certainty, not merely their overthrow, but even the hour of it:  for the rate-uniformity of the slow-riding vapour which is touring our globe is no longer doubtful, and has even been definitely fixed by Professor Craven at 100-1/2 miles per day, or 4 miles 330 yards per hour.  Its nature, its origin, remains, of course, nothing but matter of conjecture:  for it leaves no living thing behind it:  nor, God knows, is that of any moment now to us who remain.  The rumour that it is associated with an odour of almonds is declared, on high authority, to be improbable; but the morose purple of its impending gloom has been attested by tardy fugitives from the face of its rolling and smoky march.

’Is this the end?  We do not, and cannot, believe it.  Will the pure sky which we to-day see above us be invaded in nine days, or less, by this smoke of the Pit of Darkness?  In spite of the assurances of the scientists, we still doubt.  For, if so, to what purpose that long drama of History, in which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist?  Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one’s sense of the complete:  but History, so far, long as it has been, resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act.  Can it be that the Manager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and ‘hang up’ the piece for ever?  Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet:  and if the fair earth which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon him the smoke of Hell, little the wonder.  But we cannot yet believe.  There is a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, is spun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we find placarded large the words:  “Why were ye afraid?” A dignified Hope, therefore—­even now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the Condor of Death—­becomes us:  and, indeed, we see such an attitude among some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry:  “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”  Here, therefore, O Lord!  O Lord, look down, and save!

’But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her, whispers us “fool”:  and inclement is the sky of earth.  No more ships can New York Harbour contain, and whereas among us men die weekly of privations by the hundred thousand, yonder across the sea they perish by the million:  for where the rich are pinched, how can the poor live?  Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our race have perished, and the empires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of anarchy.  Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, Liverpool.  The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, banks and hospitals;