To shew this spirit manifesting it- It has been said by a great poet, self in its powerful operations during the modern civilization of Europe, will be a work for the historian of the human mind. We have ventured to speak thus hastily on so great a subject, merely to offer grounds of speculation to those to whom these changes, in the character of our own literature, may have an interest. If there be such a spirit as this of which we have spoken there will be a time when its operation will cease or be suspended. When the security of civilization is attained, when that first sense of escape and emancipation is past, and no ferment of mind sends the thoughts of men with eagerness of desire into the future, then a natural temper of judging will take place, and to that natural temper antiquity will appear in its own importance. For it is not necessary to account for an opinion among men of the interest and value of the remains of great ages that are past; it is the cessation and disappearance of such opinions among them that needs to be accounted for. When the causes have ceased to act, by which that natural sense and opinion were held oppressed almost to extinction, it may be thought that the simple feeling of long injustice committed, as well as of great loss no doubt actually incurred, will impart a temper of eager zeal, and even passion, to the returning admiration of a people for the memory of their forefathers, and to their renewed occupation of their own long neglected inheritance. "The present and the past, Upon whose wings harmoniously conjoined, Moves the great spirit of the universe." And certainly nothing can be imagined more deplorable in the feelings of a people (except in that progressive state which we have alluded to), than the voluntary forgetfulness of the mental achievements of their ancestors. The living and creative spirit of literature is its nationality. Whatever is introduced into it from abroad, or added to it from within, should be, and if it is of any value, must be, in harmony with its past greatness. It was the glory of the Greeks that their literature was native-it was the fatality of the Romans that theirs was im ported. But when a nation reaches a high point of civilization, and when its literature is highly refined and perfect, it must then either turn itself to the study, and consequently the im itation, of the literature of other nations, or it must revert to the ancient spirit of its own. Happily for us, It may, perhaps, be said that, using lofty terms like these to speak of the changes that have taken place in a nation's literature, inspires a suspicion that we may be labouring to dress up in seeming greatness, what is of no real might in the momentous concerns of mankind. It may be so. It is possible that the occupations of the intellect do more and more separate themselves from the real business of human life. Yet it would still be difficult to believe that this is a necessary condition of civilization, and that the same mind which every one, in whom it is cultivated, feels to be by its high cultivation so important to his own life, might not, through the same power, exercise an influence as high and important on the common welfare of a nation. The ancient spirit is not dead, Old times, we trust, are living here. And while the worst part of our national literature is forgotten,-all that was meagre and bloodless, or rotten and impure, on the other hand, we have raised up, as it were, from the tomb, a spirit that was only lying as leep, and that now, from the dust and the darkness, walks abroad among us, in the renovation of all its strength and beauty. PREDICTION. He whose experienced eye can pierce th' array ONE of the most curious treatises of Cicero, is that on "Divination," or the knowledge of future events, which has preserved for us a complete account of those state-contrivances which were practised by the Roman government, to instil among the people those hopes and fears by which they created public opinion. As our religious creed has entirely rendered the Pagan obsolete and ridiculous, this treatise is rarely consulted; it will always however remain as a chapter in the history of man. To these two books of Cicero on "Divination," perhaps a third might be added, and the science of political and moral Prediction may yet not prove to be so vain a thing. Much which overwhelms when it happens may be foreseen, and often defensive measures may be provided to break the waters whose stream we cannot always direct. It is indeed suspected that there exists a faculty in some men which excels in anticipations of the Future, or in the words of Bacon, "making things FUTURE and REMOTE as PRESENT. There seems something in great minds which serves as a kind of divination; and it has often happened, that a tolerable philosopher has not made an indifferent prophet. There may be a kind of Prescience in the vaticinations of a profound politician, and we presume that the facts we shall produce will sufficiently establish this principle. No great political or moral revolution has occurred in civilized society which has taken the philosopher by surprise, provided that this man, at once intelligent in the quicquid agunt homines, and still withdrawn from their conflicting interests in the retirement of his study, be free from the delusions of parties and sects. Barbarians make sudden irruptions, and alter the face of things at a blow; but intellectual nations, like man himself, are still