We have now reached the close of the most wonderful year the world ever saw. None of our readers can be unacquainted with the poem in which Dryden celebrated the marvels of the year 1666,––certainly an extraordinary twelvemonth, though the English poet, only partially acquainted with the events which rendered it so remarkable, restricts himself, in his long series of vigorous quatrains, to the description of the two naval battles with the Dutch which its summer witnessed, and of the great fire of London which rendered its autumn so remarkable.

He might also have told that it was a year of great fear and expectation among both Christians and Jews. The Jews held that their Messiah was to come that year; and, in answer of the expectation, the impostor Sabbatei Levi appeared to delude and disappoint the hopes of that unhappy nation. There was an opinion nearly equally general in the Roman Catholic world, that it would usher in the Antichrist of New Testament prophecy; while among English Protestants it was very extensively believed that it was to witness the end of the world and the final judgment. It was remarkable, too, as the year in which oppression first compelled the Scotch Presbyterians of the reign of Charles II. to assume the attitude of armed resistance, and as forming, in the estimate of Burnet and other intelligent Protestants, the fifth great crisis of the Reformed religion in Europe. And such were the wonders of the Annus 216 Mirabilis of Dryden: two bloody naval engagements; a great fire; the appearance of a false Messiah; a widely-spread fear that the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist were at hand; the revolt from their allegiance to the reigning monarch of a sorely oppressed body of Christians, maddened by persecution; and a perilous crisis in the general history of Protestantism.

The year now at its close has been beyond comparison more remarkable. In the earlier twelvemonth, no real change took place in the existing state of things. Its striking events resembled merely the phenomena of a mid-winter storm in Greenland, where, over a frozen ocean, moveless in the hurricane as a floor of rock or of iron, the hail beats, and the thick whirling snows descend, and, high above head, the flashings of aurora borealis lend their many-coloured hues of mystery to the horrors of the tempest. Its transactions, picturesque rather than important, wholly failed to affect the framework of society. That floor of ice which sealed down the wide ocean of opinion retained all its mid-winter solidity, and furnished foundations as firm as before for the old despotic monarchies and the blood-stained persecuting churches. But how immensely different the events of the year now at an end! Its tempests have been, not those of a Greenland winter, but of a Greenland spring: the depths of society have been stirred to the dark bottom, where all slimy and monstrous things lie hid, and, under the irresistible upheavings of the ground-swell, the ice has broken up; and amid the wide weltering of a stormy sea, cumbered with the broken ruins of ancient tyrannies, civil and ecclesiastical, the eye can scarce rest upon a single spot on which to base a better order of things. The ‘foundations are removed.’ A time of great trouble has come suddenly upon the kingdoms of Europe––a time of ‘famines, and pestilences, and fearful sights, and great signs from heaven;’ ‘signs in the sun, and in the 217 moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.’

The extreme stillness of the calm by which this wide-roaring tempest has been preceded, forms one of not the least extraordinary circumstances which impart to it character and effect. In the Vision of Don Roderick, the fated monarch is described as pausing for a time amid the deep silence of a vast hall, pannelled and floored with black marble, and sentinelled by two gigantic figures of rigid bronze that stand moveless against the farther wall. The one, bearing a scythe and sand-glass, is the old giant Time; the other, armed with an iron mace, is the grim angel of Destiny. Not a sound or motion escapes them. In that dim apartment nothing stirs save the sands in the glass, and the inflexible look of the stern mace-bearing sentinel marks how they ebb. The last grains are at length moving downwards––they sink, they disappear; and now, raising his ponderous mace, he dashes into fragments the marble wall: a scene of savage warfare gleams livid through the opening, and the wide vault re-echoes to the hollow tread of armies, the shrill notes of warlike trumpets, the rude clash of arms, and the wild shouts of battle. And such, during the last few years, has been the stillness of the preliminary pause, and such was the abrupt opening, when the predestined hour at length arrived, of those clamorous scenes of revolution and war which impart so remarkable a character to the year gone by. A twelvemonth has not yet passed since history seemed to want incident. Time and Destiny watched as statue-like sentinels in a quiet hall, walled round by the old rigid conventionalities, and human sagacity failed to see aught beyond them; the present so resembled the past, that it seemed over-boldness to anticipate a different complexion for the future. But, amid the unbreathing stillness, the appointed hour arrived. The rigid marble curtain of the old conventionalities was struck 218 asunder by the iron mace of Destiny; and the silence was straightway broken by a roar as if of many waters, by the wrathful shouts of armed millions––the thunderings of cannon, blent with the rattle of musketry––the wild shrieks of dismay and suffering––the wailings of sorrow and terror––the shouts of triumph and exultation––the despairing cry of sinking dynasties, and the crash of falling thrones. And with what strange rapidity the visions have since flitted along the opened chasm!

