THEIR MYSTICISM. 317 



life and death, marriage and children, riches and 

 honours, friends and enemies, were distributed. 



We need not attempt to trace the progress of 

 this science. It prevailed extensively among the 

 Arabians, as we might expect from the character 

 of that nation. Albumasar, of Balkh in Khorasan, 

 who flourished in the ninth century, who was one 

 of their greatest astronomers, was also a great as- 

 trologer ; and his work on the latter subject, " De 

 Magnis Conjunctionibus, Annorum Revolutionibus 

 ac eorum Perfectionibus," was long celebrated in 

 Europe. Aboazen Haly (the writer of a treatise 

 " De Judiciis Astrorum,") who lived in Spain in 

 the thirteenth century, was one of the classical 

 authors on this subject. 



It will easily be supposed that when this apo- 

 telesmatic or judicial astrology obtained firm pos- 

 session of men's minds, it would be pursued into 

 innumerable subtle distinctions and extravagant 

 conceits; and the more so, as experience could 

 offer little or no check to such exercises of fancy 

 and subtlety. For the correction of rules of astro- 

 logical divination by comparison with known events, 

 though pretended to by many professors of the 

 art, was far too vague and fallible a guidance to 

 be of any real advantage. Even in what has been 

 called Natural Astrology, the dependence of the 

 weather on the heavenly bodies, it is easy to see 

 what a vast accumulation of well-observed facts is 

 requisite to establish any true rule ; and it is well 



