observation of Hippocrates of that mortal time

of the year, when the leaves of the fig-tree re⚫ semble a daw's claw. He is happily seated who lives in places whose air, earth, and water promote not the infirmities of his weaker parts, or is early removed into regions that correct them. He that is tabidly inclined were unwise to pass his days in Portugal; cholical persons will find little comfort in Austria or Vienna; he that is weak-legged must not be in love with Rome, nor an infirm head with Venice or Paris. Death hath not only particular stars in heaven, but malevolent places on earth, which single out our infirmities, and strike at our weaker parts; in which concern, passager and migrant birds have the great advantages, who are naturally constituted for distant habitations, whom no seas nor places limit, but in their appointed seasons will visit us from Greenland and Mount Atlas, and, as some think, even from the Antipodes.

Though we could not have his life, yet we missed not our desires in his soft departure, which was scarce an expiration; and his end not unlike his beginning, when the salient point scarce affords a sensible motion, and his departure so like unto sleep, that he scarce needed the civil ceremony of closing his eyes; contrary unto the common way wherein death

draws up, sleep lets fall their eye-lids. With what strife and pains we came into the world we know not; but 't is commonly no easy matter to get out of it. Yet if it could be made out that such who have easy nativities have commonly hard deaths, and contrarily, his departure was so easy, that we might justly suspect his birth was of another nature, and that some Juno sat cross-legged at his nativity. I

Besides his soft death, the incurable state of his disease might somewhat extenuate your sorrow, who know that monsters but seldom happen, miracles more rarely in physic. Angelus Victorius gives a serious account.of a consumptive, hectical, phthisical woman, who was suddenly cured by the intercession of Ignatius. We read not of any in Scripture who in this case applied unto our Saviour, though some may be contained in that large expression, that he " went about Galilee, healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of diseases." Amulets, spells, sigils, and incantations, practised in other diseases, are seldom pretended in this; and we find no sigil in the Archidoxis of Paracelsus to cure an extreme consumption or marasmus, which, if other diseases fail, will put a period unto long livers, and at last make dust of all. And therefore the Stoics could not but think that the fiery principle would wear out

all the rest, and at last make an end of the world; which notwithstanding, without such a lingering period, the Creator may effect at his pleasure; and to make an end of all things on earth and our planetical system of the world, he need but put out the sun.

I was not so curious to entitle the stars unto any concern of his death, yet could not but take notice that he died when the moon was in motion from the meridian, at which time an old Italian long ago would persuade me that the greatest part of men died. But herein, I confess, I could never satisfy my curiosity, although from the time of tides in places upon or near the sea, there may be considerable deductions; and Pliny hath an odd and remarkable passage concerning the death of men and animals upon the recess or ebb of the sea. However, certain it is he died in the dead and deep part of the night, when Nox might be most apprehensibly said to be the daughter of Chaos, the mother of sleep and death, according to old genealogy; and so went out of this world about that hour when our blessed Saviour entered it, and about what time many conceive he will return again unto it. Cardan

* Aristoteles nullum animal nisi æstu recedente expirare affirmat: observatum id multum in Gallico Oceano, et duntaxat in homine compertum. Lib. ii. cap. 101.

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hath a peculiar and no hard observation from a man's hand to know whether he was born in the day or night, which, I confess, holdeth in my own, and Scaliger* to that purpose hath another from the tip of the ear. Most men are begotten in the night, animals in the day; but whether more persons have been born in the night or the day, were a curiosity undecidable; though more have perished by violent deaths in the day, yet in natural dissolutions both times may hold an indifferency, at least but contingent inequality. The whole course of time runs out in the nativity and death of things; which, whether they happen by succession or coincidence, are best computed by the natural, not artificial day.

That Charles the Fifth was crowned upon the day of his nativity, it being in his own power so to order it, makes no singular animadversion; but that he should also take king Francis prisoner`upon that day, was an unexpected coincidence, which made the same remarkable. Antipater, who had an anniversary feast every year upon his birth-day, needed no astrological revolution to know what day he

Auris pars pendula lobus dicitur; non omnibus ea pars est auribus; non enim iis qui noctu nati sunt, sed qui interdiu, maximâ ex parte. Com. in Aristot. de Animal. lib. i.

should die on. When the fixed stars have made a revolution unto the points from whence they first set out, some of the ancients thought the world would have an end; which was a kind of dying upon the day of its nativity. Now, the disease prevailing and swiftly advancing about the time of his nativity, some were of opinion that he would leave the world on the day that he entered it; but this being a lingering disease, and creeping softly on, nothing critical was found or expected, and he died not before fifteen days after. Nothing is more common with infants than to die on the day of their nativity; to behold the worldly hours, and but the fractions thereof; and even to perish before their nativity in the hidden world of the womb, and before their good angel is conceived to undertake for them. But in persons who outlive many years, and when there are no less than three hundred sixtyfive days to determine their lives in every year; that the first day should make the last, that the tail of the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coincidence, which though astrology hath taken witty pains to salve, yet

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According to the Egyptian hieroglyphic.