The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II

by Various

VII.

You may hear in Italy unto this day, various versions of this tradition. One will tell you that the Lord of Visinara offered moneys and treasures, to the half of his possessions, to the monks, if they would lay the troubled spirit of Gina Montani, but that, although they tried hard, they could not do it. According to another version, the friars would not try, for that no heretic's soul may be prayed for in the Roman Church. But, however the monks may have settled it amongst themselves, all versions of the history agree in one particular, that the ghost was not laid; that it never would be, and never could be, but still wanders on the earth. And you were wise to profess faith in it too, if you go amongst the Italians, unless you would be looked on as an unbeliever, not a degree better than the poor Protestant maiden Montani.

Several descendants of Giovanni and Adelaide of Visinara, are still scattered about Italy, though greatly reduced in station. And the accredited belief is, that whenever death is going to remove one of these, the spirit of the ill-fated Gina appears and shows itself to them in the moments of their last and most terrible agonies.

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VISION OF CHARLES XI.

From Sharpe's Magazine

We are in the habit of laughing incredulously at stories of visions and supernatural apparitions, yet some are so well authenticated, that if we refuse to believe them, we should, in consistency, reject all historical evidence. The fact I am about to relate is guaranteed by a declaration signed by four credible witnesses; I will only add, that the prediction contained in this declaration was well known, and generally spoken of, long before the occurrence of the events which have apparently fulfilled it.

Charles XI., father of the celebrated Charles XII., was one of the most despotic, but, at the same time, wisest monarchs, who ever reigned in Sweden. He curtailed the enormous privileges of the nobility, abolished the power of the Senate, made laws on his own authority; in a word, he changed the constitution of the country, hitherto an oligarchy, and forced the States to invest him with absolute power. He was a man of enlightened[pg 197] and strong mind, firmly attached to the Lutheran religion; his disposition was cold, unfeeling, and phlegmatic, utterly destitute of imagination. He had just lost his queen, Ulrica Eleonora, and he appeared to feel her death more than could have been expected from a man of his character. He became even more gloomy and silent than before, and his incessant application to business proved his anxiety to banish painful reflections.

Towards the close of an autumn evening, he was sitting in his dressing-gown and slippers, before a large fire, in his private apartment. His chamberlain, Count Brahe, and his physician, Baumgarten, were with him. The evening wore away, and his majesty did not dismiss them as usual; with his head down and his eyes fixed on the fire, he maintained a profound silence, weary of his guests, and fearing, half unconsciously, to remain alone. The count and his companion tried various subjects of conversation, but could interest him in nothing. At length Brahe, who supposed that sorrow for the queen was the cause of his depression, said with a deep sigh, and pointing to her portrait, which hung in the room,

"What a likeness that is! How truly it gives the expression, at once so gentle and so dignified!"

"Nonsense!" said the king, angrily, "the portrait is far too flattering; the queen was decidedly plain."

Then, vexed at his unkind words, he rose and walked up and down the room, to hide an emotion at which he blushed. After a few minutes he stopped before the window looking into the court; the night was black, and the moon in her first quarter.

The palace where the kings of Sweden now reside was not completed, and Charles XI. who commenced it, inhabited the old palace, situated on the Ritzholm, facing Lake Modu. It is a large building in the form of a horseshoe: the king's private apartments were in one of the extremities; opposite was the great hall where the States assembled to receive communications from the crown. The windows of that hall suddenly appeared illuminated. The king was startled, but at first supposed that a servant with a light was passing through; but then, that hall was never opened except on state occasions, and the light was too brilliant to be caused by a single lamp. It then occurred to him that it must be a conflagration; but there was no smoke, and the glass was not broken; it had rather the appearance of an illumination. Brahe's attention being called to it, he proposed sending one of the pages to ascertain the cause of the light, but the king stopped him, saying, he would go himself to the hall. He left the room, followed by the count and doctor, with lighted torches. Baumgarten called the man who had charge of the keys, and ordered him, in the king's name, to open the doors of the great hall. Great was his surprise at this unexpected command. He dressed himself quickly, and came to the king with his bunch of keys. He opened the first door of a gallery which served as an antechamber to the hall. The king entered, and what was his amazement at finding the walls hung with black.

"What is the meaning of this?" asked he.

The man replied, that he did not know what to make of it, adding, "When the gallery was last opened, there was certainly no hanging over the oak panelling."

The king walked on to the door of the hall.

"Go no further, for heaven's sake," exclaimed the man; "surely there is sorcery going on inside. At this hour, since the queen's death, they say she walks up and down here. May God protect us!"

"Stop, sire," cried the count and Baumgarten together, "don't you hear that noise? Who knows to what dangers you are exposing yourself! At all events, allow me to summon the guards."

"I will go in," said the king, firmly; "open the door at once."

The man's hand trembled so that he could not turn the key.

"A fine thing to see an old soldier frightened," said the king, shrugging his shoulders; "come, Count, will you open the door?"

"Sire," replied Brahe, "let your majesty command me to march to the mouth of a Danish or German cannon, and I will obey unhesitatingly, but I cannot defy hell itself."

"Well," said the king, in a tone of contempt, "I can do it myself."

