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 fu turity! 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 Foruin 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, li terally accomplished. This spirit of foresight, in contemplative minds, was evinced by our great antiquary Dugdale. In 1641 he anticipated 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 accus tomed 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 person ages, and has produced a Hudibras in prose. The author of the "Satire Menippée de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne," discovers all the bitter ridioule 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 volume, entitled," Essai sur les Revolutions+;" the whole work was modelled on this principle." It would be possible," says that eloquent writer, 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 volume, but probably remained unpublishcastrations. It was printed here as a first 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: 6c 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 eagerness 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 ξυνίσει, κ οὔτε προμαθὼν ἐς αὐτὴν οὐδεν,͵ οὔτ ̓ ἐπιμαίων, τῶν τε παραχρῆμα δι ἐλαχίστης βουλῆς κράτιστος γνώμων, κ τῶν μελλόντων ἐπιπλεῖστον τοῦ γενησομένου ἀριστος THUCYDIDES, Lib. 1. εἰκαστής. 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 character 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 foresight 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 philoso-` pher, mysteriously shadows out something which he calls "The Stochastic," or the faculty of political prediction,a term derived from the Greek, signifying "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 Stochastic, 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, never tell the When *. At the same time Aristotle gives us the secret principle, by which one of these divinors regulated his predictions. He frankly declared, that the future being always very obscure, while the past was easy to know, his predictions had never the future in view; he decided from the past, as this appeared in human affairs, which was however concealed from, and unknown to the multitude. And this indeed is the true principle by which a philosophical historian may become a skilful divinor, and an adept in the "Stochastic." many years; that after the death of Charles V. the empire of Germany would infallibly be torn to pieces by the Germans themselves. The monk will no longer pass for a prophet; his miscalculated Daniel, like some others, wished more ill to the Mahometans than the Christian cabinets of Europe, and had no notion that God would prosper the heretics of Luther. Sir James Macintosh has indeed observed, I am sensible, that in the field of po litical prediction, veteran sagacity has often been deceived." He alludes to the memorable example of Harrington, We have had recently a remarkable who published a demonstration of the illustration of the truth of this secret impossibility of re-establishing moprinciple, in the confession of a man narchy in England six months before of genius among ourselves. When the restoration of Charles II. But the Mr Coleridge was a political writer in author of the Oceana was a political fathe Morning Post and the Courier, at natic, who ventured to predict an a period of darkness and utter confu- event, not by other events which had sion, he was then conducted by a track happened, but by a theoretical princiof light not revealed to ordinary jour- ple which he had formed, that "the nalists. He decided of the Napoleonic balance of power depends on that of empire," that despotism in masque- property." So unphilosophical was rade," by the "state of Rome under Harrington in his contracted view of the first Cæsars ;" and of the Spanish human affairs, that he dropped out of American revolution, by taking the his calculation all the stirring passions war of the United Provinces with Phi- of ambition and party. A similar erlip II. as the ground-work of the com- ror of a great genius occurs in De Foe. parison. "On every great occur- "Child," says Mr George Chalmers, rence,” he says, "I endeavoured to with great good sense, foreseeing discover in past history the event that from experience that mens conduct most nearly resembled it. I procured must finally be decided by their printhe contemporary historians, memo- ciples, foretold the colonial revolt." De rialists, and pamphleteers. Then fair- Foe, allowing his prejudices to obscure ly subtracting the points of difference his sagacity, reprobated that suggesfrom those of likeness, as the balance tion, because he deemed interest a more favoured the former or the latter, I con- strenuous prompter than enthusiasm." jectured that the result would be the The predictions of Harrington and De same, or different. In the Essays "on Foe are precisely such as we might the probable final restoration of the expect from a political economist. Bourbons," I feel myself authorised to Child, the philosophical predictor, had affirm, by the effect