72 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 222. 



After dwelling at some length on his first two 

 positions, he thus proceeds : 



" I come now, Sir, to the most interesting part of 

 what I have to say ; it is to point out my reasons for 

 thinking this is the distinguished country in which the 

 Messiah is now to appear. The stone that is to be 

 cut out of the mountain without hands, is to fall on the 

 feet of the image, and to break the whole image to 

 pieces. Now, that would not be true, if Christ and 

 his army was to appear in any country that is a part 

 of the image ; therefore, all the countries that were 

 comprised in the Babylonish and Assyrian empire, in 

 the Medo- Persian empire, in the Greek empire, and 

 in the Roman empire, are positively excluded. There 

 is another light thrown on this question by a passage 

 in the 41st chapter of Isaiah : ' I have raised up one 

 from the north, and he shall come ; from ths rising of 

 the sun shall he call upon my name, and he shall come 

 upon princes as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth 

 clay.' This is manifestly the Messiah ; and we are 

 therefore to look for a country north of Judea, where 

 the prophecy was given. The New World is out of 

 the question, being nowhere a subject of prophecy ; 

 and as the image is excluded, it can only be in the Rus- 

 sian empire, or in the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, 

 or Ireland. 



" The army that follows the Messiah, we are told, 

 amounts to 144,000; and there are a few passages in 

 the Revelation of St. John, that denote the place 

 where they are to be assembled. One is, ' I saw them 

 harping with their harps.' Another, ' I saw them stand- 

 ing on a sea of glass, having the harps of God.' 

 Another is, 'That they were clothed in fine linen, 

 white and clean.' Another is, ' And he gathered them 

 together in a place, in the Hebrew tongue, called 

 Armageddon.' Now, what respects the harp and the 

 fine linen, peculiarly applies to Ireland ; and not at all 

 to Russia, Denmark, or Sweden. The sea of glass I think 

 must be an island. And I believe the word Armaged- 

 don in the Hebrew tongue, and Ardmah or Armagh 

 in the Irish, mean the same thing. At all events, 

 there is great similitude in their sounds ; and St. 

 Patrick thought proper to make the city of Ardmagh, 

 which is the old name, the seat of the church govern- 

 ment of Ireland. But besides these sacred passages of 

 Scripture, there are some very particular circumstances 

 attending Ireland. She has never had her share in 

 worldly prosperity, and has only since 17S2 begun to 

 rise; and I know no instance in history of any nation 

 beginning to prosper, without arriving at a summit of 

 some kind, before it became again depressed. The four 

 great empires rose progressively west of each other ; 

 and Great Britain made the last toe of the image, being 

 the last conquest the Romans made in the west. Now, 

 Ireland lies directly west of it, and is therefore in 

 exactly the same progressive line, and it never was any 

 part of the image, nor did the Roman arms ever pene- 

 trate here. The arms of Ireland is the harp of David, 

 with an angel in its front. The crown of Ireland is 

 the apostolic crown. Tradition has long spoken of it as 

 a land of saints ; and if what I expect happens, that 

 prediction will be fulfilled. But what I rely on more 

 than all, is our miraculous exemption from all of the 



serpent and venomous tribe of reptiles. This appears 

 to me in the highest degree emblematic, that Satan, 

 the Great Serpent, is here to receive his first deadly 

 blow." 



I had an idea of sending you some extracts from 

 Mr. Dobbs's poem on The Millennium, but I fear I 

 have already trespassed too far on your valuable 

 space. Henry H. Bkeen. 



St. Lucia. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS QUOTATIONS FROM 

 HIMSELF. 



Your correspondent A. J. Dunkin (Vol. viii., 

 p. 622.) asks who was the author of the couplet, — 



" Oh ! for a blast of that dread horn, 

 On Fontarabian echoes borne." 



In reply to which Query you refer him to the 

 juvenile efforts of Frank Osbaldiston in the de- 

 lightful novel of Rob Roy. 



You might have referred him likewise to a cor- 

 responding passage in the sixth canto of Marmion, 

 sec. xxxiii., from which the accomplished poet and 

 novelist repeated inadvertently his own verses : 



" O for a blast of that dread horn, 

 On Fontarabian echoes borne, 



That to King Charles did come," &c. 



I say " inadvertently " from my own knowledge. 

 A few months after the well-known occurrence at 

 a public dinner in Edinburgh, when Sir W. Scotfc 

 openly declared himself the author of the Waverley 

 Novels, the writer of these lines was staying at 

 Abbotsford on a visit. On one occasion, when 

 walking with Sir Walter about his grounds, I led 

 the conversation to his late revelations ; and while 

 expressing some wonder at the length of time 

 during which the secret of the authorship had 

 been kept, I ventured to say that I for one had 

 never felt the smallest doubt upon the matter, but 

 that the intrinsic evidence of these several works, 

 acknowledged and unacknowledged, had long ago 

 convinced me that they were written by one and 

 the same author. Among other points I quoted 

 the very lines in question from the elegy on the 

 death of the Black Prince in Rob Roy, which I 

 reminded Sir Walter might also be found in the 

 sixth canto of Marmion. " Ah ! indeed," he re- 

 plied, with his natural expression of comic gravity, 

 " that ivas very careless of me ! I did not think I 

 should have committed such a blunder ! " 



We kept up the like strain of conversation 

 during the whole ramble, with a good deal ot 

 harmless pleasantry. In the course of our walk 

 Sir Walter stopped at a particular point, and 

 leaning on his staff like his own " Antiquary," he 

 pointed out some ancient earth-works, whose un- 

 dulating surface indicated the traces of a Roman 

 or Pictish encampment. " There," said he, " you 



