FORTUNE-TELLERS FOR NATIONS.
What the Edinburgh Review—in a highly superior article on "Church Parties"—calls the "Prophetic Press," is now in a state of violent eruption. The volcano in labour, however, brings forth only the bottle of smoke. You can hardly take up your morning paper without being invited, in the advertising columns, by some half-dozen several expositors, to take so many new walks into futurity. The Overthrow of the Papacy, the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the Battle of Armageddon, the Millennium, demand your attention together with the last novel, and Soyer's Pantropheon, and the Propriety of Legalising Marriage with a Wife's Sister. It is a remarkable circumstance that the gentlemen who announce these awful things, so calculated to wean the soul from all earthly solicitudes, do not omit to affix prices to their productions. Like common Gipsies, these reverend Romany require their hands to be crossed with silver. This shows that whilst they direct the attention of others to future certainties, they give no small share of their own to the main chance. On that account we hesitate to compare them to Mother Shipton, who was an old woman, or to Nixon, who was an idiot. Otherwise we should regard them as common asses, pretending to rank with the ass of Balaam.
French, Italian, German, without a Master, are studies not very generally successful; and the language of prophecy must be rather more difficult, independently of proper direction. Those who are inclined to entertain the idea that Mr. Stiggins and Mr. Chadband are illuminated expositors of Daniel and the Apocalypse had better pay a visit to Mr. Wyld's Great Globe, to acquire, if possible, some enlargement of the views of the world and the destinies of the human race. The patrons of the "Prophetic Press" will find it best to await that explanation of prophecy which is afforded by its fulfilment; but they will have to wait a long time for any such thing in reference to the commentaries of Chadband and Stiggins.
To infer the future from the past, however, is to prophesy with some security. At all crises of the world's history have Chadbands and Stigginses applied their prophetic wisdom to the question of the day. At all those times they have made money—and mistakes. On all similar occasions in future will they, in precisely the same manner, succeed, and—fail.