6

Curtius and Dee became good friends. The Austrian showed his English acquaintance several of his inventions connected withthe quadrant and with astronomical tables, and Dee confided to him the secret of a battering glass he had contrived for taking observations on a dark night. The glass was left at Cracow with his books and other goods, but he would gladly go and fetch it to show the Emperor. This led to Dee's request for a passport to enable him to travel, with servants, wife and children, where he would in the Emperor's dominions at any time within a year. He drew it up himself on October 8, 1584, and the Emperor granted it without demur. Dee soon started for Cracow to bring the rest of his goods to Prague, but the diary for the month of November is missing, and the following book opens on December 10, when he had set out from Cracow to return to Prague. "Master Kelly" was with him, John Crocker, and Rowland and his nurse, who had been left behind when Mrs. Dee and the two elder children joined her husband in Prague. As before, more than a week was occupied with the journey, which was made in a coach, with horses bought of "Master Frizer." In Prague a new lodging was found in a house belonging to two sisters, of whom one was married to Mr. Christopher Christian, the registrar of Old Prague. Dee hired the whole house from him at a rent of 70 "dollars" or thalers a year, to be paid quarterly.

"On Saturday afternoon, January 12, 1585, I removed clean from Doctor Hageck, his house by Bedlem, and came with all my household to the House which I had hired of the two sisters (married) not far from the Market Place in old Prage."

He announced his return to the Spanish ambassador and to Dr. Curtius, and continued his interviews with "the schoolmaster" daily.

Some of the sittings recorded at this time are really of the nature of school lessons, which to a man of Dee's acquirements must have seemed rather elementary, yet he humbled himself as a child to learn. One day geographical and ethnographical information is imparted about America, or, as Dee calls it, "Atlantis"; Cathay; the Bactrian desert; and Phalagon, a country of which Dee says he never heard. Another day, minerals and their properties form the subject of the lesson.

Much was said about the doubting, incredulous spirit of Kelly, which Dee always feels is the hindrance to further knowledge. At length he is given permission to choose another skryer if he will: "Take whomsoever thou wilt in whose face the Lord shall seem to dwell, and place him withthis Seer, and let him stand seven times by him. I will take the spirit from him and will give it unto the same that standeth by, and he shall fulfill my word that I have begun."

But Dee was strangely reluctant to part with Kelly. He loved him like a son, he yearned over his soul, and he entertained more lively hopes than ever of his real conversion, for Kelly had at last consented to partake of the sacrament with his older friend. Dee uttered aloud a solemn prayer: -

"O God, thouh has coupled us two together in they election, and what the Lord hath joyned, no fleshly fancy of mine shall willingly separate. But if it be thy will, seeing he is so hard to give credit to thy holy messengers, without some proof in work first past, as for example this doctrine of the philosopher's stone, that so he may come to be allowed, though he imitate Thomas Didymus in his hard and slow belief. And because he is to receive the pledge of thy mercies, and mystery of the heavenly food, we would gladly hear of that holy sacrament some discourse for our better instruction, and his better encouragement to the mystery receiving."

Then was delivered a remarkable homily expoundig Protestant Christian belief upon several points: the Creation, the fall of Adam (because he wanted the beauty and excellency of God's spirit for which he was created); of the sacrament of Christ's body, "the holy sign of peace between God and man"; and the mystery and wonder of the rite as shown to the disciples, not, as the wicked do, "tying the power and majesty of God and His omnipotence to the tail or end of reason, to be haled as she will....It is a holy miracle, and thou must believe, as the Disciples did, that thou partakest of the true Body of Christ sub forma panis. But receiving ceasing, the Sacrament ceaseth also." This in answer to Dee's interposed question. The Hussite doctrine of the permanence of the sacred element in the common food when blessed was of course much in men's minds in Prague. So with an injunction to "share this doctrine with your wives," this exposition ends.