First Sentence

"THE celestial science termed ASTROLOGY, or the doctrine of the stars, may be properly defined the art of foreknowing and predicting future events, by the motions, positions, configurations, and influences of the planetary orbs, and various celestial phenomena ; as eclipses, comets, and peculiar aspects of the most powerful stars : deduced from various experimental observations of the philosophical enquirer, through a series of ages, commencing with the earliest known records ; whereon is founded a system that neither the revolutions of empires, the fall of the mightiest monarchies, nor the physical changes in the moral and intellectual world, have been able to annihilate : but which, like the fabled phoenix of old, has not unfrequently arisen, splendid and beauteous, even from its own ashes."