The philosophical predictor, in foretelling a crisis from the appearance of things, will not rashly assign the period of time; for the crisis which he anticipates is calculated on by that inevitable march of events which generate each other in human affairs; but the period is always dubious, being either retarded or accelerated by circumstances of a nature incapable of entering into this moral arithmetic. It is probable that a revolution similar to that of France would have occurred in this country, had it not been counteracted by the genius of Pitt. In 1618 it was easy to foretell by the political prognostic that a mighty war throughout Europe must necessarily occur. At that moment, observes Bayle, the house of Austria aimed at a universal monarchy; the consequent domineering spirit of the ministers of the Emperor and the King of Spain, combined with their determination to exterminate the new religion, excited a reaction to this imperial despotism; public opinion had been suppressed, till every people grew impatient; while their sovereigns, influenced by national feeling, were combining against Austria. But Austria was a vast military power, and her generals were the first of their class. The efforts of Europe would then be often repulsed! This state of affairs prognosticated a long war!--and when at length it broke out it lasted thirty years! The approach and the duration of the war might have been predicted; but the period of its termination could not have been foreseen. There is, however, a spirit of political vaticination which presumes to pass beyond the boundaries of human prescience; it has been often ascribed to the highest source of inspiration by enthusiasts; but since "the language of prophecy" has ceased, such pretensions are not less impious than they are unphilosophical. Knox the reformer possessed an extraordinary portion of this awful prophetic confidence: he appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of some persons. We are told that, condemned to a galley at Rochelle, he predicted that "within two or three years he should preach the gospel at Saint 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." 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, occasioned a barbarous people to imagine that the prophet Knox had received an immediate communication from Heaven. A Spanish friar and almanac-maker predicted, in clear and precise words, the death of Henry the Fourth of France; and Pieresc, though he had no faith in the vain science of astrology, yet, alarmed at whatever menaced the life of a beloved monarch, consulted with some of the king's friends, and had the