THE GREAT TRIBULATION. * " THE learned .,Fnlists, we are told

by a celebrated theologian of the last century, maintain the original cause of all things to be wind, from which principle this whole universe was at first pro- duced. and into which it must at last be resolved ; that the same breath which had kindled and blew up the flame of nature should one day blow it out." To this sect we imagine belongs the re- verend and rhetorical author of the Great Tribulation, the name by which his book is not inappropriately designated. The lEolian theory, in his conception of it, is briefly this. The air, in which Libs, Notus, Auster, and the other children of ..Eolus originate and reside, has been vitiated by an " accumulation and intensity of morbific agencies," the consequence it would appear of the upsetting of a mystic and ubiquitous vessel, technically termed an Apocalyptic vial, to the serious discomposure of these light and volatile divinities, and the subversion of their castle in the air. In the nomenclature of the present " learned 2Eolist," Libs, Notes, and Auster, &e., one form with many names, are known as the Physical Air, the Social Atmosphere, and the Commercial Air. It appears also, agreeably to the description given by the celebrated theologian already cited, that the wind and vapours issuing forth have caused an earthquake, called in the Times newspaper a Commercial Earthquake. Thus there seems to be a secret understanding between the earth and air, and the result of their combined forces is a common action exemplified in the fal- ling of houses and the explosion of banks. No wonder then if there be throes and agonies, disintegration and dereliction, fiery bosoms and gigantic shadows, Euphratean floods and photographic sketches of Millenial states ! No wonder that the vine is blighted ; the potato infected ; diptheria prevalent ; Sepoya rebellious ; and that the Turkish exchequer is going through " a succession of financial somersaults." The last vial has fallen ; which fully accounts for a corresponding fall in those things which, as the late ingenious Mr. Weller informs us, go up and down in the City ; not omnibuses, but funds. Let us not, however, be alarmed, for the present hierophant of holism obligingly assures us that, though clouds darken the sky, and banks explode one after the other, " our brightest and best things are in reversion " and " a glorious morning will one day break upon the earth " ; banks, we suppose, ceasing to do so. The singular volume now before us, with its purple patches of eloquence, and its gay philosophical embroidery, with its visions of revolution, its talk of "inex- haustible eternities," " latitudinarian universalista," and other theological polysyllables, as Swift would call them, is a collection of Vaticinations pointing to " stupendous phcenomena" and " great startling issues," and reminding us of the predictions of another celebrated mystagogue, whose life and fortunes have been deli- neated in a work by the grimly facetious author of Sartor Re- sartus. In the First Vaticination we are told that an air of melancholy may be seen on the faces of the children of Jacob. We naturally look for an air of some kind throughout the region explored by our prophet ; and are not surprised to find it here. We are accustomed to live in an intellectual atmosphere, and a social atmosphere, and a moral atmosphere ; in fact, we know that our sole chance of escaping all contact with this figurative nitro- oxygenous compound, is to go, as we once heard a classical wit and poet suggest, to the only place where there is no atmosphere, the Moon, if indeed more recent science still accord her that immunity.

Notwithstanding the " melancholy air " on the faces of our Caucasian brethren, the Jews we learn with pleasure are "found

* The Great Tribulation; or, the Things coaling on the Barth. By the Bev. John Cumming, D.D., F.R.S.E., &c. Published by RichardBentley. in every capital of Europe " ; to which we take leave to add, perhaps not without pain, that every capital of Europe is to be found with the Jews i This pensive and pecuniary people, .again, we are happy to report, have property everywhere, save in one country, and even that exceptional land " is theirs by title-deeds in comparison of which those of England's proudest and mightiest nobles are of yesterday." Our felicity suffers a slight abatement, as we approach the Fifth Vaticination ; for here " strange and por- tentous forms of error looming up at every point of the horizon" carry us fairly into the " Evening Clouds," where as a matter of course we find the " air laden with," &c., and the " light quenched." In the Ninth Vaticination our spirits again revive for we are promised, "before the sun sets in his couch in the West, a burst of more than compensating splendour." As we ad- vance, the announcements assume a kind of tragic (" secular cri- ticism " might perhaps call it theatrical) grandeur. The Last Conflagration is advertised as " a scene of unprecedented splen- dour • or we are dazzled by " a holy lustre emerging from the sleep Of Ages." Anon the rapt seer describes the Zoology of a Future Time. Animals, it seems, were not made to eat each other. Every creature was made, and will again be, gra- minivorons. We suppose Professor Owen has recently adopted this opinion, having heard perhaps of the menacing visit of a mysterious but not Muscovite Prince to the late Dr. Buckland, who seems to have held what are termed " dangerous views" on this subject: " 0 Mr. Nicholas ! How can you be so ridiculous, You know you can't eat me! You're not carnivorous,

But herbivorous,

Or eramintvereus ;— And for a proof

Look at your hoof!"

