Note 54 — MODERN PROPHECIES.

The London Saturday Journal of March 12th, 1842, contains the following:—“An absurd report is gaining ground among the weak-minded, that London will be destroyed by an earthquake on the 17th of March, or St. Patrick’s day. This rumour is founded on the following ancient prophecies: one professing to be pronounced in the year 1203; the other, by Dr. Dee the astrologer, in 1598: “In eighteen hundred and forty-two Four things the sun shall view; London’s rich and famous town Hungry earth shall swallow down. Storm and rain in France shall be, Till every river runs a sea. Spain shall be rent in twain, And famine waste the land again. So say I, the Monk of Dree, In the twelve hundredth year and three.” Harleian Collection (British Museum), 800 b, fol. 319. “The Lord have mercy on you all— Prepare yourselves for dreadful fall Of house and land and human soul— The measure of your sins is full. In the year one, eight, and forty-two, Of the year that is so new; In the third month of that sixteen, It may be a day or two between— Perhaps you’ll soon be stiff and cold. Dear Christian, be not stout and bold— The mighty, kingly-proud will see This comes to pass as my name’s Dee.” 1598. Ms. in the British Museum. The alarm of the population of London did not on this occasion extend beyond the wide circle of the uneducated classes, but among them it equalled that recorded in the text. It was soon afterwards stated that no such prophecy is to be found in the Harleian Ms. Return