when its lustre was no longer dusked by cloudy interests or temporary passions.

There is no object in human pursuits which the genius of Rawleigh did not embrace. What science was that unwearying mind not busied in? What arts of hoar antiquity did he not love to seek? What sense of the beautiful ever passed transiently over his spirit? His books and his pictures ever accompanied him in his voyages. Even in the short hour before his last morning, is he not still before us, while his midnight pen traces his mortuary verse, perpetuating the emotions of the sage, and of the hero who could not fear death*.

Such is the psychological history of a genius of the first order of minds, whom posterity hails among the founders of our literature.

* The Dean of Westminster was astonished at Rawleigh's cheerfulness on the day of his execution, who "made no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey." The divine was fearful that this contempt of death might arise from "a senselessness of his own state," but the hero satisfied the dean that he died " very Christianly." Yet the gossip of Aubrey tells, that "his cousin Whitney said, and I think it is printed, that he spake not one word of Christ, but of the great and incomprehensible God with much zeal and adoration, so that he concluded he was an a-Christ, not an a-theist." In this manner great men were then judged whenever they "ventured at discourse which was unpleasant to the churchmen," as this confused recorder of curious matters has sent down to This indicates that Socinian principles were appearing.

us.

THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR DEE.

At the dawn of philosophy its dreams were not yet dispersed, and philosophers were often in peril of being as imaginative as poets. The arid abstractions of the schoolmen were succeeded by the fanciful visions of the occult philosophers; and both were but preludes to the experimental philosophy of Bacon and Newton, and the metaphysics of Locke. The first illegitimate progeny of science were deemed occult and even magical; while astronomy was bewildered with astrology, chemistry was running into alchemy, and natural philosophy wantoned in the grotesque chimeras of magical phantoms, the philosophers themselves pursued science in a suspicious secresy, and were often imagined to know much more than the human faculties can acquire. These anagogical children of reverie, straying beyond "the visible diurnal sphere," elevated above humanity, found no boundary which they did not pass beyond-no profundity which they did not fathom-no altitude on which they did not rest. The credulity of enthusiasts was kept alive by the devices of artful deceivers, and illusion closed in imposture.

Shakespeare, in the person of Prospero, has exhibited

the prevalent notions of the judicial astrologer combined with the adept, whose white magic, as distinguished from the black or demon magic, holds an intercourse with purer spirits. Such a sage was

"transported,

And rapt in secret studies;"

that is, in the occult sciences; and he had

“Volumes that he prized more than his dukedom."

These were alchemical, astrological, and cabalistical treatises. The magical part of "The Tempest," Warton has observed, "is founded on that sort of philosophy which was peculiar to JOHN DEE and his associates, and has been called the Rosicrucian.'"

Dr. DEE was a Theurgist, a sort of magician, who imagined that they held communication with angelic spirits, of which he has left us a memorable evidence. His personal history may serve as a canvas for the picture of an occult philosopher-his reveries, his ambition, and his calamity.

Dee was an eminent and singular person, more intimately connected with the patronage of Elizabeth than perhaps has been observed. It was the fate of this scholar to live in the reigns of five of our successive sovereigns, each of whom had some influence on his fortunes. His father, in the household of Henry the Eighth, suffered some "hard-dealing" from

this imperious monarch injurious to the inheritance of the son; the harshness of the sire was considered by the royal children, for Edward granted a pension; Mary, in the day of trial, was favourably disposed towards the philosopher; and Elizabeth, a queen well known for her penurious dispensations, at all times promptly supplied the wants of her careless and dreamy sage.

That decision of character which awaits not for any occasion to reveal itself, broke forth in his college-days. His skill in mathematics, and his astronomical observations, had attracted general notice; and in his twentieth year, Dee ventured on the novel enterprise of conferring personally with the learned of the Netherlands. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, little experimental knowledge was to be gathered out of books. Like the ancient, our insular philosophers early travelled to discover those novelties in science which were often limited to the private circle; there were no Royal or Antiquarian Societies, no "Transactions" of science or the arts. Robert Fludd, the great Rosicrucian, who became more famous than Dee in occult studies, before he gave the world his elaborate labours, passed six years in his travels in France, Germany, and Italy.

Our youthful sage on his return to his college presented them with several curious instruments of science

which were not then always procurable in the shops of mechanics. Philosophers often made as well as invented their implements. The learned Mercator was renowned for his globes; and mathematical instruments, of a novel construction, were the invention of the scientific Frisias.

Our young philosopher, already suspected of a dangerous intimacy with the astral influences, did not quiet the murmurs by his improved dexterity in mechanics. In the elation of youth, he astounded the marvelling fellows of his college. Dee has himself confessed, that "his boyish attempts and exploits scholastical may not be meet to repeat." In a lecture, Dee executed a piece of mechanical invention which, now, would have been pantomimical, but was then necromantic. When a greater magician, Roger Bacon, by his art, had made the apparition of a man to walk from the top of All-Hallows steeple in Oxford to the top of St. Mary's, this optical illusion had endangered his life; and another great occult philosopher set forth a compassionate apology for the science of optics, but could only allege it was not magical, though it seemed so. Two centuries and a half had not sufficed to enlighten the fellows of a college at Oxford.

Dee has suffered hard measure from those who have only judged of him in the last days of his unprotected