g to have deserved a grave notice. I see in it, however,
an illustration very noticeworthy of the temper which was working in the
country. The suspicion of treason in the Neville family may not have been
confirmed, although we see them casting longing looks on the lost
inheritance of Warwick; but their confessions betray the visions of
impending change, anarchy, and confusion, which were haunting the popular
imagination. A craving after prophecies, a restless eagerness to search
into the future by abnormal means, had infected all ranks from the highest
to the lowest; and such symptoms, when they appear, are a sure evidence of
approaching disorder, for they are an evidence of a present madness which
has brought down wisdom to a common level with folly. At such times, the
idlest fancy is more potent with the mind than the soundest arguments of
reason. The understanding abdicates its functions; and men are given over,
as if by magic, to the enchantments of insanity.

Phenomena of this eccentric kind always accompany periods of intellectual
change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit fails them, they
are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks of their course, and
have no compass and no celestial charts by which to steer. In the years
which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was the companion of
princes--at the dissolution of paganism the practicers of curious arts, the
watches and the necromancers, were the sole objects of reverence in the
Roman world;--and so, before the Reformation, archbishops and cardinals saw
an inspired prophetess in a Kentish servant girl; Oxford heads of colleges
sought out heretics with the help of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a basin
of rings, her royal fingers pouring such virtue into the metal that no
disorder could resist it;[667] Wolsey had a magic crystal; and Cromwell,
while in Wolsey's household, "did haunt to the company of a wizard."[668]
These things were the counterpart of a religion which taught that slips of
paper, duly paid for, could secure indemnity for sin. It was well for
England that the chief captain at least was proof against the epidemic--no
random scandal seems ever to have whispered that such delusions had touched
the mind of the king.[669]

While the government were prosecuting these inquiries at home, the law at
the Vatican had run its course; November passed, and as no submission had
arrived, the sentence of the 12th of July came into fo