and there similarly arises the date 1869.
Again, add 1852 to one, eight, five, three,
and for a third time you arrive at 1869.
"Therefore," it was thought by some,
"1869 will witness the downfall of the
empire." When the year passed over
without any such catastrophe, the figures
were manipulated a bit; the Prince President
was not actually crowned emperor
till 1853. Predictions can often be made
to accommodate themselves to ascertained
facts by some such manipulation as this.
Still, there can be no doubt that the dates
here collected are very singular; they are
odd coincidences, if not fulfilled predictions;
and the world will probably see a good
many more of them.

The hereditary nobility and old county
families are the subjects of many curious
speculations of this kind—mostly credited,
if at all, by the uneducated peasantry of
the neighbourhood. Sir Bernard Burke
has collected many such stories. One
relates to the Lambton family. There is a
legend that, in the time of the Crusaders,
the head of the house consulted a witch
as to the best mode of killing a serpent,
monster, or dragon. The witch instructed
him, but at the same time told him he must
follow up that achievement by putting to
death the first living thing he might
afterwards behold: under penalty that, "for
nine generations, the lords of Lambton
shall never die in their beds." A plan
was laid that a dog should be the victim,
but by a mischance the lord's father
happened to be the first living being he saw
after killing the serpent. Lambton refused
to be a parricide. After that, it was a
fact that nine successive lords of Lambton
died otherwise than in their beds. In the
Ferrers family, also, there was an old
tradition that, whenever a black calf was
born at Chartley Park (where the cows
were usually of a peculiar sandy white), a
Ferrers would die that year. There were
six deaths in the family in about thirty
years, and each death was preceded by
the birth of a black calf. Eastbourne, in
like manner, has its local legend. Sir
Anthony Browne was holding a revel
at Cowdrey Hall in the time of Henry the
Eighth. A monk appeared, and warned
him that, because he had received the
church lands of Battle, and the prior lands
of Eastbourne, the curse of fire and water
should rest on his descendants. It was
recorded that, in a period of one
hundred years, Cowdrey Hall was burnt
down, the owner was drowned in the Rhine
on the same day, the male line became
extinct, all the sons of the female line likewise
became extinct, and the estate again
fell to female recipients, who could not hold
the title. Very few of these local legends,
it is hardly necessary to say, have ever been
traced to authentic sources.

A prevalent characteristic of predictions
is the vagueness of the language in which
they are expressed, so as to render apparent
fulfilment possible at any one of many
different dates. Nostradamus, a French
physician who lived three centuries ago,
poured forth predictions by the score:
each generally contained in a quatrain or
four-line stanza. Henry the Second and
Charles the Ninth attached great importance
to them; but the hits probably bore
but a small ratio to the failures; and, indeed,
the rhapsodies were ill-fitted for exact
fulfilment. His name became famous during
the time of the Stuarts for the following
lines:

Le Sang de juste à Londres sera faute!
Le Senat de Londres meteront à mort le roy!
Le Olivier se plantera en terra firma!
Brulez par feu, de vingt et trois, le six!

But there were suspicions that lines in some
editions did not exist in the first published.
He spoke in one of his predictions of the
defeat of the French army in Italy; but
as neither name nor date was mentioned,
the fulfilment became a very elastic affair
indeed. In an old volume of the Gentleman's
Magazine it is stated that a
prophecy was found in the tomb of a bishop
who died during the Middle Ages,
foretelling of a struggle between the Lion and
the Eagle, Italy to be left desolate, Rome
to be burned, and an English prince to be
King of France—all before the end of the
nineteenth century. But the dates were
not mentioned, nor is there any clue to
the time of writing the paper which was
"found" in the tomb. A few years ago
there was a report that an old book had
predicted the Crimean war, and the price
of the book rose accordingly in the market;
but when it came to be examined, the
announcement was to the effect that, in two
hundred and fifty-one years after 1604, the
downfall of the Mahommedan power in
Turkey would take place. Now this was
rather too much; for the defeat of Russia
by the Allies in 1855 could hardly be thus
interpreted. William Huntington, in the
last century, in one of his sermons, foretold
that, before 1870, the Papal See would
be turned into darkness, and the Turkish
moon into blood; words elastic enough,