would have required not only more talent than the Author could be
conscious of possessing, but also involved doctrines and
discussions of a nature too serious for his purpose and for the
character of the narrative. In changing his plan, however, which
was done in the course of printing, the early sheets retained the
vestiges of the original tenor of the story, although they now
hang upon it as an unnecessary and unnatural incumbrance. The
cause of such vestiges occurring is now explained and apologised
for.

It is here worthy of observation that, while the astrological
doctrines have fallen into general contempt, and been supplanted
by superstitions of a more gross and far less beautiful character,
they have, even in modern days, retained some votaries.

One of the most remarkable believers in that forgotten and
despised science was a late eminent professor of the art of
legerdemain. One would have thought that a person of this
description ought, from his knowledge of the thousand ways in
which human eyes could be deceived, to have been less than others
subject to the fantasies of superstition. Perhaps the habitual use
of those abstruse calculations by which, in a manner surprising to
the artist himself, many tricks upon cards, etc., are performed,
induced this gentleman to study the combination of the stars and
planets, with the expectation of obtaining prophetic
communications.

He constructed a scheme of his own nativity, calculated according
to such rules of art as he could collect from the best
astrological authors. The result of the past he found agreeable to