated astrology, making thus a distinction betwixt the art as
commonly practised and the manner in which it might, as he conceived, be
made a proper use of. But a grave or sober use of this science, if even
Bacon could have taught such moderation, would not have suited the
temper of those who, inflamed by hopes of temporal aggrandizement,
pretended to understand and explain to others the language of the stars.
Almost all the other paths of mystic knowledge led to poverty; even the
alchemist, though talking loud and high of the endless treasures his art
was to produce, lived from day to day and from year to year upon hopes
as unsubstantial as the smoke of his furnace. But the pursuits of the
astrologer were such as called for instant remuneration. He became rich
by the eager hopes and fond credulity of those who consulted him, and
that artist lived by duping others, instead of starving, like others, by
duping himself. The wisest men have been cheated by the idea that some
supernatural influence upheld and guided them; and from the time of
Wallenstein to that of Buonaparte, ambition and success have placed
confidence in the species of fatalism inspired by a belief of the
influence of their own star. Such being the case, the science was little
pursued by those who, faithful in their remarks and reports, must soon
have discovered its delusive vanity through the splendour of its
professions; and the place of such calm and disinterested pursuers of
truth was occupied by a set of men sometimes ingenious, always for