'If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of MY LAND, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.'

'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?'

'Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.'

Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises so severely the learning of other men,—who disposes so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he finds them,—who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it pass. Let us see what the learning is that is not 'words,' as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.

This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those connections. Time has changed it 'into something rich and strange,'—Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the seer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here upon the clouds, 'in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,' are but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.

'There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which, in their seeds
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'

'One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and revolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same subject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who brings so many 'buckets' from 'the headspring of sciences,' to water his plants in this field in particular. 'That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the whole mass.'

This part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind of prophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for. And the careful reader will observe, that notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of any supernatural gift on the part of this seer, and this frank explanation of the mystery of his Art, the prophecy appears to compare not unfavourably with others which seem to come to us with higher claims. A very useful and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed, this inductive prophecy appears to be; and the question arises, whether a kind, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which commands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near and sufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes, ought to be besieging Heaven for a _super_natural gift, and questioning the ancient seers for some vague shadows of the coming event, instead of putting this immediate endowment—this 'godlike' endowment—under culture.

There is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat and turmoil of this great ACT, the Muse of the Inductive Science drops her mask, and she forgets to take it up again. The hand that is put forth to draw 'the next ages' into the scene, when the necessary question of the play requires it, is bare. It is the Man of Learning here everywhere, without any disguise,—the man of the new learning, openly applying his 'universal insight,' and 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' to this great question of 'Policy,' which was then hurrying on, with such portentous movement, to its inevitable practical solution.

He who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this 'Magician,' when he 'brings the rabble to his place,' the reader who would know at last why it is that these old Roman graves 'have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so potent art'; and why it is, that at this great crisis in English history, the noise of the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely in the English ear, should read now—but read as a work of natural science in politics, from the scientific statesman's hands, deserves to be read—this great revolutionary scene, which the Poet, for reasons of his own, has buried in the heart of this Play, which he has subordinated with his own matchless skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for the sake of pursuing that general intention with the less interruption, now that the storm appears to be 'overblown,' may safely reserve for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history, and criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the COMMON-WEAL.