living men. There is the same peculiarity in
the modern spirit. One day a pretty little
maiden of from four to seven appeared to the
two astrologers. Her hair was rolled up in
front, but hung down long behind; her gown was
of " changeable sey," red and green, and her
name was Madimi. Madimi said she was one
of six sisters; but would not give much
information about herself. " She would be
beaten," said the little spirit maiden frankly;
not a very pleasant contingency for youthful
spirits in the better world! When she
disappeared from the table "beside the silk cloth
where the show-stone stood," there came a man
dressed in red, like one of the cruel men in the
Babes of the Wood. He had red close hose,
red buttoned-up cap, red jacket, red shoes; and,
like the little maiden Madimi, he spoke in an
audible voice, and with a certain amount of
method and sequence. After the man, came a
woman in a red kirtle and a white garment
above, with a green coronet about her head
under the mantle. On her breast was a precious
white stone, and on her back another; she was
called Ath, was sharp of tongue, and somewhat
shrewish of temper, but a good spirit enough,
like a well-conditioned earthly scold: also a
character of the period; another and a well-
defined instance of the mere local and human
transcript of all these appearances. We should
not have such a spirit now; neither would our
little Madimi say that she would be beaten.
Earthly times and manners have changed;
consequently the spiritual and the heavenly times
and manners have changed with them. All
these spirits foretold and prophesied of the
next prominent person in this solemn farce;
the Lord Albert Lasky, a Polish nobleman,
who was to be made into something more
than a nobleman, if Dr. Dee and his spiritual
plotters had had full swing. When Lasky
comes he has a globe of white smoke on his
head, and is great as a medium, but foolish as a
plotter. The spirits are not always well-behaved.
Once a "great black masty hound" came when
he had no business; rebuked as a " hell-hound,"
he obediently retired; and once a false likeness
of our Madimi put on a very naughty
appearance, and talked such wicked things, that
we do not translate them in the vulgar tongue,
but keep them wrapped up in Latin, for the
perversion of the learned only. Wicked little
Madimi! she argued like a philosopher; but
her philosophy was of the laxest. Sometimes
the spirits held up their hands, with letters and
words springing from their fingers; sometimes
they showed hands alone, as at present by Mr.
Home and others.

"Cui est habet,
Cui nihil non habet,"

said one hand – the letters written all along the
back. Once, a piece of white paper was put on
to the mass-table: when mass was said, the
paper was found written over by spirit hands.
As soon as copied, the writing vanished. For
six months, there were no apparitions, and the
show-stone was dull and clouded. The young
son Arthur was put to see and hear: but he only
saw, and that but imperfectly; he could hear
nothing: and then his Power came back to
Kelly, and he saw, and heard, and translated as
before. Once the stone was taken away, and
brought back again by invisible hands "in the
sight of all," much as bells and bracelets, rings
and chaplets are taken now: and we all know
of John Beaumont's spirits, who brought a little
bell which they rang in his ear. Spirits have
always been fond ot bells; they are light, and
easily managed, and produce grand effects with
little expenditure of force.

All this early time, Dee and his companions
were made much of by the Emperor of Russia
(not France), and talked often with the spirits
on Russian (not French) affairs. They got
plenty of money, and little Madimi
prepared the way for Lasky to be King of
Moldavia; which was the meaning of the whole
matter. When that scheme was knocked
on the head, Prince Rosimberg came on the
scene, and he entertained the spirits and their
mediums handsomely; but nothing practical
resulting, poor Dr. Dee was ultimately left to
poverty and distress, with only the planet angel
Raphael for his comforter. Kelly died, having
broken his leg in escaping out of prison, and
Dee lingered on in a wretched state, mixing
himself up in plots both domestic and political,
between-whiles talking to Raphael, who came to
him in the show-stone, but whose coming brought
neither meal nor money to the miserable
conjuror.

What order and state of mind was in Edward
Kelly may be gathered from the following
extract made from Dee's memoranda:

"Edward Kelly yesterday had a show of a
little thing as big as a pease, of fire as it were,
in the stone, going about by the brinks. And
because it was not in shape humane, he of
purpose would not declare it to me, and so I have
noted (as appeareth) of no show. This he told
me on Tuesday night (that was yesternight),
upon occasion of a great stir and moving in his
brains very sensible and distinct, as of a creature
of humane shape and lineaments going up and
down, to and fro in his brains, and within his
skull, sometimes seeming to sit down, sometimes
to put his head out of his ear."

We need not wonder at anything reported to
be seen or heard by a gentleman who went about
with something of humane shape in his skull,
given to putting its head out of his ear! The
New Book which was to be written by the
spirits for Dr. Dee, and which book was to
supersede the Bible, the partitioning of states
on spiritual principles, the suspension or
contravention of the laws of nature by spiritual powers
– all become quite easy to us when we know
that the medium was afflicted with the sensation
of something alive moving about in his head,
and when we remember that state plots and
intrigues offered the solo, active career then
open to an enterprising man.

Dee and Kelly strangely prefigured the doings
of the present phase. They had a magic crystal