'Abuses non tollit usum.' The abuse of any thing doth not abrogate the lawful use thereof.

During this discussion, Ellangowan was somewhat like a woodcock caught in his own springe. He turned his face alternately from the one spokesman to the other, and began, from the gravity with which Mannering plied his adversary, and the learning which he displayed in the controversy, to give him credit for being half serious. As for Meg, she fixed her bewildered eyes upon the astrologer, overpowered by a jargon more mysterious than her own.

Mannering pressed his advantage, and ran over all the hard terms of art which a tenacious memory supplied, and which from circumstances hereafter to be noticed, had been familiar to him in early youth.

Signs and planets, in aspects sextile, quartile, trine, conjoined or opposite; houses of heaven, with their cusps, hours, and minutes; Almuten, Almochoden, Anahibason, Catahibazon; a thousand terms of equal sound and significance, poured thick and threefold upon the unshrinking Dominie, whose stubborn incredulity bore him out against the pelting of this pitiless storm.

At length, the joyful annunciation that the lady had presented her husband with a fine boy, and was (of course) as well as could be expected, broke off this intercourse. Mr. Bertram hastened to the lady's apartment, Meg Merrilies descended to the kitchen to secure her share of the 'groaning malt,' and Mannering, after looking at his watch, and noting, with great minuteness, the hour and minute of the birth, requested, with becoming gravity, that the Dominie would conduct him to some place where he might have a view of the heavenly bodies.

The schoolmaster, without further answer, rose and threw open a door half sashed with glass, which led to an old fashioned terrace-walk behind the modern house, communicating with the platform on which the ruins of the ancient castle were situated. The wind had arisen, and swept before it the clouds which had formerly obscured the sky. The moon was high, and at full, and all the lesser satellites of heaven shone forth in cloudless effulgence. The scene which their light presented to Mannering was in the highest degree unexpected and striking.

We have observed, that in the latter part of his journey our traveller approached the sea-shore, without being aware how nearly. He now perceived, that the ruins of Ellangowan castle were situated upon a promontory, or projection of rock, which formed one side of a small and placid bay on the sea-shore. The modern mansion was situated lower, though closely adjoining, and the ground behind it descended to the sea by a small swelling green bank, divided into levels by natural terraces, on which grew some old trees, and terminating upon the white sand. The other side of the bay, opposite to the old castle, was a sloping and varied promontory, covered with copsewood, which, on that favoured coast, grows almost within water-mark. A fisherman's cottage peeped from among the trees. Even at this dead hour of night there were lights moving upon the shore, probably occasioned by the unloading a smuggling lugger from the Isle of Man, which was lying in the bay. On the light being observed from the sashed door of the house, a halloo from the vessel of Ware-hawk! Douse the glim!'

alarmed those who were on shore, and the lights instantly disappeared.

It was one hour after midnight, and the prospect around was lovely. The gray old towers of the ruin, partly entire, partly broken, here bearing the rusty weather-stains of ages, and there partially mantled with ivy, stretched along the verge of the dark rock which rose on Mannering's right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves, crisping and sparkling to the moon-beams, rolled succesively along its surface, and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the silvery beach. To the left the woods advanced far into the ocean, waving in the moonlight along ground of an undulating and varied form, and presenting those varieties of light and shade, and that interesting combination of glade and thicket, upon which the eye delights to rest, charmed with what it sees, yet curious to pierce still deeper into the intricacies of the wood-land scenery. Above rolled the planets, each, by its own liquid orbit of light, distinguished from the inferior or more distant stars. So strangely can imagination deceive even those by whose volition it has been excited, that Mannering, whilst gazing upon these brilli ant bodies, was halfinclined to believe in the influence ascribed to them by superstition over human events. But Mannering was a youthful lover, and might, perhaps, be influenced by the feelings, so exquisitely expressed by a modern poet:

'For fable is Love's world, his home, his birth-place,
Delightfully dwells he 'mong fays and talismans,

And spirits, and delightfully believes

Divinities, being himself divine.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The power, the beauty, and the majesty,

That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountains,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanish'd,
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits of gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend, and to their lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,

And Venus who brings every thing that's fair.'

Such musings soon gave way to others. 'Alas!' he thought, 'my good old tutor, who used to enter so deep into the controversy between Heydon and Chambers on the subject of astrology, he would have looked upon this scene with other eyes, and would have seriously endeavoured to discover from the respective position, of these luminaries, their probable effects upon the destiny of the new-born infant, as if the courses or emanations of the stars superseded, or, at least, were co-ordinate with Divine Providence. Well, rest be with him! he instilled into me enough of knowledge for erecting a scheme of nativity, and therefore will I go pleasantly about it.' So saying, and having noted the position of the principal planetary bodies, Guy Mannering returned to the house. The laird met him in the parlour and acquainting him, with great glee, that he was the father of a healthy boy, seemed rather disposed to press further convivialty. He admitted, however, Mannering's plea of weariness, and conducting him to his sleeping apartment, left him to repose for the evening.

CHAPTER IV.

Come and see! trust thine own eyes,

A fearful sign stands in the house of life,
An enemy; a fiend lurks close behind

The radiance of thy planet-O be warned.

Coleridge from Schiller.

The belief in astrology was almost universal in the middle of the seventeenth century; it began to waver and become doubtful towards the close of that period, and in the beginning of the eighteenth, the art fell into general disrepute, and even under general ridicule. Yet it still had its partizans even in the seats of learning. Grave and studious men were loth to relinquish the calculations which had early become the principal objects of their studies, and felt reluctant to descend from the predominating height to which a supposed insight into futurity, by the power of consulting abstract influences and conjunctions, had exalted them over the rest of mankind.

Among those who cherished this imaginary privilege with undoubting faith, was an old clergyman, with whom Mannering was placed during his youth. He wasted his eyes in observing the stars, and his brains in calculations, upon their various combinations. His pupil, in early youth, naturally caught some portion of his enthusiasm, and laboured for a time to make himself master of the technical process of astrological research; so that, before he became convinced of its absurdity, William Lilley himself would have allowed him 'a curious fancy and piercing judgment upon resolving a question of nativity.'