at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such an one." James then gives the circumstances to which he alludes; and at length, when, still pursued by the archbishop, then the organ of Buckingham, as usual, this king's good nature too easily yielded; he did not, however, without closing with this prediction: "Then take him to you!--but, on my soul, you will repent it!" The future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great politicians. "This coarse unpromising man," said Lord Falkland, pointing to Cromwell, "will be the first person in the kingdom, if the nation comes to blows!" And Archbishop Williams told Charles the First confidentially, "There was _that_ in Cromwell which foreboded something dangerous, and wished his majesty would either win him over to him, or get him taken off." 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 touches his ambition, even in the most trifling things, that he must plunge into dreadful difficulties. He is one of an order of minds that by nature make for themselves great reverses." Lord Mansfield was once asked, after the commencement of the French Revolution, when it would end? His lordship replied, "It is an event _without precedent_, and therefore _without prognostic_." The truth, however, is, that it had both. Our own history had furnished a precedent in the times of Charles the First. And the prognostics were so redundant, that a volume might be collected of passages from various writers who had predicted it. However ingenious might be a history of the Reformation before it occurred, the evidence could not be more authentic and positive than that of the great moral and political revolution which we have witnessed in our own days.