advancing circumscribed by an eternal circle of similar events and like passions. Whatever is to follow, like our thoughts, is still linked to what precedes it; unless the force of some fortuitous event interrupts the accustomed progress of human affairs. In general, every great event has been usually connected with presage or prognostic. Lord Bacon has said, The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of statetempests, hollow blasts of wind seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm." Continental writers formerly employed a fortunate expression when they wished to have an Historia Reformationis ante Reformationem; this history of the Reformation would have commeneed perhaps a century before the Reformation itself. We have indeed a letter from Cardinal Julian to Pope Eugenius IV. written a century before Luther appeared, in which he clearly predicts the Reformation and its consequences. Sir Walter Raleigh fore saw the consequences of the Separatists and Sectaries in the national church about 1530. The very scene his imagination raised has been exhibited to the letter of his description two centuries after the prediction. "Time will soon bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God would be turned out of churches into barns, and from thence again into the fields and mountains, and under hedgesall order of discipline and churchgovernment left to newness of opinion and men's fancies, and as many kinds of religion spring up as there are parish churches within England." Are we not struck by the profound genius of Tacitus who foresaw the calamities which have ravaged Europe, on the fall of the Roman empire, in a work written five hundred years before the event. In his sublime view of human affairs, he observes, "When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all these nations." Leibnitz foresaw the results of those selfish, and at length demoralising opinions which began to prevail through Europe in his day, and predicted that revolution in which they closed, when conducted by a political sect of villainous men who tried "to be worse than they could be," as old Montaigne expresses it-a sort of men whom a fashionable prologue-writer of our times had the audacity to describe as "having a taste for evil. I give the entire passage of Leibnitz, I find that cer tain opinions (approaching those of Epicurus and Spinosa), are insinuating themselves little by little into the minds of the great rulers of public affairs, who serve as the guides of others, and on whom all affairs depend; besides, these opinions are also sliding into fashionable books, and thus they are preparing all things to that general revolution which menaces Europe; and in destroying those generous sentiments of the ancients, Greek and Roman, which preferred the love of country, and public good, and the cares of posterity, to fortune, and even to life. Our public spirits, as the English call them*, excessively diminish and are Public spirit, and public spirits were no more in fashion, and will be still less while the least vicious of these men preserve only one principle which they call honour,-a principle which only keeps them from not doing what they deem a low action, while they openly laugh at the love of country ridicule those who are zealous for public ends and when a well-intentioned man asks what will become of their posterity? They reply, "Then, as Now!" But it may happen to these persons themselves to endure those evils which they believe are reserved for others. If this epidemical and intellectual disorder could be corrected, whose bad effects are already visible, those evils might still be prevented; but if it proceeds in growth, Providence will correct man by the very revolution which must spring from it. Whatever may happen indeed, all must turn out as usual for the best in general at the end of the account; although this cannot happen without the punishment of those who contribute even to general good by their evil actions." Leibnitz, in the seventeenth century, foresaw what occurred in the eighteenth. The passage reads like a prophetic inspiration, verified in the history of the actors in the late revolution, while the result, according to Leibnitz's own exhilarating system of optimism, is an eduction of good from evil. Did not Rous seau predict the convulsions of modern Europe, while he so vividly foresaw the French revolution, that he seriously advised the higher classes of society to have their children taught some useful trade? This notion was highly ridiculed on the first appearance of the Emile, but at its hour the truth struck. He too foresaw the horrors of that revolution, for he announced that Emile designed to emigrate, because, from the moral state of the people, a virtuous revolution had become impossible. Unquestionably there have been men of such political sagacity, that they have anticipated events which have sometimes required centuries to achieve; they have detected that principle in the dark mystery of its germ, which time only could develope to others. When SOLON, accompanied by Epimenides, who was sent by the Athe about the year 1700, household words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, and it might now puzzle us to find syno nyms. nians to assist him by mutual consultation, was looking on the port and citadel of Munychia, considering it a while, he turned to his companion, exclaiming, "How blind is man to futurity! For, did the Athenians foresee what mischief this will do their city, they would even eat it with their own teeth to get rid of it;" a prediction verified more than two hundred years afterwards. A similar prescient view was conceived by THALES, when he desired to be buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing, that that very spot would in time be the Forum of the Milesians. The same genius displayed itself in Charlemagne. As this mighty sovereign was standing at the window of a castle by the sea-side, observing a Norman fleet preparing to make a descent, tears started in the eyes of the aged monarch, and he exclaimed, "If they dare to threaten my dominions while I am yet living, what will they do when I shall be no more!" a melancholy prediction of their subsequent incursions, and the protracted miseries of the French nation during a century. Erasmus, when at Canterbury, be fore the tomb of Becket, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had been only adorned with boughs and flowers: For, said he, " those who have heaped up all that mass of treasure, will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to those who are in power;" a prediction literally fulfilled about twenty years after it was made. The unknown author of the Visions of Piers Ploughman, who wrote in the reign of Edward III., surprised the world by a famous prediction of the fall of the religious houses from the hand of a king. The event was realised two hundred years afterwards, in the reign of Henry VIII. The protestant writers have not scrupled to declare, that in this instance he was "divino numine afflatus." But prediction is not inspiration; the one may be wrought out by man, the other comes from God. The same principle which led Erasmus to predict, that those who were "in power" would destroy the rich shrine, because no other class of men in society were equal to mate with one so mighty as the monks, conducted the author of Piers Ploughman to the same conclusion; and since power only could accomplish that great purpose, he fixed on the highest as the most likely; and the wise prediction was, so long after, literally accomplished. This spirit of foresight, in contemplative minds, was evinced by our great antiquary Dugdale. In 1641 he an ticipated the scene which was preparing to open, in the destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He then hastened his zealous itinerant labours, of taking draughts, and copying inscriptions, to preserve them for future and better times." And thus it was, that, conducted by his prescient spirit, posterity owes to Dugdale the ancient monuments of England. The next age will instruct itself with the history of ours, as we do by that of the last. Involved amid the most rapid reverses, those who only draw from the surface of history the volatile pleasure of a romantic tale, or deaden all its living facts by the torpedo touch of chronological antiquarianism, will not easily comprehend the principles which terminate in certain political events, nor the characters among mankind who are the usual actors in those scenes. "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be." The heart of man beats on the same eternal springs. Whether he paces, or whether he flies, his reasoning unreasonable being cannot escape out of the march of human thought and human passions. Thus we discover how, in the most extraordinary revolutions, the time and the place only have changed. Even when events are not strictly parallel, the conducting principles are the same. When the French revolution recalled our attention to our own, the neglected volumes which preserved the public and private history of our Charles I. and Cromwell, were collected with eager curiosity. How often the scene existing before us, nay the very personages themselves, opened on us in those forgotten pages. But as the annals of human nature did not commence with those of Charles I., we took a still more retrograde step; and it was discovered, in this wider range, that, in the various governments of Greece and Rome, the events of those times had been only reproduced. Among them the same principles had terminated in the same results, and the same personages had figured in the same drama. This strikingly 'appears in a little curious volume, entitled, "Essai sur l'Histoire de la Revolution Françoise, par une Societé d'Auteurs Latins *. This "Society of Latin Authors," who have so inimitably written the history of the French revolution, consists of the Roman historians themselves! By extracts ingeniously applied, the events of that melancholy period are so appositely described, indeed so minutely detailed, that they will not fail to surprise those who are not accustomed to detect the perpetual parallels which we meet in philosophical history. Many of these crisises in history are close resemblances of each other. Compare the history of " the League," in French history, with that of our own civil wars; we are struck by the similar occurrences, performed by the same political characters which played their part on both those great theatres of human action. A satirical royalist of those times has commemorated the motives, the incidents, and the personages, and has produced a Hudibras in prose. The author of the "Satire Menippée de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne," discovers all the bitter ridicule of Butler, in his ludicrous and severe exhibition of the "Etats de Paris," while the artist who designed the satirical prints, becomes