The future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great politicians. “This coarse, unpromising man,” observed 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, that “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 incomparable character of Buonaparte, given by the Marquis of Wellesley, predicted his fall when highest in his power. “His eagerness of power,” says this great Statesman, “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.” After the commencement of the French Revolution, Lord Mansfield was once asked when it would end? His Lordship replied, “It is an event _without precedent_, and therefore _without prognostic_.” The fact is, however, that it had both; as our own history, in the reign of Charles the First, had furnished us with a precedent; and the prognostics were so plentiful, that a volume of passages might be collected from various writers who had foretold it. There is a production, which does honour to the political sagacity, as well as to his knowledge of human nature, thrown out by Bishop Butler in a Sermon before the House of Lords, in 1741; he calculated that the unreligious spirit would produce, some time or other, political disorders, similar to those which, in the 17th century, had arisen from religious fanaticism. “Is there no danger,” he observed, “that all this may raise somewhat like _that levelling spirit_, upon Atheistical principles, which in the last age prevailed upon enthusiastic ones? Not to speak of the possibility that _different sorts of people_ may _unite_ in it upon these _contrary principles_!” All this has literally been accomplished! If a prediction be raised on facts which our own prejudice induce us to infer will exist, it must be chimerical. The Monk Carron announces in his Chronicle, printed in 1532, that the world was about ending, as well as his Chronicle of it; that the Turkish Empire would not last many years; that after the death of Charles V. the Empire of Germany would be torn to pieces by the Germans themselves. This Monk will no longer pass for a prophet; he belongs to that class of Chroniclers who write to humour their own prejudices, like a certain Lady-prophetess who, in 1811, predicted that grass was to grow in Cheapside about this time!