produced on many read the past. intelligent men, that, were the dates wanting, it might have been suspected that the Essays had been written within the last twelve months +." Even when the event does not justify the prediction, the predictor may however not have been the less correct in his principles of divination. The catastrophe of human life, and the turn of great events, often prove accidental. Biron, whom we have noticed, might have ascended the throne, instead of the scaffold; Cromwell and De Retz might have become only the favourite general, or the minister of their sovereigns. Such fortuitous events are not comprehended in the reach of political prescience; it is only a vulgar superstition which pretends to this; but in these very cases where nothing occurred to disturb the accus2 M tomed progress of human nature, the foresight of the predictors is unquestionable. Hartley, in his "Observations on Man," &c. published in 1749, predicted the fall of the existing governments and hierarchies in these two simple propositions :— "PROP. 81. It is probable that all the civil governments will be overturned. PROP. 82. It is probable that the present forms of church government will be dissolved." We are told that Lady Charlotte Wentworth, much alarmed at these falls of church and state, asked Hartley when these terrible things would happen? The predictor answered, "I am an old man, and shall not live to see them; but you are a young woman, and probably will see them." We can hardly deny that the prediction has failed;-it has taken place in America, and it has occurred in France. A fortuitous event has comfortably thrown back the world into its old corners; but we still revolve in a circle; what is dark and distant shall be clear as we approach it; and these 81st and s2d propositions of our Vaticinator may again come round in a crisis. There is a spirit of political vaticination, which has been often ascribed to the highest source of inspiration, by the enthusiasts of a party; but, since "the language of prophecy" has ceased among them, such pretensions are equally impious and unphilosophical. Knox, the reformer, possessed an extraordinary portion of this bold prophetic confidence. He appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of some persons. Many of his "prophetical sayings," as they were called, esteemed wild at the time, were afterwards remembered with awful astonishment. When condemned to a galley in Rochelle, he predicted that, within two or three years, he should preach the Gospel at St Giles's in Edinburgh; an improbable event which happened. Of Mary and Darnley, he pronounced, that "as the king, for the queen's pleasure, had gone to mass, the Lord, in his justice, would make her the instrument of his overthrow." Events not long afterwards realized. There are other striking predictions of the deaths of Thomas Maitland, and of Kirkaldy of Grange, and the warning he solemnly gave to the Regent Murray not to go to Linlithgow, where he was assassinated. Such predictions occasioned a barbarous people to imagine that Knox had some immediate communication with Heaven. One Clerius, a Spanish friar and almanackmaker, clearly predicted the death of Henry the Fourth of France. Peiresc, as Gassendi tells us, although he gave no faith to the vain science of astrology, alarmed for the life of a beloved monarch, consulted with two gentlemen about the king, and sent the Spanish almanack to his majesty. That high-spirited prince thanked them for their care, but slighted the prediction; the event occurred; and, in the following year, the Spanish friar spread his own fame in a new almanack. I have been occasionally struck at the Jeremiads of honest George Withers the poet; some of his works afford many solemn predictions. Some predictions are recorded of this sort, which have been made after the event; but as certain is it, that many have preceded it, which we may fairly account for on mere human principles. The busy spirits of a revolutionary age, the heads of a party such as Knox was, have frequently secret communications with spies or friends; such a constant source of concealed information, combined with a shrewd, confident, and enthusiastic temper, will account for some mysterious predictions of this nature. Knox was unquestionably endowed with a considerable portion of our Stochastic faculty, as appears by his Machiavellian maxim, on the barbarous destruction of the monasteries and cathedrals."The best way to keep the rooks from returning is to pull down their nests." The event of Henry the Fourth's death, so clearly predicted by the Spanish friar, resulted either from his being acquainted with the plot, or made an instrument in this case by those who were; the report of the assassination, before it occurred, was rife in Spain and Italy. Such as George Withers, will always rise in disturbed times, which are favourable to a melancholy temperament, and sanguine imagination. Like the Sybil attending on Eneas, these usually see nothing but horrid battles, and the Tyber foaming with blood. |