Letter X

Other Mystic Arts independent of Witchcraft--Astrology--Its Influence during the 16th and 17th Centuries--Base Ignorance of those who practised it--Lilly's History of his Life and Times--Astrologer's Society--Dr. Lamb--Dr. Forman--Establishment of the Royal Society--Partridge--Connexion of Astrologers with Elementary Spirits--Dr. Dun--Irish Superstition of the Banshie--Similar Superstition in the Highlands--Brownie--Ghosts--Belief of Ancient Philosophers on that Subject--Inquiry into the respect due to such Tales in Modern Times--Evidence of a Ghost against a Murderer--Ghost of Sir George Villiers--Story of Earl St. Vincent--Of a British General Officer--Of an Apparition in France--Of the Second Lord Lyttelton--Of Bill Jones--Of Jarvis Matcham--Trial of two Highlanders for the Murder of Sergeant Davis, discovered by a Ghost--Disturbances at Woodstock, anno 1649--Imposture called the Stockwell Ghost--Similar Case in Scotland--Ghost appearing to an Exciseman--Story of a Disturbed House discovered by the firmness of the Proprietor--Apparition at Plymouth--A Club of Philosophers--Ghost Adventure of a Farmer--Trick upon a Veteran Soldier--Ghost Stories recommended by the Skill of the Authors who compose them--Mrs. Veal's Ghost--Dunton's Apparition Evidence--Effect of Appropriate Scenery to Encourage a Tendency to Superstition--Differs at distant Periods of Life--Night at Glammis Castle about 1791--Visit to Dunvegan in 1814.

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While the vulgar endeavoured to obtain a glance into the darkness of futurity by consulting the witch or fortune-teller, the great were supposed to have a royal path of their own, commanding a view from a loftier quarter of the same _terra incognita_. This was represented as accessible by several routes. Physiognomy, chiromancy, and other fantastic arts of prediction afforded each its mystical assistance and guidance. But the road most flattering to human vanity, while it was at the same time most seductive to human credulity, was that of astrology, the queen of mystic sciences, who flattered those who confided in her that the planets and stars in their spheres figure forth and influence the fate of the creatures of mortality, and that a sage acquainted with her lore could predict, with some approach to certainty, the events of any man's career, his chance of success in life or in marriage, his advance in favour of the great, or answer any other horary questions, as they were termed, which he might be anxious to propound, provided always he could supply the exact moment of his birth. This, in the sixteenth and greater part of the seventeenth centuries, was all that was necessary to enable the astrologer to erect a scheme of the position of the heavenly bodies, which should disclose the life of the interrogator, or Native, as he was called, with all its changes, past, present, and to come.

Imagination was dazzled by a prospect so splendid; and we find that in the sixteenth century the