ged for the worse, and exhibited
strange relaxations of the moral principle. But why? What is the
philosophy of the case? Some will think it sufficiently explained by
the necessity of witnessing so much bloodshed--the hearths and the
very graves of their fathers polluted by the slaughter of their
countrymen--the _acharnement_ which characterises civil contests (as
always the quarrels of friends are the fiercest)--and the license of
wrong which is bred by war and the majesties of armies. Doubtless this
is part of the explanation. But is this all? Mr. Coleridge has
referred to this subject in _The friend_; but, to the best of my
remembrance, only noticing it as a fact. Fichte, the celebrated German
philosopher, has given us his view of it (_Idea of War_); and it is
so ingenious, that it deserves mention. It is this--'Times of
revolution force men's minds inwards: hence they are led amongst other
things to meditate on morals with reference to their own conduct. But
to subtilise too much upon this subject must always be ruinous to
morality, with all understandings that are not very powerful, _i. e._
with the majority, because it terminates naturally in a body of maxims
a specious and covert self-interest. Whereas, when men meditate less,
they are apt to act more from natural feeling, in which the natural
goodness of the heart often interferes to neutralise or even to
overbalance its errors.'

PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS.[24]

(_April, 1823._)

With a total disbelief in all the vulgar legends of supernatural
agency, and _that_ upon firmer principles than I fear most people
could assign for their incredulity, I must yet believe that the 'soul
of the world' has in some instances sent forth mysterious types of the
cardinal events, in the great historic drama of our planet. One has
been noticed by a German author, and it is placed beyond the limits of
any rational scepticism; I mean the coincidence between the augury
derived from the flight of the twelve vultures as types of the
duration of the Roman empire, _i. e._ Western Empire, for twelve
centuries, and the actual event. This augury we know to have been
recorded many centuries before its consummation; so that no juggling
or collusion between the prophets and the witnesses to the final event
can be suspected. Some others might be added. At present I shall
notice a coincidence from our own history, which, though not so
important as to come within the class of p