"All is ready. That awful pause, which takes place before the shock of battle, reigns around; but ere it is broken by the clash of meeting arms, and while yet the contending parties are at a little distance from each other, a strange sound is heard over head. The time for the visible manifestation of God's vengeance has arrived, his fury has come up in his face, and He calls for a sword against Gog throughout all the mountains. 'Tis this voice of the Lord that breaks the solemn stillness, and startles the assembled hosts. The scene that follows baffles description. Amid earthquakes and showers of fire, the bewildered and maddened armies of the autocrat rush, sword in hand, against each other, while the Israelites and their Anglo-Saxon friends gaze on the spectacle with amazement and consternation. It does not appear that they will even lift their hand against that foe which they had come so far to meet. Their aid is not necessary to accomplish the destruction of the image. The stone, cut without hands, shall fall on its feet and break them to pieces; and then shall the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, become like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and the wind shall carry them away. The various descriptions which we have of this battle, all intimate that God is the only foe that shall contend with the autocrat at Armageddon. John terms it, 'the battle of that great day of God Almighty;' and we believe the principal instrument of their defeat will be mutual slaughter. The carnage will be dreadful. Out of all the millions that came like a cloud upon the land of Israel, only a scattered and shattered remnant will return; the great mass will be left to 'cleanse the land,' and fill the valley of Hamongog with graves."
I refrain from quoting the remarks made by Napoleon, at St. Helena, respecting Russia, and the likelihood of her ultimately subjugating Western Europe, as your readers must be familiar with them from the writings of O'Meara and others.
At p. 80. of Mr. Trench's admirable little volume _On the Study of Words_, an etymology is assigned to the word _bigot_, which is, I think, clearly erroneous:
"Two explanations of it are current," writes Mr. Trench, "one of which traces it up to the early Normans, while they yet retained their northern tongue, and to their often adjuration by the name of God; with sometimes a reference to a famous scene in French history, in which Rollo, Duke of Normandy, played a conspicuous part: the other puts it in connexion with _beguines_, called often in Latin _beguttæ_, a name by which certain communities of pietist women were known in the Middle Ages."