There is, according to the wise man's phrase, a folly under the sun, which, in my opinion, has as little to be said for it as any one of the many others of the present age, – and that is, – an insatiable inquisitiveness into future events, as if the fore-knowledge of what is to come would enable us either to alleviate or avert the decrees of Providence. – Well does mr. Dryden ridicule this propensity, when he says,

Yet are all ages, all degrees of both sexes, tainted, more or less, with this epidemic frenzy. – It cannot but afford the most astonishing, as well as melancholy reflections, in a thinking mind, to observe how many impostors, in and about this great town, are maintained by pretending to the art of divination, while the industrious followers of lawful occupations perish for want of due encouragement.

As I was one day on my Invisible Progressions, I accompany'd a mingled crowd of people into a house situated in one of the most obscure parts of the city: – at first I imagined that this was some private chapel, where persons resorted to pay their adorations to the Deity in a manner not authorised by the government; but was soon convinced of my mistake, when, instead of a pulpit and desk, I found the room we came into furnished only with globes and tellescopes, and other implements of a soothsayer and astrologer. – On looking round me these lines of Dr. Garth's came immediately into my head: