into the air, and claps its
self-congratulating wings, answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such
things; and that the astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless it
would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with
the affirmations of Scripture.

The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the
nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee
that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly
regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or
before it. Yet many, who call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be
found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings
of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment
opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In
that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict
on Bohemia:[26]--in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that
adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's
teeth:--in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the
Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:--in
that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the
Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:--in that
book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a
unit, and his worthlessness by a million:--in that book, the avarice and
cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died;
and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness,
the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
filthy doings shall be read in that book--they who have made such
rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the
Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner
of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O
blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer!--O blessed
Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain
walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest
of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the
beast, who keeps so