the body of this great reformer laid in Somerset House: the apartment was hung with black, the daylight was excluded, and no other but that of wax tapers to be seen. This scene of purgatory continued till the first of November, which being the day preceding that commonly called All Souls, he was removed into the great hall of the said house, and represented in effigy, standing on a bed of crimson velvet covered with a gown of the like coloured velvet, a sceptre in his hand, and a crown on his head. That part of the hall wherein the bed stood was railed in, and the rails and ground within them covered with crimson velvet. Four or five hundred candles set in flat shining candlesticks were so placed round near the roof of the hall, that the light they gave seemed like the rays of the sun: by all which he was represented to be now in a state of glory. This folly and profusion so far provoked the people, that they threw dirt in the night on his escutcheon that was placed over the great gate of Somerset House. I purposely omit the rest of the pageantry, the great number of persons that attended on the body, the procession to Westminster, the vast expense in mourning, the state and magnificence of the monument erected for him, with many other things that I care not to remember.' William Lilly, the astrologer (1602-1682), to be discussed more fully among the writers of personal memoirs, claims a few words here as the author of an account of Charles I. whose justice and liveliness would have met more general recognition, but for the author's character as a fortune-teller, and if it had not been mingled with the apparently serious exposition of idle prophecies respecting the White King. So long as he keeps clear of the occult, Lilly is a shrewd and discriminating, as well as a highly entertaining writer. His enumeration of individual traits in Charles's character is correct and instructive, and free from any misleading bias. He was in fact a time-server, whose main purpose was to stand well with the powers that were, and whose sketch of Charles would have worn another aspect if he had written after the Restoration; but this frame of mind, at all events, exempts him from political passion, nor does his complacency carry him to the length of misrepresentation, much less calumny. He is destitute of the literary power which would have enabled him to fuse single traits into an harmonious character; but he has supplied others with very valuable material towards such an undertaking. One merit the book certainly possesses in an eminent measure, it is one of the most readable in the language. The following passage indicates the author's real insight into Charles's attractive, but infirm character; and, adversary as he is, his remarkable agreement with Clarendon, of whose work he had no knowledge: