Fortunately for us mortals, Mr. Froude says, necessary as any future may be, and inevitable as by our own actions we may have made it, it is kindly kept from us wrapt up in clouds, and we are not made wretched about it by anticipation. “O my fortune,” prays Agrippina, in one of Jonson’s Roman tragedies, “let it be sudden thou preparest against me; strike all my powers of understanding blind, and ignorant of destiny to come!” Seek to know no more, is in vain the joint appeal of the three witches to Macbeth, beside the magic caldron in the cave; but as to the future of Banquo’s issue he _will_ be satisfied. Cranmer, predicting a glorious reign for the infant Elizabeth, parenthesises a sigh on the common lot— “Would I had known no more! but she must die.” Shakspeare’s King Henry the Fourth, again, in one place utters the aspiration, “O Heaven! that one might read the book of fate!” Hardly an aspiration, however, as the context shows; a privilege to be deprecated rather; for could there be foreseen all the changes and chances of one’s mortal life, “how chances mock, and changes fill the cup of alteration with divers liquors,” “O, if this were seen, The happiest youth,—viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue,— Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.” Mr. de Quincey describes an Installation of the Knights of St. Patrick at which he was present, during the Lord-Lieutenancy of Lord Cornwallis—the narrator’s companions on that occasion being Lord and Lady Castlereagh, who “were both young at this time, and both wore an impressive appearance of youthful happiness; neither, happily for their peace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years, not much more than twenty, which divided them from the day destined in one hour to wreck the happiness of both.” Vision ill foreseen it were to know the times and the seasons, the manner how, and the place where. “O tell me, cried Ereenia, for from thee Nought can be hidden, when the end will be. Seek not to know, old Casyapa replied, What pleaseth Heaven to hide. Dark is the abyss of Time. But light enough to guide your steps is given; Whatever weal or woe betide, Turn never from the way of truth aside, And leave the event, in holy hope, to Heaven.”