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 EPILOGUE. 190 versal-Suffrage Parliament or an *Impenar Coi^per Captain has, in these nine centuiies, grown to be very great. And the eternal Providence that guides all this, and produces alike these entities dth their epochs, is not its course still through the great deep ? Docs not it still speak to us, if we have ears ? Here, clothed in stormy enough passions and instincts, un- conscious of any aim but their own satisfaction, is the blessed beginning of Human Order, Regulation, and real Government; there, clothed in a highly different, but again suitable garniture of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as to real aim, is the accursed-looking ending (temporary ending) of Order, Regulation, and Government; — very dismal to the sane onlooker for the time being ; not dismal to him otherwise, his hope, too, being stedfast ! But here, at any rate, in this poor Norse theatre, one looks with interest on the first transformation^^ so mysterious and abstruse, of hmnan Chaos into something of articulate Cosmos ; witnesses the wild and strange birth-pangs of Human Society, and reflects that without something similar (little as men expect such now), no Cosmos of human