prediction of the Earl of Salisbury that he “would shortly go mad” was nearly being realised, for in the midst of his poverty, and while on the very verge of the grave, he resumed his occult practices, in which he was aided by the formerly discarded Bartholomew Hickman. At last, in poverty and neglect, wearied and worn out, the miserable wreck of an ill-spent life, he, in 1608, passed away at the advanced age of 81, and was buried in the chancel of the church at Mortlake without any tombstone or other memorial to preserve his name. [Illustration: MORTLAKE CHURCH.] Of the numerous family that had once gathered round his hearth few remained at the time of his dissolution, death or estrangement having removed nearly all. His son Michael had died in infancy. His busy, shrewish wife died on the 23rd March, 1605. Of the other seven children Katherine was the only one who clung to him to the last. Rowland, on completing his studies at the Manchester Grammar School, obtained an exhibition at Oxford, but of his subsequent career nothing is known, nor, with the exception of Arthur, can we trace anything of the after-history of the others. Arthur, his first-born, resided in Manchester for some time, and subsequently practised as a physician. He married Isabella, one of the daughters of Edmund Prestwich, of Hulme Hall, and afterwards was chosen physician to Michael III., the first Czar of Russia, and for many years he resided in that country, where his wife died, July 6, 1634, after having borne him 12 children. Returning to England, he was sworn physician to Charles I., and located himself at Norwich, where he continued to reside until his death, September, 1651. Anthony à Wood, in his _Athenæ_, mentions that Arthur Dee, when an old man, spoke in full confidence of his father’s goodness and sincerity, and affirmed that in his youth, when he had initiated him in some of his mystical pursuits, he had seen enough to satisfy him that he had discovered many marvellous secrets, and only lacked the means to make them available. The son may not have been altogether an impartial witness, but it would be unfair to judge the father by the standard of the present day. Dee lived in an age when everybody believed in the occult sciences, and in the power of summoning visitants from the world of shadows by incantations and other mysterious means. Half a century before his death he had been pre-eminent for his learning, his eloquence, and his scientific attainments, and he was undoubtedly one of the great lights of his era. Camden styled him _nobilis mathematicus_, and he may fairly be accounted the prophet of the arts which Bacon and Newton were afterwards to reveal. A ripe scholar, well skilled in chemistry, mathematics, and mechanics, and the master of the whole circle of the liberal arts as then understood— He sought and gathered for our use the true.