ther Shipton's was quoted to show that
London was doomed to hopeless and entire destruction.

[195] "A Dark Lantherne, offering a dim Discovery, intermixed with
Remembrances, Predictions, &c. 1652."

[196] Hooker wrote this about 1560, and he wrote before the _Siecle
des Revolutions_ had begun, even among ourselves! He penetrated into
this important principle merely by the force of his own meditation.
_At this moment_, after more practical experience in political
revolutions, a very intelligent French writer, in a pamphlet,
entitled "M. da Villele," says, "Experience proclaims a great
truth--namely, that revolutions themselves cannot succeed, except
when they are favoured by a portion of the GOVERNMENT." He
illustrates the axiom by the different revolutions which have
occurred in his nation within these thirty years. It is the same
truth, traced to its source by another road.

DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY.

Modern philosophy, theoretical or experimental, only amuses while the
action of discovery is suspended or advances; the interest ceases with
the inquirer when the catastrophe is ascertained, as in the romance
whose _denouement_ turns on a mysterious incident, which, once unfolded,
all future agitation ceases. But in the true infancy of science,
philosophers were as imaginative a race as poets: marvels and portents,
undemonstrable and undefinable, with occult fancies, perpetually
beginning and never ending, were delightful as the shifting cantos of
Ariosto. Then science entranced the eye by its thaumaturgy; when they
looked through an optic tube, they believed they were looking into
futurity; or, starting at some shadow darkening the glassy globe, beheld
the absent person; while the mechanical inventions of art were toys and
tricks, with sometimes an automaton, which frightened them with life.

The earlier votaries of modern philosophy only witnessed, as Gaffarel
calls his collection, "Unheard-of Curiosities." This state of the
marvellous, of which we are now for ever deprived, prevailed among the
philosophers and the _virtuosi_ in Europe, and with ourselves, long
after the establishment of the Royal Society. Philosophy then depended
mainly on authority--a single one, however, was sufficient: so that when
this had been repeated by fifty others, they had the authority of fifty
honest men--whoever the first man might have been! They were then a
blissfu