And this was seen, not with the misty uncertainty of a mind prone to dreams of evil, but with a clearness of foresight, a distinct and defined reality, that left no room for conjecture. Yet—and here was the bitterest part of my meditation—what was all this ruin to me? What were those men and women and households and lands but as the leaves on the wind to me! I might strive in the last extremities of their struggle. I might undergo the agonies of death with them a thousand times; and I inwardly pledged myself never to desert their cause while through pain or sorrow I could cling to it; but this devotion, however protracted, must have an end. I must see the final hour of them all, and more unhappy, more destitute, more undone than all, I must be deprived of the consolation of making my tomb with the righteous and laying my weary heart in the slumbers of their grave! Still, I experienced more than the keenest fervor of the impulse which was now burning around me. With me it was not kingly care, nor the animal ardency of the soldier. It was the high stimulation of something like the infusion of a new principle of existence. I felt as if I had become the vehicle of a descended spirit. A ceaseless current of thought ran through my brain. Old knowledge that I had utterly forgotten revived in me with spontaneous freshness. Casual impressions and long past years arose, with their stamps and marks as clear as if a hoard of medals had been suddenly brought to light and thrown before me. I ran over in my recollection persons and names with painful accuracy. The conceptions of those for whom I once felt habitual deference were now seen by me in their nakedness. All that was habitual was passed away; I saw intuitively the vanity and giddiness, the inconsequential reasoning, the bewildering prejudice, that made up what in other days I had called the wisdom of the wise. As I threw out in the most unpremeditated language the ideas thus glowing and struggling for escape, I found that the impression of some extraordinary excitement in me was universal. Accustomed to be heard with the attention due to my rank, I now saw the eyes of my fellow travelers turned on me with an evident and deferential surprise. When I talked of the hopes of the country, of the resources of the enemy, of the kingdoms that would be ready to make common cause with us against the galling tyranny of Nero, of the glory of fighting for our altars, and of the imperishable honors of those whose blood earned peace for their children, they listened as to something more than man. “Was I the prophet delegated at last to lead Judea to her glory?”