Some Cranks and their Crotchets 433 



in mental calculation, riveted my attention on the 

 metallic image, in the vague hope of symmetrizing 

 the four sections of the collective emblem with the 

 successive dominations of the individual empires. 

 Failing in so shadowy an aspiration, I seemed to 

 be more than compensated by detecting an identity 

 of duration, equally pregnant and positive, between 

 the gold and the silver and the brass and the iron 

 taken together on the one hand, and the mountain 

 that was to crush them all to powder on the other, 

 the former aggregate being assumed to stretch 

 from Nebuchadnezzar s succession in 606 B. c. to 

 the dethronement of Augustulus in 476 A. D., and 

 the latter again from the epoch just specified to 

 Elizabeth s purgation of the Sanctuary in 1558.* 

 Having thus taken two equal periods of 1082 

 years, our Octogenarian proceeds to break them up 

 (Heaven knows why !) each into four periods of 

 68, 204, 269, and 541 years. Then we are treated 

 to the following equations : 



68=2x34 

 204=6x34 

 269=5x34+3x33 

 541 = 13x34+3x33 



Hence, &quot;with such a fulcrum as the Lamb slain 

 before the foundation of the world, and such a 

 lever as the span of the Victim s sublunary humili- 



