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spent the fury of the first fluctuation and watery progress, and by and by it returned to the contrary with the same earnestness, only because it was violent and ungoverned. A raging passion is this crowd, which, when it is not under discipline and the conduct of reason, and the proportions of temperate humanity, runs passionately the way it happens, and by and by as greedily to another side, being swayed by its own weight, and driven any whither by chance, in all its pursuits, having no rule but to do all it can, and spend itself in haste, and expire with some shame and much indecency.

The 27th edition of the Holy Living and Dying, has been recently published, Svo. by the Rev. Thomas Thirwall.

Jeremy Taylor possessed a very lively and beautiful fancy, a taste perhaps more chaste than correct. His power of language is unbounded; and we are often pleased with his astonishing fertility, when we are least disposed to sympathize with his opinions. His similies, indeed, are often crowded, and the general effect is dissipated and weakened by a redundance of beauties. The bulk of his works consists of sermons, which few probably would

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wish to read, but for the astonishing passages of eloquence which occasionally burst upon the mind. No writer can exceed him in sentimental painting-in awful representation.

LILLY.

WILLIAM LILLY, the famous English astrologer, was born in Leicestershire, in 1602. His parents not being in affluent circumstances, were unable to give their son a liberal education. Having been taught therefore a little writing and arithmetic in the country school of Ashby de la Zouch, he resolved to try his fortune in London, where he arrived in 1620. He first became servant to a mantuamaker, then book-keeper to the master of a salter's company in the Strand, who dying, he was so successful as to marry his widow with a fortune of 10001.

Being now at his ease, he, frequented the sermons and lectures of the Puritans; and in 1632, commenced the study of astrology, under the tuition of one Evans, a debauched

Welch parson, who had lately come to London from Leicestershire, where he had practised his craft many years. The first specimen Lilly gave of his skill in his new art, was a prophecy that the king had chosen an unlucky horoscope for his coronation in Scotland, 1633. In 1634, getting possession of a MS. with some alterations of the " Ars Notoria" of Cornelius Agrippa, he imbibed with great eagerness the doctrine of the magical circle, and the invocation of spirits, adopted a form of prayer therein prescribed to the angel Salmonæus, and soon came to flatter himself that he was the particular favorite of that uncreated phantom. He likewise boasted a familiar acquaintance with the peculiar guardian angels of England, named Salmael and Malchidael. Having purchased some other astrological books, which had been found on pulling down the house of another astrologer, he entered still more deeply into the science.

His subsequent connections with the parliament party, whose interests he espoused, are known from general history, and strongly mark the superstition of the times. Charles I. himself consulted him, to know where he should conceal himself, if he could escape

from Hampton-court; and general Fairfax enquired of him, if he could tell by his art, whether God were with them, and approved their cause. He received, in 1648, fifty pounds in cash, and an order from the council of state for a pension of a hundred pounds per annum, for information he stipulated to furnish relative to the chief concerns of France; which information he obtained by means of a secular priest he formerly knew, and who was then confessor to one of the French secretaries, Meanwhile, in 1648 and 1649, he read public lectures on astrology, by which, and other employments of his art, he amassed a competent fortune.

After the restoration, 1660, he was taken into custody, and examined by a committee of the House of Commons respecting the execution of Charles I.; but he was finally pardoned. For the ten or eleven last years of his life he combined the practice of medicine and astrology; and died in 1681.

In a literary point of view, he is chiefly known by his Ephemeris, or Almanack, which he 'entitled "Merlinus Anglicus Junior;" the first of which was published in 1644, and continued in repute for six-and-thirty years. In

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