But the thing was past all tampering. The poor creature could neither
be kicked nor coaxed into vitality.] On the other hand, look at France.
Henry the historian, speaking of the fifteenth century, describes it as
a national infirmity of the English to be prophecy-ridden. Perhaps
there never was any foundation for this as an exclusive remark; but
assuredly not in the next century. There had been with us British, from
the twelfth century, Thomas of Ercildoune in the north, and many
monkish local prophets for every part of the island; but latterly
England had no terrific prophet, unless, indeed Nixon of the Vale Royal
in Cheshire, who uttered his dark oracles sometimes with a merely
Cestrian, sometimes with a national reference. Whereas in France,
throughout the sixteenth century, every principal event was foretold
successively, with an accuracy that still shocks and confounds us.
Francis the First, who opens the century, (and by many is held to open
the book of _modern history_, as distinguished from the middle or
_feudal_ history,) had the battle of Pavia foreshown to him, not
by name, but in its results--by his own Spanish captivity--by the
exchange for his own children upon a frontier river of Spain--finally,
by his own disgraceful death, through an infamous disease conveyed to
him under a deadly circuit of revenge.
Pages:
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465