anecdote told of a very high and a very low man meeting. “What news down there?” said the tall fellow. “Very little,” replied the other: “what kind of weather have you above?” Well indeed might the Prophecy Man ask what news there is below for his mind seldom leaves those aërial heights from which it watches the fate of Europe and the shadowing forth of future changes. The Prophecy Man--that is, he who solely devotes himself to an anxious observation of those political occurrences which mark the signs of the times, as they bear upon the future, the principal business of whose life it is to associate them with his own prophetic theories--is now a rare character in Ireland. He was, however, a very marked one. The Shanahus and other itinerant characters had, when compared with him, a very limited beat indeed. Instead of being confined to a parish or a barony, the bounds of the Prophecy Man’s travels were those of the kingdom itself; and indeed some of them have been known to make excursions to the Highlands of Scotland, in order if possible to pick up old prophecies, and to make themselves, by cultivating an intimacy with the Scottish seers, capable of getting a clearer insight into futurity, and surer rules for developing the latent secrets of time. One of the heaviest blows to the speculations of this class was the downfall and death of Bonaparte, especially the latter. There are still living, however, those who can get over this difficulty, and who will not hesitate to assure you, with a look of much mystery, that the real “Bonyparty” is alive and well, and will make his due appearance _when the time comes_; he who surrendered himself to the English being but an accomplice of the true one. The next fact, and which I have alluded to in treating of the Shanahus, is the failure of the old prophecy that a George the Fourth would never sit on the throne of England. His coronation and reign, however, puzzled our prophets sadly, and indeed sent adrift for ever the pretensions of this prophecy to truth.