events corresponding to the time when he would have completed his twenty-first year. There was another system called the Placidian, in which the effects of the positions of the planets were judged with sole reference to the motion of the earth upon her axis. It is satisfactory to find astrologers in harmony amongst each other as to these various methods, which one would have supposed likely to give entirely different results. 'Each of them,' says a modern astrologer, 'is not only correct and approved by long-tried practice, but may be said to defy the least contradiction from those who will but take the pains to examine them (and no one else should deliver an opinion upon the subject). Although each of the above methods are different, yet they by no means contradict each other, but each leads to true results, and in many instances they each lead to the foreknowledge of the same event; in which respect they may be compared to the ascent of a mountain by different paths, where, although some paths are longer and more difficult than others, they notwithstanding all lead to the same object.' All which, though plausible in tone labours under the disadvantage of being untrue.

Ptolemy is careful to point out, in his celebrated work the 'Tetrabiblos,' that, of all events whatsoever which take place after birth, the most essential is the continuance of life. 'It is useless,' he says, 'to consider what events might happen to the native in later years if his life does not extend, for instance, beyond one year. So that the enquiry into the duration of life takes precedence of all others.' In order to deal properly with this question, it is necessary to determine what planet shall be regarded as the Hyleg, Apheta, or Lord of Life, for the native. Next the Anareta, or Destroyer of Life, must be ascertained. The Anaretic planets are, by nature, Saturn, Mars, and Uranus, though the sun, moon, and Mercury may be endowed with the same fatal influence, if suitably afflicted. The various ways in which the Hyleg, or Giver of Life, may be afflicted by the Anareta, correspond to the various modes of death. But astrologers have always been singularly careful, in casting horoscopes, to avoid definite reference to the native's death. There are but few cases where the actual day of death is said to have been assigned. One is related in Clarendon's 'History of the Rebellion.' He tells us that William Earl of Pembroke died at the age of fifty, on the day upon which his tutor Sandford had predicted his decease. Burton, the author of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' having cast his own horoscope, and ascertained that he was to die on January 23, 1639, is said to have committed suicide in order that the accuracy of his calculations might not be called in question. A similar story is related of Cardan by Dr. Young (Sidrophel Vapulans), on the authority of Gassendi, who, however, says only that either Cardan starved himself, or, being confident in his art, took the predicted day for a fatal one, and by his fears made it so. Gassendi adds that while Cardan pretended to describe the fates of his children in his voluminous commentaries, he all the while never suspected, from the rules of his great art, that his dearest son would be condemned in the flower of his youth to be beheaded on a scaffold, by an executioner of justice, for destroying his own wife by poison.