" THE DEEP QUESTION OF PROPHECY."
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—It is one cf the sayings credited to the astute and sagacious Philippe de Comines that " wise men discerne so farre off as their life is not sufficient to see halfe of those things which they have foreseene." Of the many illustrations of that remark which might be quoted, few seem to be more interesting at the present
moment than the following passage in one of the letters of Robertson of Brighton, written in 1852 :—
"How devoutly it is to be hoped that, in the coming conflict of the nations, America and England will stand side by side, instead of opposite; for, if not, it will be all over with the cause of liberty, for some centuries at least. The conqueror in tho strife will be then a military Power, and must perforce crush the peoples under a tyranny. And as to a universal war, that is inevitable, and in every direction men's minds are foreboding it— a very strange symptom of the times to he so prevalent long before a single cases belli has made its appearance. It is one of those mysterious phenomena which plunge you into the deep question of Prophecy—what it is in our human nature and how it works. At present the anticipation resembles the inexplieable awe and sense of coming danger which makes the dumb unreason- ing cattle restless at the approach of a thunder-storm."
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