tible, but only translatable from a worse to a better meaning. Man is the Desolator of his own Empire, as the absolute principle is of the East, until woman, and all the principles which the female Nature represents, enjoy their own eternal and legitimate rights.

One people still remains distinct, unmixed and uncombined with the nations during the long career of the great historical Eras, and, true to the primitive word of the first rock and its Rabbinical interpretation, refuses even to listen to the additions, interpretations and glosses which have been made to or put upon it. The Jews are the Protestants of Gentilism. They refuse to accept or be governed by any other than a Divine Law. They admit a Human Interpretation, and thus analogically accept the Divine Humanity; but it is the old and original Law of the Desert, and no other. They are right in one sense; no other Law but a Divine Humanity Law can ever be permanently established. Who has it? That is the question. Solve that question and the East is restored, and the five Great Nations occupy in splendour their lineal geographical position.

But one of them is lost one of the five great cities is lost. It is "the city of Destruction;" not the Jewish; for we know where the Jews are, and they can be restored. The Greeks also can be

* See Isaiah xix, 18.

restored. The French and English are at present in safety; but where are the Romans? They are converted into Italians. Latin Rome is lost for ever, and her language is a dead language; but being a dead language, it becomes sacred. A living language is vulgarised and slanged; a dead language is not. Such a language is wanted for high purposes. This is merely an idea that seems to grow very naturally out of a fact we leave it to its fate. is a kernel in the nut.

But there

532

ACT FIFTH.-The Universal Mission.

PROLOGUE

THIS is in the future, but has a dawn, like the other acts, that announces its coming. The dawns, which are distinctly marked in the New or Christian Drama, where alone the acts are arranged in chronological succession, and are never, even in part, synchronical, amount on an average to seventy or eighty years. Thus, from the Nativity to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, seventy years-from the establishment of Christianity by Constantine (323) to the prohibition of Paganism by law (390), and the final rupture of the Empire in 395, sixty-seven or seventy-two years-from the Justinian Reformation (532) or declaration of the Papal Supremacy to the beginning of the Middle Ages, seventy-five or seventy-six years-from the taking of Constantinople by the Turks (1452) to Luther's Excommunication (1520), or formation of the Protestant Party at Smalkald (1529), sixty-eight or seventy-six years. All these are transitional periods which close one Era and usher in another, and thus become the evening of the preceding and the morning of the succeeding age. Assuming, therefore, that the

fourth great Era had its preliminary close at the French Revolution in 1792 (which is the official date), or in 1789 (which is the popular date), we are at present in the dawn of an Era, which, however, as it is the greatest of all Eras, may be honoured on that very account with a greater or a longer dawn than the preceding. We cannot tell, and we shall not even attempt to excogitate the matter. Suffice it to say, that we are in the dawn of another Era.

The fourth Era is represented by two leading nations, corresponding to the two ideas of Catholic Philosophy and national or disruptive Religion which characterise it. These two are France and England. France, being first in the order of time, marks the first end of the Era; England marks the second. France, being exclusively political, has only a political and military revolution: it may be sublimated to Socialism, but it is not theological. France thrusts out the old theology, and lets it in again as it may, can, or must. It does not try to improve it for it regards it as absolute. England has an ecclesiastical as well as a political mission, and therefore she marks the date of the new Era with two reformations; and theology being the basis upon which all Christendom is founded, it becomes of necessity the tropical or turning point, before we come to which all policy, however hopeful and apparently changeful, is only old policy mended by expediency. The great obstacle to all improvement in this or any other country, is the

religious question. The whole system of Education, at home and abroad, is hampered by it; moral and sanitary reforms are rendered impossible by it; union and communion in great moral and philanthropic achievements of high character are forbidden by it; and there is no possibility of escaping from this into a unitary state of things, but by the solution of it. This is the Mountain. Beyond it is Ultramontanism; on this side of it is Cismontanism. There is a passage, possible and pre-ordained on purpose, and it is a very Simplon.*

England, being double (State and Church), has two corresponding movements. The first, being superficial or material, and not touching the heart of the question, and therefore incapable of solving it, comes first, and forms the great popular question of the dawn; the latter closes it. The English Revolution is all peaceful. France has the sword, as the temporal and military nation, without the spiritual power. England, having the spiritual power, and being the great representative of the Written Word, conducts her revolution entirely with it, and only uses the sword to keep the Law in office. Her leading Reformers in State and Church will conduct their warfare with words only, and especially in the latter movement, which, though the most trenchant and heart

* Simplon is the name of the passage of the Alps made by Napoleon.