GOLD.                                        377
	called art; as likewise in his Crystal, of a convex form, which he alleged had been presented to him by no less a person than the angel Uriel. Dr. Dee believed also in the possibility of communicating with the spirits of the invisible world, supposing that he had only by looking intently into his Crystal to behold those who had been long dead, and to converse with them. It is now known that this wondrous crystal was nothing more than a polished piece of cannel coal. In a catalogue of a well-remembered sale held by Mr. George Robins, 1842 (that of the effects of Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill) we find the following puff:—" One glance must be allowed at the little glass case in the corner, which is filled with curiosities. Here is the wondrous speculum of the renowned Dr. Dee,—the mirror which Kelly (another contemporary magician) did all his feats upon." The same is a highly polished piece of cannel coal, of a circular form, with a handle to it. It is a very mysterious-looking object, and worthy of being called " the devil's looking-glass." As regards the planetary symbol of the sun, previously noticed here, it is to be said that the origin of such planetary symbols—applied to all the nobler metals— is wrapt in obscurity ; what their primitive meaning signified is by no means clear. Obviously the moon— which denotes the metal silver,—was designated by the crescent, as a representation of herself. The alchemists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who were all more or less astrologers, thought out an explanation of these planetary metallic symbols, which briefly was this: Gold, as we have told, was represented by a circle, with a dot in the centre, id est, the character signifying the sun; the circle being always taken as the