no contemptible Hogarth. So much are these public events alike, in their general spirit and termination, that they have afforded the subject of a curious vo lume, entitled, "Essai sur les Revolutions;" the whole work was modelled on this principle. "It would be possible," says that eloquent writer, 66 to frame a table, or chart, in which all the given imaginable events of the history of a people would be reduced to a mathematical exactness." The conception is fanciful, but it is founded on truth. He who judges of the present by the parallels which the past furnishes, has one source opened to him of a knowledge of the future. We find how minds of large comprehension have been noticed for possessing this faculty of prediction. Cornelius Nepos relates of Published at Paris 1801. † An extraordinary work, which soon sold, in the reprinting has suffered many castrations. It was printed here as a first volume, but probably remained unpublish.. ed. I read with some surprise the single copy which was said to have been saved from the entire edition, Cicero, that he remarkably exercised this political prescience, so that, with him, it seemed a kind of divination; for Cicero "not only foretold events which happened in his own time, but had also prophesied what has occurred in these days." There is a remarkable expression employed by Thucydides, in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is given as a close translation: By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he was supereminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far surpassed all, in his deductions of the FUTURE, from the PAST;" or was the best guesser of the future from the past. And assuredly our country has witnessed, among her illustrious men, many a rival in prediction with Themistocles. Burke, Pitt, and a noble statesman yet living, were often endowed with the faculty of political vaticination. The instances are numerous and familiar. The eloquence of Burke is often oracular; a speech of Pitt, in 1800, painted the state of Europe, as it was only realised fifteen years afterwards. The Marquis of Wellesley's incomparable character of Bonaparte predicted his fall when highest in his glory; that great statesman then poured forth the sublime language of philosophical prophecy: "His eager ness of power is so inordinate-his jealousy of independence so fierce his keenness of appetite so feverish in all that touched his ambition, even in the most trifling things, that he must plunge into desperate difficulties. He is one of an order of minds that, by nature, make for themselves great reverses. Such are the statesmen of genius prescient moralists! who so happily succeed in their predictions of the fortune and the character of famous individuals. The revolutionary character of Cardinal de Retz was detected, by the sagacity of Cardinal Mazarine, even in the youth of de Retz. He then A critical friend, who supplies me with this version, would have the original placed under the eye of the learned reader. Οικείᾳ γὰρ ξυνέσει, δὲ οὔτε προμαθὼν ἐς αὐτὴν οὐδὲν, οὔτ ̓ ἐπιμαίων, τῶν τε παραχρῆμα δι ἐλαχίστης βουλῆς κράτιστος γνώμων, καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐπιπλεῖστον τοῦ γενησομένου άριστος εἰκαστής. THUCYDIDES, Lib. 1. wrote a history of the conspiracy of Fiesco, with such vehement admiration of his hero, that the Italian politician having read it, predicted that the young author would be one of the most turbulent spirits of the age. The father of Marshal Biron, even amid the glory of his son, discovered the cloud which was to obscure it, invisible to other men: "Biron," said he, " I advise thee, when peace takes place, to go and plant cabbages in thy garden, otherwise I warn thee thou wilt lose thy head on a scaffold." The future cha racter of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great politicians: "This coarse, unpromising young man," said Lord Falkland, pointing to Cromwell, "will be the first person in the kingdom, if the nation comes to blows." And Archbishop Williams, on a visit Charles I. paid him, told the king confidentially, that "there was that in Cromwell which forbode something dangerous; and wished his Majesty would either win him over to him or get him taken, off." Such are the facts which may establish the existence of a faculty of fore sight and vaticination possessed by some great minds, which seems yet to want a denomination; yet this may be supplied to us; for the writer of the life of Sir Thomas Brown, in claiming the honour of it for that philosopher, mysteriously shadows out something which he calls "The Stochastic,” or the faculty of political prediction,a term derived from the Greek, signi fying " shooting at a mark." Sir Thomas, it seems, was this intellectual archer who then hit the white; for he says, "Though he were no prophet, yet in that faculty which comes nearest to it, he excelled, i. e. the Stochas tic, wherein he was seldom mistaken as to future events, as well public, as private." Aristotle, who collected all the curious knowledge of his times, affords us some remarkable opinions on this art of Divination. The passage is in that "Magazine of intellectual riches," as Mr Coppleston calls his "Rhetoric." The Stagyrite details the various subterfuges practised by the pretended divinors of his day, who found it much easier to say that such a thing would happen, than to mark the time when it is to happen. They are never circumstantial, and, in all they predict, |