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Now I, Thomas Wingfield, saw these portents with my own eyes, but I cannot say whether they were indeed warnings sent from heaven or illusions springing from the accidents of nature. The land was terror-struck, and it may happen that the minds of men thus smitten can find a dismal meaning in omens which otherwise had passed unnoticed.
In proportion as a man has them, he is partaker of a Divine nature. He can rise no higher, and he needs no more. Platonists had said No, that is only virtue; and virtue is the means, not the end. We want proof of having something above that; something more than any man of the herd, any Christian slave, can perform; something above nature; portents and wonders.
The violent derangement of the world’s equilibrium; the trembling that will seize the limbs of mankind; the radical transformation of human society; the rolling up of the present-day Order; the fundamental changes affecting the structure of government; the weakening of the pillars of religion; the rise of dictatorships; the spread of tyranny; the fall of monarchies; the decline of ecclesiastical institutions; the increase of anarchy and chaos; the extension and consolidation of the Movement of the Left; the fanning into flame of the smouldering fire of racial strife; the development of infernal engines of war; the burning of cities; the contamination of the atmosphere of the earth—these stand out as the signs and portents that must either herald or accompany the retributive calamity which, as decreed by Him Who is the Judge and Redeemer of mankind, must, sooner or later, afflict a society which, for the most part, and for over a century, has turned a deaf ear to the Voice of God’s Messenger in this day—a calamity which must purge the human race of the dross of its age-long corruptions, and weld its component parts into a firmly-knit world-embracing Fellowship—a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time, to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed Order, and to flower, in the course of future Dispensations, into a Civilization, the like of which mankind has, at no stage in its evolution, witnessed.
He is fond of books, and, above all, of old books strange, old medical works, for example full of portents and prodigies, such as those of Wierus. New England, owing to its famous college, Harvard, and its steady maintenance of the literary and learned tradition among the clergy, was, naturally, the home of the earliest great American school of writers.
For several days, victims of the larger kind were sacrificed without any favourable appearance, and for a long time the good will of the gods could not be obtained. The fatal event indicated by these portents pointed to the persons of the consuls, the state being unaffected.
Nor, though they struck the minds of these high-born ladies with less perplexity and awe than the vulgar souls without, were the portents and horrors of the heaven, without due effect. No mind in those days, however clear and enlightened, but held some lingering belief that such things were ominous of coming wrath, and sent by the Gods to inform their faithful worshippers.
Taking up as our first illustration the series devoted to birth portents, it is interesting to observe the system followed in presenting the various phases of the general subject. A broad distinction is drawn between significant phenomena in the case of human infants and in the case of the young of animals.
Geologists have imagined that they could tell us what was going on at all parts of the earth's surface during a given epoch; they have talked of this deposit being contemporaneous with that deposit, until, from our little local histories of the changes at limited spots of the earth's surface, they have constructed a universal history of the globe as full of wonders and portents as any other story of antiquity.
He flung his own mantle upon the bed and went forth in his shirt. The storm raged terribly; the stars were dancing in high heaven. He came to the house of the Chief Leech and beat at the door. The Leech was not in bed. All the wise men of Emain Macha were awake that night, listening to the portents. "Setanta, son of Sualtam, is sick," said Laeg. "What are his symptoms?" said the Leech.
Lincoln at the Helm First Days in Washington Meeting Public Men and Discussing Public Affairs The Inauguration The Inaugural Address A New Era Begun Lincoln in the White House The First Cabinet The President and the Office-seekers Southern Prejudice against Lincoln Ominous Portents, but Lincoln not Dismayed The President's Reception Room Varied Impressions of the New President Guarding the White House.
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