Dinsmore Documentation  presents  Classics of American Colonial History

Author:Eggleston, Edward
Title:The Transit of Civilization from England to America in the Seventeenth Century.
Citation:New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1901
Subdivision:Explanation of Changes to Page Layout
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Explanation of Changes to Page Layout

In this book, Eggleston follows an unusual and confusing practice of placing section titles, bibliographic references, and endnote marks in the margins of pages. After much experimentation, I have given up on writing HTML code to place these in a parallel column. I have therefore treated the bibliographical references and endnote marks as footnotes, placing reference numbers in the text at what appear to be the most logical points. These numbers are in red, following my general practice of using that color to indicate material not found in the original text. It is not always clear from the context where the reference number should be in the text, and thus some may be incorrectly placed.

Section headings have been placed beneath the Roman numeral at the beginning of the section.

A sample page from the original text is given below, followed by its transcription.

Page 5

5

IV.

Astrology.

The interest in astronomy was mainly practical; the stars were thought to exert a controlling influence on human affairs. Kepler himself lived in part by casting horoscopes for princes, as Tycho had done before him; it is by such scullion work that the world in every age contrives to degrade its superior men and dissipate their energies. John Winthrop, the younger, Governor of Connecticut, a fellow of the Royal Society and a man of much learning, as learning was then understood, possessed some of the works on astrology so much esteemed at that time. Among these is a book with astrological figures set one on each page with the lower half of the page blank.[1] These diagrams are for every four minutes of time, and by means of them “any reasonable artist” in such things “may give judgment of a question.” On one page some reasonable artist has essayed to find out, by casting a horoscope, what was the ailment afflicting one Alice Wilkins in 1656.[2] Medicines were administered when the moon was in the proper sign, and the almanacs of the eighteenth century told the farmer to cut his brushwood in certain signs of the zodiac and in the decrease of the moon, that it might not grow again, but to cut firewood in the increase. Timber to last must be cut in the last quarter of the moon. So Tusser, in his Points of Good Husbandry, says, “The moon in the wane gather fruit for to last.”[3] The Rev. Jared Elliot,

[1] A Table of the Astrological Houses of the Heaven, 1654.

[2] Note 4.

[3] Note 5.

Dinsmore Documentation   presents   Classics of American Colonial History

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