Thus, too, it is related of Cardan, the celebrated physician and astrologer, that having predicted the year and day of his death, when the time drew near, he suffered himself to perish through hunger, to preserve his reputation. My worthy and most intelligent friend Mr. J. J. Welsh has furnished me with the following additional information concerning the death of Cardan, and other astrologers: “Respecting Cardan’s abstaining from food, in order to verify his prediction, Thuanus says: ‘Cum tribus diebus minus septuagesimum quintum annum implevisset, eodem quo prædixerat anno et die, videlicet XI. Kalend. Octobris defecit, ob id, ne falleret, mortem suâ inediâ accelerasse creditus.’ lib. lxii. p. 155. The same historian also relates, that Cardan brought astrology into repute by the success he had in calculating nativities. ‘Judiciaria quam vocant fidem apud multos adstruxit, dum certiora per eam quam ex arte possint plerumque promere.’ _Id. ib._ Cardan was not the only astrologer who foretold the time of his own death; for Martin Hortensius, Professor of Mathematics in Amsterdam, not only predicted the time of his own death, but that of two young men who were with him, and the result proved the truth of his prophecy. The fact is admitted by Descartes, while he ridicules the science and underrates the abilities of Hortensius. See the 35th of his Letters to Father Mersenne, in the second volume of that collection. “When Ann of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII., was delivered of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIV., a famous German astrologer was in attendance to draw his nativity, but refused to say more than these three words, which give a true character of Louis the Fourteenth’s reign; _Diu, durè, feliciter_. See Limier’s Hist. du Règne de Louis XIV. “I omitted to mention above, a curious circumstance related of Cardan in Lavrey’s Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 711, viz. that having cured the Archbishop of St. Andrew’s of a disorder which had baffled the most skilful physicians, he took his leave of the Primate in these words: ‘I have been able to cure you of your sickness, but cannot change your destiny, nor prevent you from being hanged.’ Eighteen years after, this Prelate was hung by order of the Commissioners appointed by Mary Queen Regent of Scotland. “By the way, I am much surprised that Cardan’s autobiography has never been translated; for it is, without a single exception, the most extraordinary book of the kind ever published.”