then low water; but the helmsman directed her course obliquely across the river, as the inshore stream is always less impetuous than the central, where the depth and body of the water accelerates its force. There were then none of those coal, and wood, and lime, and iron, and stone wharfs, that now cumber the margin of this majestic river between Blackfriars and the Palace of Lambeth.

On the northern bank, beautiful gardens sloped to the brink of the water, and displayed, in their rear, the summits of numerous castellated palaces of the nobility; and between the Temple Gardens and London Bridge the antique roofs of many religious houses, that had, within the short period of a century, been in the possession alternately of Catholics and Protestants, monks and merchants, churchmen and laymen; so various were their masters in a country

that had four times, in twenty years, changed its national religion.

On the southern bank of the river, there appeared little of that throng of churches and palaces which stunted the northern bank; but there the vast plain which stretched southward to the Surry Hills, westward even to Richmond, and eastward as far as the eye could reach, was diversified with numerous farms and orchards, hop gardens, and grazing meadows.

In some places this plain lay so low that from the gallery of the Countess's barge, the roofs only of adjacent farm houses could be seen peeping above the noble embankment that appeared partly the labour of industrious generations long since dead, but more generally the operation of nature in those changes she makes in diverting the course of rivers from channels in which they flowed from time immemorial.

Along the southern gentle flowing current of the river the rowers plied their oars, and soon reached Lambeth, where the Countess was landed with her attendants Turner, Coppinger, and Weston; Mistress Turner, who acted as guide to the party, conducted the Countess through many narrow bye lanes to a neat cottage, well sheltered by trees, and, on the whole, so curiously fashioned as to represent the grotto of a magician. Coppinger, on the approach of the party to this secluded dwelling, applied a cat-call to his mouth, and whistled, or rather piped the inmate to a knowledge of his company and their quality.

With cautious step a venerable looking man approached the casement of stout oaken board, which was pierced with numerous holes of various diameter, but all stuffed up with plugs, so that by removing few, or many of these, both air and light could be admitted in whatever proportion the occupant pleased.

This ancient inhabitant of Lambeth wore a beard that was partly sprinkled with the blossoms of the tomb, and his locks were still more blanched with shaggy grey hair_He had on a mantle of velvet that had once been green, around his waist a stout silken cord with rich but dingy tassels was several times warped; and his head was covered with a bonnet of the same stuff, and seemingly of the same age with his gown.

"Father," said the Countess, "we are come to have another tug at the aspects and configurations through thy jatromathematical skill."

"Salve, filia, salve, ora pro me, said the aged artist; then addressing his helpmate, "Trunco, Trunco, open the door to the Countess," and his wife Trunco did so, the party entering agreeably to a prescribed rule of the astrologer.

"The astrologer"!-yes-the Countess of Essex was now within the domicile of a magician. The artists who practised medicine in the sixteenth, and early in the seventeenth centuries, were generally men skilled in the learning of the times, but they mixed with a knowledge of simples a vast mass of heterogeneous stuff under the specious but absurd name of alchymy. Still with all its errors, the alchymy of the philosophers, if such they may be called, of those times, became the handmaid of a more rational and enlightened science, now known under the fascinating and popular name of Chemistry. In the dawn of the reformation speculative men launched forward in experiments to achieve what the labour of ages had discovered to be little better than twining ropes of sand. They had received from the monks of the dark ages certain hints about discovering that indescrib