ZADKIEL, THE SEER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4156, 16 July 1874, Page 3

ZADKIEL, THE SEER.

Not long ago, Commander Richard James Morrison, of the Royal Navy, known in his day among his intimates ’as a Hebrew scholar as well as a mathematician and astronomer, died quite unexpectedly. At the time of his death he could have been very little short of eighty years of age. With all his unquestionable ability—-and he was a man who had collected together, /luring the course of his long life, a curious store of oldworld learning—he was chiefly remarkable for his devotion, during fifty years and upwards, to the study of the pseudo-science of astrology. Every year since 1830—that is, for a period of forty-four years consecutively—he had, under the tolerably notorious signature of Zadldel Tao-Sze, brought out his little sixpenny pamphlet, known far and wide among the credulous as “Zadkiel’s Almanack.” It sold annually by tens of thousands, running up sometimes to an imprint of 100,000 and 200,000 copies, and it secured to him for more than the lifetime of a whole generation a moderate competence. Apart from “ Zadkiel’s Almanack,” Captain Morrison was known among modern believers in astrology—for it is idle to blink the fact that there are such people —as the author of the “Handbook of Astrology,” of the “Grammar of Astrology,” of Lily’s “Introduction to Astrology,” and of “ The Horoscope.” He wrote, besides these, for several year's in succession, the “ Astronomical Ephemeris,” a remarkable little book entitled “Astronomy in a Nutshell,” and a daring treatise, embellished with ten large geometrical engravings—a treatise setting the whole Newtonian scheme of the heavens openly at defiance—a nine-shilling octavo flagrantly entitled “ The Solar System as it is and not as it is Represented.” Captain Morrison, otherwise “ Zadldel,” passed through the world with the reputation, among the many, of a charlatan, but among a select few of a clever and accomplished man, whose preference for odd studies amounted to something very like a distinct hallucination. Eleven years ago “ Zadldel,” then Lieutenant Morrison, R.N., brought an action in the Court of Queen’s Bench against Admiral Sir Edward Belcher for having libelled him by denouncing him as an imposter. The case was tried before the present Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Serjeant Ball&ntine being the counsel for the defendant, and the late Mr. Serjeant (afterwards Mr. Justice) Shee the counsel for the plaintiff. According to The Times' report of the proceedings, “ various persons of rank” appeared in the witnessbox and gave evidence, all of them on behalf of the plaintiff, among them the late Lord Lytton, the Earl of Wilton, Lady Harry Vane, and Lady Egerton of Tatton. After a careful summing up of this evidence by Sir Alexander Cockburn, the verdict found was “ for the plaintiff,” the Court of Queen’s Bench, in other words, formally deciding that Captain Morrison, otherwise “Zadkiel,” was not an impostor.