"THE COMING MAN."

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1523, 7 November 1873, Page 7

"THE COMING MAN."

That somebody—whether a New Zealander, a Fiji Islander, or what not—will, at some remote date, indulge in melancholy reflections over the ruins of London must be accepted as inevitable, seeing that the belief is supported by a consensus of opinion, furnished not only by Lord Macaulay, but also by Sir Robert Walpple, Shelley, Volney, Darwin, Mrs Barbauld, " Satan," Montgomery, and—last, not least important—the renowned and eccentric Mother Shipton. This is the manner in which the last-named wondrous prophetess predicts the " Coming Man." " A time shall happen when a Ship shall come sailing up the Thames, til] it come against London, and the Master of the Ship shall weepe, and the Mariners of the Shippe shall aske him, i Why he weeps, seeing he hath made so good a voyage ?' and he shall say : Ah what a goodly city this was, none in the world comparable to it, and now there is left scarce any house that can let us have drinke for our money." This portentous utterance may, however, be interpreted in either sf two different ways. It may be taken to signify that the shipmaster's grief is occasioned by the sight of London in extremis, with scarce a house of any sort left standing, On the other hand, it may—without doing violence to grammatical construction—beheld that the chief mariner's sorrow is due to the consciousness of a scarcity of publichouses within the metropolitan district. The second reading would, of course, imply the previous second reading and passage of some such measure as the Permissive Bill. Otherwise the notion of an uncompulsory scarcity of licensed victuallars is too absurd for credence, even on the authority of Mother Shipton,— Western Morning Neios,