CHAPTER IV.
Come and see! trust thine own eyes,
A fearful sign stands in the house of life,
An enemy; a fiend lurks close behind
The radiance of thy planet—O be warned.
The belief in astrology was almost universal in the middle of the seventeenth century; it began to waver and become doubtful towards the close of that period, and in the beginning of the eighteenth the art fell into general disrepute, and even under general ridicule. Yet it still had its partizans even in the seats of learning. Grave and studious men were loth to relinquish the calculations which had early become the principal objects of their studies, and felt reluctant to descend from the predominating height to which a supposed insight into futurity, by the power of con-
