NOSTRADAMUS.* Tait sage who, with the lower and non-religious world—as

dis- tinguished from that which follows Dr. Cumming—deals chiefly in prophecy, and who now-a-days makes a large income from pro- phetic almanacs, is this year, perhaps, more lively than ever, and in his latest edition of Zadkid boldly attacks the press for daring to assert that astrology was " exploded." "Who," he cries, "ex- ploded it ?" and, receiving no answer to his question, he asserts that because England does not believe in the voice of the stars we see " among the poor, want, misery, and indifference to Religion, Demons of Crime grovelling in vice—all the horrors of brutal ignorance, and the retrograde march of civilization ; among the rich, bloated wealth, sinful and soul-enslaving luxury,

cruelty, oppression, and harsh principles of law advocated And the kingdoms of Europe, reaping no fruit from experience, but ever ready to obey the evil influences of the martial star, and pour out each other's hearts' blood ! THESE ! THESE ARE THE DIRE EVILS REAPED FROM THE MODERN ATTEMPTS TO DECRY THE SCIENCE OF ASTROLOGY." The capitals are his own.

But Zadkiel has a set-off against unbelief. He cannot only refer to the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy, to Plato, Pythagoras, Nigidius Figulus, and Manillas, Bacon, Melancthon, Nostradamus, Al Hakim the Wise, and John Kepler ( " here be names, we hope"), but to the vast increase of believers of to-day. Cardinal Wiseman told us that by the colportage system in France eight to nine millions of volumes were annually distributed, but finding ".that exploded fallacies" of astrology were still preserved as scien- tific truths in these books, "the Government wisely required a stamp," and of 7,500 works examined three-fourths were rejected. It is possible, of course, that the Cardinal's friends wished to keep out some of the expbsive fallacies of Protestantism as well as " ex- ploded fallacies" of astrology ; but Zadkiel chuckles over the free press in England, and to show our superiority to France gives the returns of the astrological almanacs in the following list :—

"Moore's Almanac sells about ...

600,000 l'atridge's about... ...

290,000 Zadkiel's about ...

•••

55,000 Orion's, Old Moore's, and others

50,000 Yearly total ...

995,070

.As each copy may be judged to be perused by six persons, this gives an aggregate number of readers not much below six millions ! What other branch ofliterature can surpass this ?" (Zadkiets Almanac for 1863 )

What, indeed ! Perhaps, after all—and this is the most melan- choly part of the matter—these returns are not exaggerated by more than one-third, which, if so, leaves us four millions of astrological triflers, idlers, believers, or devotees, out of about ten millions of readers, if we may boast so many. If this be all that we have reached after many years if teaching, the ardent scholar may well ask, with Milton, "What boots it with incessant care strictly to meditate the thankless muse," and may join with Zadkiel, from another point indeed, in lamenting the retrograde movement of civilization.

Excepting, of course, Bacon and Kepler, many of the old disci- ples of astrology were mere puppets. Nostradamus has a sound- ing name, and has certainly published twelve " cenmries " (hundreds) of quatrains of prophecy ; but after reading most of these carefully, we may fairly say that out of the fifty thousand lines more than half are so utterly mystical that they cannot be understood, and that of the remainder only about one-tenth can be applied. His art is much the same as that practised at the present day. A direct application he seldom gives ; but it is fair to say—little as it may be—that an ardent believer in his pro- phetic spirit could twist, perhaps, twenty of his verses into some comprehensible application. It is very possible that no one else would agree to that application, indeed we always, with all pro- phets, want a key to the prophecy after it has occurred, and our modem soothsayers take care to supply us with one under the heading of "prophecies fulfilled."

Michel Nostradamus, a man probably of Jewish descent, but said to have been of noble family, "now only remembered," writes a biographer, " as the author of the most celebrated predictions published in modern times," was in his own day a skilful phy- sician. He was born on the 14th December, 1503. His father was a public notary. Michel having studied at Montpellier, was driven away by the plague there in 1522 ; he then travelled, and returning to Montpellier took there his degree. He became

* Cabinet Edition of the Encgclopadia Metropolitan. Occult Sciences. Griffin and Co., 1860.

Miraculous Prophecies, Predictions, and &range Visions of sundry Eminent. Mea. I.ondon, 1754.

• M. Ifostredamt (Les Prophecies de) ses Visions et Son gee. Lyons. 1505, A.D. Xostradamus, some of the Eminent Prophecies of (no place of publication). 1679,

intimate with Julius Caesar Scaliger, whom he styles a Virgil in poetry, a Cicero in eloquence, and a Galen in medicine. He was invited by a deputation of the inhabitants of Aix, in con- sequence of the plague occurring there, and was of such service, by the invention of a powder, that he received for several years a pension from that town. In 1547 he succeeded equally well in Lyons, and on returning to Salon, where he had settled, lie em- ployed himself, not only in compounding medicine, but also in studying astrology and the arts of divination and prophecy. The predictions he wrote at first in prose, but afterwards thinking better of the matter he turned them into verse, and in 1555 pub- lished his first three centuries, with a bombastical dedication to his son Caesar, then an infant.

Nostradamus did not forget to speak of himself and his won- derful gift in this dedication, and, in a superstitious age, easily set the ball of his own fame rolling. Notwithstanding the pro- verb that a prophet is but poorly received in his own country, the fame of the arch seer grew to a very respectable height, and although many called him an impostor, others declared that " his inspiration came from God," about which he himself appears to have had the least doubt of any.

