AN ANNUS MIRABILISSIMUS. 87 



we suppose we may regard the matter as a fait accompli, an event 

 so unheard-of and unusual that we must go back for an exact 

 parallel for more than two hundred years, when the Duke of 

 York, afterwards James II., " a man of many woes," married the 

 Lady Anne Hyde, daughter of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, whose 

 history of the Rebellion is one of the most interesting, and, on 

 account of its inimitable portraiture, one of the most valuable 

 works of its kind in the English language. If to all this be added 

 such events as the loss of the " Captain," built and armed on 

 a principle, the ultimate adoption or rejection of which will so 

 materially affect the navy of the future; the revision of the 

 Authorised Version of the Scriptures ; and many other matters, 

 both at home and abroad, that will readily occur to the reader, 

 this may be regarded as a very wonderful year indeed. Occupying 

 the centre, as it were, of all these events, we are too near them at 

 present to appraise either their magnitude or importance at their 

 legitimate value. Not the man at the base of a lofty tower, but 

 he who stands at some distance from it can take its proportions 

 aright, and we may depend upon it that the reader of the history 

 of our period a hundred years hence will turn to the page that 

 records the events of 1870 as at once the most interesting and 

 important in the annals of many centuries. Ee verting for a 

 moment to the Annus Mirabilis of Dryden, it is but fair to 

 acknowledge that they seem to have had one wonder to boast 

 of in 1666 that we cannot claim for 1870, to this date at least; 

 the wonder in question being two blazing comets in the nocturnal 

 sky. Describing the English fleet advancing to attack the enemy 

 at night, the poet, with a boldness of hyperbole for which he is 

 always remarkable, says 



" To see that fleet upon the ocean move, 



Angels drew down the curtains of the skies ; 

 And Heaven, as if there wanted lights above. 

 For tapera, made two glaring comets rise ! " 



