Hence we conclude that alchemy is in all probability, from the very nature of things, an obsolete and forgotten lore. LANCASHIRE ASTROLOGERS. Astrology (literally the Science of the Stars), is now understood to signify the mode of discovering future events by means of the position of the heavenly bodies, which has been termed judicial astronomy. This quasi science found universal belief among all the nations of antiquity except the Greeks. Among the Romans it was eagerly cultivated from the time of the conquest of Egypt. In the second century the whole world was astrological. All the followers of Mohammed have ever been, and still are, believers in it. The Church of Rome has repeatedly condemned the art, but popes and cardinals rank amongst its votaries. Cardinal d'Ailly (about 1400), calculated the horoscope of Jesus Christ; and in the fifteenth century Pope Calixtus III. directed prayers and anathemas against a comet which had either assisted in or predicted the success of the Turks against the Christians. The establishment of the Copernican system was the death of astrology. The last of the astrologers was Morin, best known as the opponent of Gassendi. The latter in youth had studied and believed in the art, but afterwards renounced and written against it. Morin, who worked thirty years at a book on astrology, and who disbelieved in the motion of the earth, repeatedly predicted the death of Gassendi, but was always wrong, as he was in foretelling the death of Louis XIII. Since his death, in 1656, the pseudo-science has gradually sunk, and has not since, it is believed, been adopted by any real astronomer. Roger Bacon and other early English philosophers were believers in astrology, no less than in alchemy. In Lancashire the most remarkable practisers of the art were Dr. John Dee, warden of Manchester College, his friend and "seer," Sir Edward Kelly, and John Booker, of Manchester. Dee was the son of a wealthy vintner, and was born in London in 1527. At the age of fifteen he was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he seems to have devoted himself to the study of mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry; displaying great assiduity and industry. At twenty he made a year's tour on the Continent, chiefly in Holland, and on his return was made one of the fellows of Trinity College on its foundation by Henry VIII., in 1543. In 1548 he was strongly suspected of being addicted to "the black art," probably from his astrological pursuits; and having taken his degree of A.M., he again went abroad to the university of Louvaine and to Rheims, and elsewhere in France; returning to England in 1551, when he was presented by Cecil to King Edward VI., who assigned him a pension of one hundred crowns, which he subsequently relinquished for the rectory of Upton-on-Severn. Shortly after the accession of Mary, he was accused of "practising against the queen's life by _enchantment_;" the charge being founded on