Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/238

 every traveller will testify who has visited her in Syria; for it was after she went to live in solitude that her penetration became so extraordinary. It was founded both on the features of the face and on the shape of the head, body, and limbs. Some indications she went by were taken from a resemblance to animals; and, wherever such indications existed, she inferred that the dispositions peculiar to those animals were to be found in the person. But, independent of all this, her doctrine was, that every creature is governed by the star under whose influence it was born.

Every star has attached to it two aërial beings, two animals, two trees, two flowers, &c.; that is, a couple of all the grand classes in creation, animal, vegetable, mineral, or etherial, whose antipathies and sympathies become congenial with the being born under the same star. She would say, "My brother Charles vomited if he ate three strawberries only: other people, born under the same star as his, may not have such an insurmountable antipathy as his was, because their star may be imperfect, whilst his was pure; but they will have it, more or less. Some persons again will have as much delight in the smell of particular flowers as cats have in the smell of valerian, when they sit and purr round it.

"The stars under which men are born may be one