A royal proclamation forbids in Paris a political banquet; four short days elapse, and France is proclaimed a Republic, and Louis Philippe and his Ministers have fled. Britain at once recognises the Provisional Government; but what are the great despotisms of the Continent to do? Six days more pass, and the Canton of Neufchatel declares itself independent of Prussia. In a few days after, the Duke of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha grants to his subjects a representative constitution, freedom of the press, and trial by jury; the King of Hanover has also to yield, and the King of Bavaria abdicates. These, however, are comparatively small matters. But still the flame spreads. There is a successful insurrection at Vienna, the very stronghold of despotism in central Europe; and the Prime Minister, Metternich, the grim personification of the old policy, is compelled to resign. Then follows an equally successful insurrection at Berlin; Milan, Vicenza, and Padua are also in open insurrection. Venice is proclaimed a Republic. Holstein declares itself independent of Denmark, Hungary of Austria, Sicily of Naples. Prague and Cracow have also their formidable outbreaks. Austria and Prussia proclaim new constitutions. Secondary revolutionary movements in both Paris and Vienna are put down by the military. There are bloody battles fought between the Austrians and the Piedmontese on the one hand, and the Germans and the Danes on the other; and, in a state of profound peace, the people 219 of a British port hear from their shores the boom of the hostile cannon. The Emperor of Austria abdicates his throne, the Pope flees his dominions, and a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte is elected President of France. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the ebullitions of the revolutionary element serve but to demonstrate its own weakness. In both England and Scotland, the moral and physical force of the country––in reality but one––arrays itself on the side of good order and the established institutions. A few policemen put down, without the assistance of the military, the long-threatened rebellion in Ireland; and the Sovereign Lady of the empire, after journeying among her subjects, attended by a retinue which only a few ages ago would have been deemed slender for a Scotch chieftain or one of the lesser nobility, and without a single soldier to protect her, and needing no such protection, spends her few weeks of autumn leisure in a solitary Highland valley,––a thousand times more secure in the affections of a devoted and loyal people than any other European monarch could have been in the midst of an army of an hundred thousand men. Such are some of the wonderful events which have set their stamp on the year now at its close.

We regard the old state of things as gone for ever. The foundations have broken up on which the ancient despotisms were founded. It would seem as if ‘the stone cut out without hands’ had fallen during the past year on the feet of the great image, and ground down into worthless rubbish the ‘iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold.’ And ‘the wind,’ though not yet risen to its height, seems fast rising, which will sweep them all away, ‘like the chaff of the summer thrashing-floor;’ so that ‘there shall be no place found for them.’ But while we can entertain no hope for the old decrepit despotisms, we cannot see in the infidel liberalism––alike unwise and immoral––by which they are 220 in the course of being supplanted, other than a disorganizing element, out of which no settled order of things can possibly arise. It takes the character, not of a reforming principle destined to bless, but of an instrument of punishment, with which vengeance is to be taken for the crimes and errors of the past; and, so far at least, a time when we need expect to witness but the struggles of the two principles––the old and the new––as they act and react against each other, stronger and weaker by turns, as they disgust and alienate by their atrocities in their hour of power such of the more moderate classes as had taken part with them in their hour of weakness. It is the grand error of our leading statesmen, that they fail to appreciate the real character of the crisis, and would fain deal with the consequent existing difficulties in that petty style of diplomatic manoeuvre with which it was their wont to meet the comparatively light demands of the past. It would seem as if we had arrived at a stage in the world’s history in which statesmanship after this style is to be tolerated no longer. How instructive, for instance, the mode in which, for the present at least, an all-governing Providence has terminated the negotiations of this country with the Pope! Contrary to the wishes and principles of the sound-hearted portion of the British people, our leading statesmen open up by statute their diplomatic relations with the Pope, palpably with the desire of governing Ireland through the influence of that utterly corrupt religion which has made that unhappy island the miserable lazar-house that it is; and, lo! Providence strikes down the ghostly potentate, and virtually, for the present, divests him of that ‘property qualification’ in virtue of which the relation can alone be maintained. But not less infatuated than our statesmen, and even less excusably so, are those men––professedly religious and Protestant, but of narrow views and weak understandings––who can identify the cause of Christ with the old tottering despotisms 221 and the soul-destroying policy of princes such as the late Emperor of Austria, and of ministers such as Metternich. It would not greatly surprise us to see Protestants of this high Tory stamp, who have been zealous against Popery all their lives long, taking part in the ‘lament of the merchants and mariners’ over the perished Babylon, when they find that the representatives of the Roman Emperors must fall with the Roman See. There are two wild beasts, like those which Daniel saw in vision, contending together in fierce warfare,––the old Babylonish beast, horrid with the blood of saints, and its cruel executioner––the monster of Atheistic Liberalism; but Christ has identified His cause with neither. No reprieve from the prince awaits the condemned culprit; and with the disreputable and savage executioner he will hold no intercourse. Destruction, from which there is no escape, awaits equally on both.

We began with a reference to Dryden’s Year of Wonders: we conclude with an anecdote regarding that year, connected with the history of one of the most eminent judges and best men England ever produced. It needs no application, showing as it does, with equal simplicity and force, how and on what principle the terrors of years such as the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ of the seventeenth century, or the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ of our own, may be encountered with the greatest safety and the truest dignity. We quote from Bishop Burnet’s Life of Sir Matthew Hale:––

‘He’ (Sir Matthew), says the Bishop, ‘had a generous and noble idea of God in his mind; and this he found, above all other considerations, preserve his quiet. And, indeed, that was so well established in him, that no accidents, how sudden soever, were observed to discompose him, of which an eminent man of that profession gave me this instance:––In the year 1666 an opinion did run through the nation that the end of the world would come that year. This, whether set on by astrologers, or advanced by those who thought it 222 might have some relation to the number of the beast in the Revelation, or promoted by men of ill designs to disturb the public peace, had spread mightily among the people; and Judge Hale going that year the Western Circuit, it happened that, as he was on the bench at the assizes, a most terrible storm fell out very unexpectedly, accompanied with such flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, that the like will hardly fall out in an age; upon which a whisper ran through the crowd, “that now was the world to end, and the day of judgment to begin.” And at this there followed a general consternation in the whole assembly, and all men forgot the business they were met about, and betook themselves to their prayers. This, added to the horror raised by the storm, looked very dismal, insomuch that my author––a man of no ordinary resolution and firmness of mind––confessed it made a great impression on himself. But he told me “that he did observe the judge was not a whit affected, and was going on with the business of the court in his ordinary manner;” from which he made this conclusion: “that his thoughts were so well fixed, that he believed, if the world had been really to end, it would have given him no considerable disturbance!’”

December 30, 1848.