rk ofttimes to be
effected by some revelation, and Cabala from above, rather than any
Philosophy, or speculation here below."

(32) Sir Thomas Browne: Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Bk. IV, Chap.
XIII. (Wilkin's ed., Vol. III, p. 84.)

As late as 1699, a thesis was discussed at the Paris Faculty, "Whether
comets were harbingers of disease," and in 1707 the Faculty negatived
the question propounded in a thesis, "Whether the moon had any sway on
the human body."

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw, among intelligent men, a
progressive weakening of the belief in the subject; but not even the
satire of Swift, with his practical joke in predicting and announcing
the death of the famous almanac maker, nor contemptuous neglect of the
subject of late years sufficed to dispel the belief from the minds of
the public. Garth in the Dispensary (1699) satirizes the astrological
practitioners of his day:

The Sage in Velvet Chair, here lolls at Ease
To promise future Health for present Fees
Then as from Tripod solemn Sham reveals
And what the Stars know nothing of foretell. (Canto ii.)

The almanacs of Moore and Zadkiel continue to be published, and
remain popular. In London, sandwich men are to be met with carrying
advertisements of Chaldeans and Egyptians who offer to tell your fortune
by the stars. Even in this country, astrology is still practiced to
a surprising extent if one may judge from advertisements in certain
papers, and from publications which must have a considerable sale. Many
years ago, I had as a patient an estimable astrologer, whose lucrative
income was derived from giving people astral information as to the rise
and fall of stocks. It is a chapter in the vagaries of the human mind
that is worth careful study.(33) Let me commend to your reading the
sympathetic story called "A Doctor of Medicine" in the "Rewards and
Fairies" of Kipling. The hero is Nicholas Culpeper, Gent., whose picture
is here given. One stanza of the poem at the end of the story, "Our
Fathers of Old," may be quoted:

Wonderful tales had our fathers of old--
Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars--
The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,
Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.
Pat as a sum in division it goes--
(Every plant had a star bespoke)--
Who but Venus should govern the Rose?
Who but Jupiter own the Oak?
Simply and gravely the facts are told
In the wonderf