the present
modes of worship, and in eluding all questions with regard to a subject
so momentous. Being asked at one time, what she thought of the words of
Christ, '_This is my Body_,'--whether she thought it the true body of
Christ that was in the sacrament,--it is said that after some pausing
she thus answered:--

"'Christ was the Word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it; And
what the Word did make it, _That_ I believe, and take it;'

"which, though it may seem but a slight expression, yet hath in it more
solidness than at first sight appears; at least, it served her turn at
that time to escape the net, which by a direct answer she could not have
done."--Baker's _Chronicle_, p. _320_.

[18] Cardinal Pole and others.

DR DEE, THE ASTROLOGER.

"Dark was the vaulted room of gramarye
To which the wizard led the gallant knight,
Save that before a mirror huge and high
A hallowed taper shed a glimmering light
On mystic implements of magic might;
On cross, and character, and talisman,
And almagest and altar, nothing bright;
For fitful was the lustre, pale and wan,
As watch-light by the bed of some departing man."

--_Lay of the Last Minstrel_.

The character of Dee, our English "Faust," as he is not inaptly called,
has both been misrepresented and misunderstood. An enthusiast he
undoubtedly was, but not the drivelling dotard that some of his
biographers imagine. A man of profound learning, distinguished for
attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like
Faustus, and the wisest of human kind, had found out how little he knew;
had perceived that the great ocean of truth yet lay unexplored before
him. Pursuing his inquiries to the bound and limit, as he thought, of
human knowledge, and finding it altogether "vanity," he had recourse to
forbidden practices, to experiments through which the occult and hidden
qualities of nature and spirit should be unveiled and subdued to his own
will.

Evidently prompted to unhallowed intercourse by pride and ambition, he
deluded himself with the vain and wicked hope that the God who spurned
his impious requests would vouchsafe to him a new and peculiar
revelation. He would not bow to the plain and humbling tenets already
revealed, but sought another "sign,"--a miraculous testimony to himself
alone. Fancying that he was entrusted with a divine mission, he was
given up to strong delusions that he s