A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Crosse. Sueno, King of Denmark, at a great Feast, kill- 

 eth Canutus : Sueno is himself slain, in pursuit of Walde- 

 mar. The Order of Eremites, according to the rule of 

 Saint Augustine, begun this year ; and in the next, the 

 Pope submits to the Emperour: (was not this miracu- 

 lous?) Lombardy was also adjudged to the Emperour." 



Continuing this list of peculiar phenomena he comes 

 down to within a few years of his own time. 



"Anno 1622, three Suns appeared at Heidelberg. 

 The woful Calamities that have ever since fallen upon 

 the Palatinate, we are all sensible of, and of the loss of 

 it, for any thing I see, for ever, from the right Heir. 

 Osman the great Turk is strangled that year; and 

 Spinola besiege th Bergen up Zoom, etc." 



Fortified by the enumeration of these past events, 

 he then proceeds to make his deductions. " Only this 

 I must tell thee," he writes, "that the interpretation I 

 write is, I conceive, grounded upon probable founda- 

 tions; and who lives to see a few years over his head, 

 will easily perceive I have unfolded as much as was 

 fit to discover, and that my judgment was not a mile 

 and a half from truth." 



There is a great significance in this "as much as 

 was fit to discover" a mysterious something that 

 Lilly thinks it expedient not to divulge. But, never- 

 theless, one would imagine that he was about to 

 make some definite prediction about Charles I., since 

 these three suns appeared upon his birthday and 

 surely must portend something concerning him. But 

 after rambling on through many pages of disserta- 

 tions upon planets and prophecies, he finally makes 

 his own indefinite prediction. 



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