crates, Diocles, and
Avicenna. Or I will begin ab hora questionis, as Haly, Messahala,
Ganwehis, and Guido Bonatus have recommended.'

One of Sampson's great recommendations to the favour of Mr. Bertram was,
that he never detected the most gross attempt at imposition, so that the
Laird, whose humble efforts at jocularity were chiefly confined to what
were then called bites and bams, since denominated hoaxes and quizzes,
had the fairest possible subject of wit in the unsuspecting Dominie. It
is true, he never laughed, or joined in the laugh which his own
simplicity afforded--nay, it is said, he never laughed but once in his
life, and on that memorable occasion his landlady miscarried, partly
through surprise at the event itself, and partly from terror at the
hideous grimaces which attended this unusual cachinnation. The only
effect which the discovery of such impositions produced upon this
saturnine personage was, to extort an ejaculation of 'Prodigious!' or
'Very facetious!' pronounced syllabically, but without moving a muscle of
his own countenance.

On the present occasion, he turned a gaunt and ghastly stare upon the
youthful astrologer, and seemed to doubt if he had rightly understood his
answer to his patron.

'I am afraid, sir,' said Mannering, turning towards him, 'you may be one
of those unhappy persons who, their dim eyes being unable to penetrate
the starry spheres, and to discern therein the decrees of heaven at a
distance, have their hearts barred against conviction by prejudice and
misprision.'

'Truly,' said Sampson, 'I opine with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and
umwhile master of his Majesty's mint, that the (pretended) science of
astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory.' And here he
reposed his oracular jaws.

'Really,' resumed the traveller, 'I am sorry to see a gentleman of your
learning and gravity labouring under such strange blindness and delusion.
Will you place the brief, the modern, and, as I may say, the vernacular
name of Isaac Newton in opposition to the grave and sonorous authorities
of Dariot, Bonatus, Ptolemy, Haly, Eztler, Dieterick, Naibob, Harfurt,
Zael, Taustettor, Agrippa, Duretus, Maginus, Origen, and Argol? Do not
Christians and Heathens, and Jews and Gentiles, and poets and
philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?'

'Communis error--it is a general mistake,' answered the inflexible
Dominie Sampson.

'Not so,' replied the young Englishman; 'it