The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 50, June 12, 1841

The individual to whom the heading of this article is uniformly applied, stands, among the lower classes of his countrymen in a different light and position from any of those previous characters that we have already described to our readers. The intercourse which they maintain with the people is one that simply involves the means of procuring subsistence for themselves by the exercise of their professional skill, and their powers of contributing to the lighter enjoyments and more harmless amusements of their fellow-countrymen. All the collateral influences they possess, as arising from the hold which the peculiar nature of this intercourse gives them, generally affect individuals only on those minor points of feeling that act upon the lighter phases of domestic life. They bring little to society beyond the mere accessories that are appended to the general modes of life and manners, and consequently receive themselves as strong an impress from those with whom they mingle, as they communicate to them in return.
Now, the Prophecy Man presents a character far different from all this. With the ordinary habits of life he has little sympathy. The amusements of the people are to him little else than vanity, if not something worse. He despises that class of men who live and think only for the present, without ever once performing their duties to posterity, by looking into those great events that lie in the womb of futurity. Domestic joys or distresses do not in the least affect him, because the man has not to do with feelings or emotions, but with principles. The speculations in which he indulges, and by which his whole life and conduct are regulated, place him far above the usual impulses of humanity. He cares not much who has been married or who has died, for his mind is, in point of time, communing with unborn generations upon affairs of high and solemn import. The past, indeed, is to him something, the future every thing; but the present, unless when marked by the prophetic symbols, little or nothing. The topics of his conversation are vast and mighty, being nothing less than the fate of kingdoms, the revolution of empires, the ruin or establishment of creeds, the fall of monarchs, or the rise and prostration of principalities and powers. How can a mind thus engaged descend to those petty subjects of ordinary life which engage the common attention? How could a man hard at work in evolving out of prophecy the subjugation of some hostile state, care a farthing whether Loghlin Roe’s daughter was married to Gusty Given’s son, or not? The thing is impossible. Like fame, the head of the Prophecy Man is always in the clouds, but so much higher up as to be utterly above the reach of any intelligence that does not affect the fate of nations. There is an old anecdote told of a very high and a very low man meeting. “What news down there?” said the tall fellow. “Very little,” replied the other: “what kind of weather have you above?” Well indeed might the Prophecy Man ask what news there is below for his mind seldom leaves those aërial heights from which it watches the fate of Europe and the shadowing forth of future changes.