Catherine de Medicis, " the Godless regent" who " trembled at a star," hearing of him, persuaded her son, Henry II., to send for him to Paris, where he was received graciously, and sent back to his own country "loaded with presents," that is, the King gave him two hundred crowns and despatched him to Blois to foretell the destinies of the two royal children there. Encouraged by his success he increased his quatrains to twelve centuries, and the King being shortly afterwards slain at a tournament, all the French world consulted the prophet's book of quatrains to find whether he had foretold the circumstances. In the thirty- fifth quatrain of the fifth century were found the following lines :—

"Le lion jeune, he vieu surmontera,

En champ bellique par eingulier duel, Dans cage d'or lea yeux lui crevera

Deux plaies une, pins mourir ; most cruelle."

We presume that the golden cage in which the lion was to finish his existence referred to the gilded armour of the king. Perhaps, in modern days we may see the difficulty of fully adapting the prophecy; but with the French of that day it was otherwise, and the prophet thereon became very much in request. Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, and his wife, Margaret of France, honoured him with a visit ; Charles IX., on his progress through France, sent

for him, and it is said—the story is told of other astrologers—

determined to put him to death, and asked him in bitter jesting if he could foretell the hour of his own death. " Sire," said the cunning physician, "the fates have withheld from me the exact hour of my death ; but on consulting the stars I found out thus much, that I shall die some very short time before your-Majesty : our fates are inseparably connected. You will not long survive me." It need hardly be added that the superstitions king did not carryout his intention of slaying the astrologer. He was, in- deed, appointed his physician in ordinary, and Henry presented him with a purse of two hundred crowns. His popularity having in the mean time been on the wane in Salon, he begged that he might be treated with more respect, and the king stated publicly that" all enemies of the physician should be reckoned as his own."

Nostradamus lived about sixteen months after this, dying in

July, 1566. He was variously estimated as a rogue, a charlatan, a fool, an enthusiast, and a prophet. Even so lately as 1806 a M. Bouys published a defence of him, in which lie claims for

him the merit of having foretold the death of our Charles I., that of Due de Montmorency, son of Louis XIII., the persecution of the Christian Church in 1792, the elevation of Napoleon to the empire, the duration of his reign, the fact (?) of his being equally powerful at sea and at land, and the conquest of the Corsican hero by the English.

This is the prediction about Charles I., which is at least singular :—

"Land et Bruxelles marcheron contre Anvers • Tenans de Londres mettront d wort leur Rai ; Le sel et le yin lui seront a l'envers, Pour aux avoir regne en d4sarroi."

But that which follows is even more so. In dedicating his work to Henry II., he told that sovereign that the Church of Rome would suffer much persecution "et durera ceate cy jusquali ii Fan mile septcent nonante deux, que Eon cuidera estre une renovation de Bache." We must remember that in 1792 (Sept. 22) the French Republic decreed the destruction of the old

"method of measuring time from the birth of Christ, and that in all public acts time was to be reckoned from the new era—in fact, the year One.

But in spite of these lucky guesses, the most part of the quatrains of Nostradamus are to us as incomprehensible as " Hebrew-Greek " was to Sir John Falstaff. What, for instance, can we understand by this which relates to our own land ?—

" Le Grand Empire fern par Angleterre,

Le Pempotam des ans plus au trois cents; Grands copies passee par mer et terre, Les Lusitans n'en feront pas contens."

• ' Does this relate to the dissatisfaction which Portugal felt, and perhaps, feels, at the success of England's colonies ? In the following quatrain there are those who saw a prophecy of the death of Louis XVI.:—

" Pluye, Faim, Guerre en Perse non ceasee, La foy trop grand trahira le monarque ; Par finie en Gaule commence,

Secret auguste pour a un estre parque."

" The Rain, Famine, War in Persia not being ended, Too great credulity shall betray the monarch ; Being ended, there it shall begin in France, A secret omen to one that he shall die."

The English translator in 1794 adds, "No sooner bad a peace been settled between Lord Cornwallis and Tippoo Seib, than 'war was declared against France, which proves a striking instance of the truth of this prediction." Louis XVI. was put to death in 1793. We presume that this amongst the many may have had a partial fulfilment ; or, on the other band, it may yet come to pass, it being a striking beauty in Nostradamus and other prophets that his predictions are so wide that, if not applied to one person or age they may fit another. Thus, to- day, Zadkiel having, as it happens, last year prophesied the death of Lord Palmerston and several others, whose great age would naturally scarcely require a prophet to foretell a proximate decease, the astrologist eats his own words, and declares that the application was wrongly made, and that if the Prime Minister do not die this year, he will " come to much honour in October or November next." "Truly, there is much virtue in an ' if.' " This is the quatrain to which we al-

lude :—

"Refine Gaulois to Beres change

En lieu estrange est translate l'Empire, En autre inceurs et lois feras range, Ronan et Chartres to feront bien du pire."

Nostradamus was, of course, a weather prophet, and published during several years an almanac and many other works, most of them medical, of which the names only are remembered. A famous Latin distich, attributed to Beza, and also to Jodelle, contains as much good sense as it does point, and is worthy to be remembered in connection with this prophet.

" Nostra damns, cam &lea damns, nam fallere nostra est ; Et cam false damns, nil nisi nostra damns."

A townsman of Michel has published an abridgment of his life, and Adelung has placed him amongst his portraits in the " His- toire de la Folie Humaine," a work which, if fully done, would be of the driest and most melancholy reading, but surely, also, a story without an end. It is questionable whether there be any believers in the prophet now alive ; but still many astrologers and alchemists buy their books of Mr. Millard, in Newgate street ; and as we have yet amongst us those who believe in Joanna 1.1$outheote and her Shiloh, there may be those who puzzle their ...bemused brains over the centuries of Michel Nostradamus.