the authority, and the councils of an empire; * and in the divided Roman empire, it must mean the power and councils of its head (the head of the beast). Now, in the year 1792, when the seven vials began to be poured out, the Austrian sovereign, in his capacity of Emperor of Germany and of the Romans, was the head of the beast. The influence of this vial upon the Austrian throne is sufficiently apparent. Austria was at the head of all the coalitions against France. Her total failure and discomfiture in them, the infatuate blindness which so often marked her councils, the defeat of army after army, and the loss of one province after another, till at length she fell prostrate at the feet of her conqueror, and her sovereign renounced the title of Emperor of the Romans are events well known to those who have paid any attention to the wonderful history of the present period. In these events we may trace the first accomplishment of this vial.

The throne of the beast was next transferred to France, and the plague of this vial followed its devoted object, by affecting first the councils of Bonaparte and lastly his power. It merits our most attentive consideration, that until the period when the renunciation of the imperial titles of Rome by Austria, rendered Napoleon the virtual representative of the Cæsars, his enterprises on the continent of Europe, were crowned with complete success. But now he occupied the throne of the beast, and

* Rev. xiii. 2. The dragon gave the beast his power, and his throne, and great authority. The word "throne" is here evidently used as synonymous with the other two.

the influence of the fifth vial began forthwith to be felt by him. Its effects appeared first in the infatuate blindness of his conduct towards Spain. That

country was one of the most devoted of his allies. But not satisfied with the substantial control of its resources for the purposes of his ambition, he aimed at its annexation to the French empire, and having procured an instrument whereby the reigning king resigned to himself the throne, he transferred it to his brother Joseph. The Spanish nation however refused to acquiesce in this transaction, and rose in arms against their oppressor, and from this time may be dated the decline of his power and resources.

But

The next glaring instance of infatuation in the conduct of Bonaparte was his invasion of Russia in the year 1812. From that enterprise he returned a fugitive to his capital, after the complete destruction, by the hand of Heaven itself, of the best appointed and most formidable army of disciplined troops which till then the world had ever seen. the heart of this modern Pharaoh still continued hardened, and he once more advanced into Germany in the following year. Here again the influence of this vial on his councils is discernible. Nothing but infatuation seems to have induced him, after the declaration of Austria in favour of the allies, to remain at Dresden till his retreat was nearly cut off, and he was hemmed in on every side by an overwhelming force, and was in consequence obliged to hazard the general action at Leipsick, in which his power was finally broken. He still however refused the terms of peace which were offered by the allies;

and in the year 1814, the confederated sovereigns dictated at Paris his deposition and exile to Elba. From thence he again emerged, and suddenly appeared in France in the following spring, only to sustain a last and irreparable defeat, and to complete the series of wonderful vicissitudes which had marked his life, by delivering himself up to that power whose destruction he had most incessantly pursued. This man, at whose name the nations so lately trembled, is now confined as a state prisoner: and by a coincidence too strange not to bear upon it the marks of divine ordination, the place of his captivity is a barren rock in the midst of the Atlantic, which is itself a fit emblem of his past history, St. Helena being manifestly the summit of an extinguished volcano.*

In reviewing the character of the Apocalyptic beast, we however saw, that under his last political form, the imperial power is participated between the seventh head healed of its deadly wound and ten regal horns. I am therefore of opinion, that the effects of this vial are not limited to that power representing the head of the beast, but are at this moment in a measure felt by all the governments of the bestial empire and their subjects. The dreadful struggle in which they have been engaged has left them all in a condition of lassitude and debility, disordering their finances and surrounding them

* Having myself resided a week in the island of St. Helena, fourteen years ago, I was at the time forcibly struck with the appearances of its volcanic origin. They are also mentioned in the accounts of it which have lately appeared. I at that time little suspected that it was destined to receive so celebrated an inhabitant.

with difficulty and embarrassment. In consequence of this vial we are informed that the kingdom of the beast "was full of darkness, and they gnawed their

tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of "heaven because of their pains and their sores, and "repented not of their deeds." Darkness is an emblem signifying perplexity and misery, and it aptly describes the present state of Europe, filled as it is with various and complicated distress. The decay and embarrassments of commerce, and the stagnation of manufactures, have every where reduced the labouring classes of the community to a state of the most abject wretchedness. Our own country has also suffered, not only from these causes, but perhaps even to a greater degree from the ruin which has nearly overwhelmed its agricultural population. But still our distresses have been light in comparison with those of the continental nations.*

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It is my wish to support all my inferences from facts, by testimony of an authentic nature. Now with respect to the general distress which at the present moment overwhelms Europe, those statesmen who are at the helm of government must possess the most enlarged information. On this subject I therefore insert the following extract from Lord Castlereagh's Speech in the House of Commons, on the 7th of February, 1817, as reported in the Times Newspaper of the following day :-" He was as little disposed to deny as he was ready to lament, that the country was suffering under the severest pressure in every branch of its industry and resources; that this "distress was as universal as it was severe; and that from the highest "to the lowest rank, through all classes of society, the hand of Pro"vidence was severely felt. It was rather an aggravation than an "alleviation of the sufferings of a generous people, to know that they "did not suffer alone; but if our calamities could be soothed by a fellowship in distress, we need only look into Europe to find "causes of consolation. No state on the Continent, however small "or great, no class of society, were exempt from that pressure and "exhaustion, which were consequent upon a war of such extent. If

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In an especial manner the effects of the fifth vial, have fallen upon the devoted kingdom of France, with a heavy and overwhelming weight of calamity, the extent of which it is difficult for those to estimate who have no local information. I have shown, in a former part of this volume, that the number of the allied troops which actually entered France after the last renewal of hostilities, was one million one hundred and forty thousand. And when we take a view of the necessary consumption of such a body of men, with its attendant cavalry, artillery, and baggage horses, we shall be able to form some vague estimate of the dreadful sufferings of the French nation. But in the preceding year 1814, also, the whole line of French territory from the Netherlands to Switzerland, as well as on the side of the Spanish frontier, was the seat of war. The various and complicated misery, which followed in the train of these visitations, added to the previous drain of the population, to supply the waste in the armies of Bonaparte, has filled France with darkness, and thus has the fifth vial received its awful accomplishment. But no salutary moral effect has been produced upon the nations of papal Europe. On the contrary, the most authentic accounts represent them to be more and more hardened in depravity. They gnaw their tongues for pain and blaspheme God because of their

"lot of other nations, our sufferings were severe; our calamity was

great."

* Page 35, Note.