or more. Thus Mr. H*****, an English traveller, who came to see me, was born under four stars, all tending to beauty, but of no good in other respects. His forehead was as white as snow; his mouth" (I think she said) "was good, with a handsome small black beard; but his stars were otherwise dull: for you know the stars in the heavens are not always bright and twinkling, but sometimes heavy and clouded. It is like engravings—some of them are proofs, and those are perfect. Some persons may have a good star, but it may be cracked like a glass, and then, you know, it can't hold water.
"The influence of stars depends, likewise, on whether they are rising, or in their zenith, or setting; and the angle at which they are must be determined by calculations, which good astrologers make very readily. But a clever man will, from his knowledge of the stars, look even at a child and say, 'That child will have such and such diseases, such and such virtues, such and such vices;' and this I can do: nay, what is more, I can give a description of the features of any person I have never seen, if his character is described to me, and vice versa. There is a learned man at Damascus, who possesses the same faculty in an extraordinary degree. He knew nothing of me but by report, and had never seen me: but a friend of his, having given him a description of my person and