in one instance at least our learned ./Eolist seems inclined to " imitate that prudent method observed by many other philosophers and great clerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of some proper mystical number, whioh their imaginations have rendered sacred, to such a degree that they force common reason to find room for it in every part of nature ; reducing, including, and adjusting every genus and species within that compass by coupling some against their wills, and banishing others at any rate." The result of his arithmetical manipula- tions is that 1867 is an era fraught with gigantic issues." Are we to have a progeny of Titans ; or do the words indicate an

epoch of unlimited paper ? •

The Great Tribulation, we are told, began in 1848. It will cease in 1867. It is characterized by startling physical, political, and social conditions. 1. By morbific agencies now in the air which no previous year has witnessed. 2. By war. 3. By commer- cial panic. 4. By earthquake. Now we agree with our " Veiled Prophet " that these occurrences are remarkable, but we do not think that they are unprecedented or almost unprecedented. In the reign of Justinian, A.D. 539, a great historian tells us that a comet appeared "with its head in the East and its tail in the West "; the second that had been seen in about nine years. Wars and calamities were expected ; and " these expectations were abundantly realized." Earthquakes followed in annual succes- sion. Constantinople was shaken for forty days, and the shook communicated to the whole surface of the Roman empire. Bery- tus was overthrown A.D. 551, as Antioch had been about twenty- five years before, when 250,000 persons are said to have perished. In A.D. 542 the Plague appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelu- slum, it spread to the East, it penetrated to the West ; " during three months, five and at length ton thousand persons died each day at Constantinople ; many cities of the East were left vacant, and the harvest and vintage withered on the ground." It is needless to enumerate the wars of this period. Take another. Between 1348 and 1368 the Black Death,* Earthquake, Famine, the Invasion of France, the War of the Jacquerie, the Procession of the Flagellants, the Dancing Mania, and the Ecclesiastical and Papal degradation, not only "made men long for the end" of the world, but some even " fixed this end for the year 1365." In 1687, again, the town of Lima was almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake ; in 1666 the Great Plague of Loudon followed a comet of "malign influence," and three years after was followed by another which " produced a remarkable epidemic among cats in Westphalia" ! " In 1664," says Miehelet, " the Pope erected a pyramid to perpetuate his humiliation." Ten years after saw Europe leagued against Louis XIV. Once more, in 1745, the Pretender invaded England ; a comet passed near the earth in 1746 ; the cities of Lima and Callao were destroyed by

an earthquake, and the bank of St. George, at Genoa, was pillaged

by the Austrians in the same year ; while between 1743 and 1762 the Plague visited Aleppo, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Da-

mascus, and eight years afterwards invaded Poland and Russia. In 1797, 40,000 persons are stated to have perished in the earth- quake of Quito ; two years after the Plague attacked the French army in Egypt, and "gigantic issues" so nearly exhausted the

bullion of the Bank of England that an Order in Council alone averted that catastrophe which the Times calls a commercial

earthquake, in the same month of the same year in which the

physical earthquake took place. But the crowning and orucial instance of the presence of these " abnormal " conditions, in a period

not falling within that of our learned vaticinator, is yet In be ad- duced. It includes the interval which elapsed between 1812 and

• See Spectator, October 29, 1859.

1833 ; from Napoleon's departure from Paris on his Russian Cam- paign on March 9 of the former year, till the cholera had "reached Mexico and several other parts of America at the end of the latter." In this period, in addition to war and pesti- lence, the champion of the Great Tribulation will find abundance of social shocks and political convulsions. We may point to the Revolution of July, the War of Russia with Turkey, the Invasion of Spain, the Establishment of the South American Republics, and in our own country, the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and the Reform of Parliament, as examples of the " throes and agonies of nature groaning and travailing with the birth of a new and nobler genesis," if we may use without irreverence the sublime words of an Apocalyptic seer. We might indeed like to ask what is the birth of a genesis ; but we respect the beautiful obscurity of the expression, and proceed in the humbler style of

purely " secular criticism." The physical earthquakes which distinguish our period of Great Tribulation occurred at Bogota

in 1812 and 1826, and at Copiapo and Valparaiso 1819 and 1822. By the convulsion of 1812, Caracas was destroyed. Twelve thousand of its inhabitants were buried in the ruins. That of 1826 was hardly less destructive. For a commercial earthquake, " almost unprecedented," we may refer to the crisis of 1825-1826 ; while in 1814 and the two following years "house after house fell "; in fact, two hundred and forty banks " exploded one after the other."

Now we have little faith in our own mystical numbers or sacred imaginations, but they may serve to show that remarkable events are for ever recurring, and that while language is metaphorical and elastic, and human fortunes repeat themselves with similar if varying features, identification is difficult, perhaps impossible, though the likeness may be undeniably striking. We do not

therefore mtencl- to back our Great Tribulation against that of the reverend :),fidpsodist of a bespoken Millenium. We do not assert

that we h,,ive supplied an exact parallel. We willingly allow that the age in which we live, like that of each previous generation, has its own distinctive characteristics. But if we have not found an exact illarallel we have at least shown that the conditions of

the present period are not unprecedented, that our prophet's phy- sical and leommereial earthquake does not surpass, as the Original

Record ri quires it should, either in degree of destruction or area of opera' in, all its vibratory and subversive predecessors. The same remark applies to the morbific agencies of the air ; not to omit the fact that the Potato Disease, with its terrible sequel the Irish Famine, made its first mysterious appearance considerably before the commencement of the aerial era of the Great Tribula- tion. We conclude then that if we have not utterly destroyed,

we have, to adopt his own ingenious qualification, " very much annihilated " the theory of this vaticinating Violist. We leave the decision to others. Meanwhile, though our sober reason re- fuses to be misled by the reports of an inebriated fancy, and is

unable to "exaggerate every casual likeness into absolute identity," we can yet appreciate the less recondite speculations of our prophetical instructor. Thus we turn from his ecstatic con- templations to listen reverently to that lowlier wisdom with

which he informs us that "phosphate of lime could not write Shakspeare's tragedies " or " Milton's Paradise Lost." We think

we understand him when he tells us that " man is man in rags or in purple and fine linen," though we find it hard to comprehend a phrase of such transcendental gorgeousness as " the re- splendent prierogatives of ' his ' resuscitated raiment."

There is a daily beauty in human love, in human hope, in the patient endurance and honest endeavour of man worth all the phantasmagoria of the religious clairvoyant, or the rapturous in- spirations of the theological fortune-teller.