House of Elias Ashmole, at Lambeth.

The name of Ashmole is now out of fashion; but, in his day, he was the Mecænas of a class of popular writers, and his pursuits were in keeping with the intelligence of his own age, while they constituted a necessary link in the progression of science and knowledge. He was the patron of William Lilly, of John Aubrey, and other occult philosophers; and his superstition and reverence for relics led him to assemble the collection which, to this day, forms the well-known Museum at Oxford under his name. The first dawnings of natural science in Europe consisted in classifying and embodying the rude superstitions of darker ages; and hence philosophy was identified with magic, astrology, belief in dreams, charms, occult causes, fates, &c.; and Kepler, and even Newton, were so far the dupes of these prevailing errors, that science is disgraced by them even to our own days; and ages must, perhaps, pass away, before natural operations are ascribed to natural simplicity in the mechanical action and re-action of atoms and masses.