In effect it was seen that when the boy arrived at the age of eight years he nearly met his death. His father, being intent on going to a hunt, left the lad at home with a Latin exercise, enjoining him strictly not to leave the house until his return. As fate would have it, however, the stag in breaking away from the hounds jumped the wall of Dryden’s garden, and the boy running out to see what the noise was all about, came by the wall just as the hounds were scaling it. The wall gave way under the pressure of the pack, and Charles was buried beneath it. After a long illness he was restored to comparative health. At twenty-three years of age, when descending the steps of the Vatican, he fell and received such a severe blow upon the head as to render him unconscious. From this, however, he recovered, and might have lived to defeat the sinister predictions of his father, but that at the age of thirty-three he was tempted one day to indulge in a swimming feat in the Thames. Having crossed the river twice in succession he essayed to perform the feat a third time, but being caught with cramp or heart failure he was soon seen to be in difficulties; and before assistance could be rendered he sank and was drowned. Thus we see that among the readers of the Symbols some were able to admonish others and to give timely warning of the evils which beset them, while themselves unable to provide against those troubles of which they had equal prescience. One is indeed tempted to say with Philip Bailey, “Free will in man is necessity in play.” But we know that the reading of the symbols is not the same as the understanding of the law, and it is quite reasonable to affirm that the ability to foresee and predict a danger does not carry with it the ability to avert it. That such power lies to the hand of man we may assume from the fact that successive rulers of ancient China were able to continue in vigorous life long past the age at which astrological indications extend. Thus Fuh Hi reigned 115 years, Shin Nung 140 years, while Hwang Ti lived 110 years and reigned 100. Show Hao lived 100 and reigned for 84, and several others lived over 100 years each, and according to astrological principles all the “arcs of direction” would be completed in 112 years. Thus Fuh Hi began the Patriarchal Dynasty in 2943 B.C., and the obliquity of the Ecliptic was then 24° 7´, and taking the capital of the Yellow Empire as in latitude 39° 54´ the product of their tangents will amount to about 22°, which added to 90° will give 112° or about the same number of years.