He took the key, opened the massive oak door, and entered the hall, pronouncing the words, "With the help of God." His three attendants, whose curiosity overcame their fears, or who, perhaps, were ashamed to desert their sovereign, followed him. The hall was lighted by an innumerable number of torches. A black hanging had replaced the old tapestry. The benches round the hall were occupied by a multitude, all dressed in black; their faces were so dazzlingly bright that the four spectators of this scene were unable to distinguish one amongst them. On an elevated throne, from which the king was accustomed to address the assembly, sat a bloody corpse, as if wounded in several parts, and covered with the ensigns of royalty; on his right stood a child, a crown on his head, and a sceptre in his hand; at his left an old man leant on the throne; he was dressed in the mantle formerly worn by the administrators of Sweden, before it became a kingdom under Gustavus Vasa. Before the throne were seated several grave, austere looking personages, in long black robes. Between the throne and the benches of the assembly was a block covered with black crape; an axe lay beside it. No one in the vast assembly appeared conscious of the presence of Charles and his companions. On their entrance they heard nothing but a confused[pg 198] murmur, in which they could distinguish no words. Then the most venerable of the judges in the black robes, he who seemed to be their president, rose, and struck his hand five times on a folio volume which lay open before him. Immediately there was a profound silence, and some young men, richly dressed, their hands tied behind their backs, entered the hall by a door opposite to that which Charles had opened. He who walked first, and who appeared the most important of the prisoners, stopped in the middle of the hall, before the block, which he looked at with supreme contempt. At the same time the corpse on the throne trembled convulsively, and a crimson stream flowed from his wounds. The young man knelt down, laid his head on the block, the axe glittered in the air for a moment, descended on the block, the head railed over the marble pavement, and reached the feet of the king, and stained his slipper with blood. Until this moment surprise had kept Charles silent, but this horrible spectacle roused him, and advancing two or three steps towards the throne, he boldly addressed the figure on its left in the well-known formulary, "If thou art of God, speak; if of the other, leave us in peace."

The phantom answered slowly and solemnly, "King Charles, this blood will not flow in thy time, but five reigns after." Here the voice became less distinct, "Woe, woe, woe to the blood of Vasa!" The forms of all the assembly now became less clear, and seemed but colored shades: soon they entirely disappeared; the lights were extinguished; still they heard a melodious noise, which one of the witnesses compared to the murmuring of the wind among the trees, another to the sound a harp string gives in breaking. All agreed as to the duration of the apparition, which they said lasted ten minutes. The hangings, the head, the waves of blood, all had disappeared with the phantoms, but Charles's slipper still retained a crimson stain, which alone would have served to remind him of the scenes of this night, if indeed they had not been too well engraven on his memory.

When the king returned to his apartment, he wrote an account of what he had seen, and he and his companions signed it. In spite of all the precautions taken to keep these circumstances private, they were well known, even during the lifetime of Charles, and no one hitherto has thought fit to raise doubts as to their authenticity.

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DIVINATION, WITCHCRAFT, AND MESMERISM.

From the Dublin University Magazine.

It seems strange that so obvious a case as that of Barlaam and the monks of Mount Athos has not been brought into the mesmerical collection of pièces justificatives. The first compiler of the authorities on which it rests is Ughelli. The story is told in modern language by Mosheim, by Fleury, and by Gibbon at the years 1341-51. In taking the version of it by the last (Decline and Fall, c. 63,) we shall run least risk of being imposed on by over-credulity.

"The Fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental Church," says the complacent philosopher of Lausanne, "were alike persuaded that in total abstraction of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions and practices of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. 'When thou art alone in thy cell,' says the ascetic teacher, 'shut thy door and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the naval; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and etherial light.' This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos, the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus these monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists who placed the soul in the naval; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble the simple devotion of their brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God."

Gregory illustrated his argument by a reference to the celestial light manifested in the transfiguration of our Lord on Mount Thabor. On this distinction issue was taken by the disputatious Calabrian, and the result was the convocation of a synod at Constantinople, whose decree "established as an article of faith the uncreated light of Mount Thabor; and, after so many insults, the reason of mankind was slightly wounded by the addition of a single absurdity."

Of the truth of facts so long and openly discussed, there can be no question. The monks of Mount Athos did indeed put themselves into a state which may with safety be called one of mental lucidity, by fixing their eyes intently on a point. Mr. Robertson, who[pg 199] used to induce the mesmeric sleep by causing his votaries to fix their eyes on a wafer, had better precedent than he supposed for his practice; and Miss Martineau, who, in her artificial trances, saw all objects illuminated has been unconsciously repeating a monastic method of worship. The contemptuous indifference of Gibbon for once arises from defect of information; and when in a note he observes that Mosheim "unfolds the causes with the judgment of a philosopher," while Fleury "transcribes and translates with the prejudices of a Catholic priest," himself gives a luculent example of the errors of philosophy, and of the often unsuspected approach of prejudice to truth. Mosheim's observation, notwithstanding the damaging approval of Gibbon, is not without its value. "There is no reason," he says, "for any to be surprised at this account, or to question its correctness. For among the precepts and rules of all those in the East who teach men how to withdraw the mind from the body, and to unite it with God, or inculcate what the Latins call a contemplative and mystic life, whether they are Christians, or Mohammedans, or Pagans, there is this precept, viz., that the eyes must be fixed every day for some hours upon some particular object, and that whoever does this will be rapt into a kind of ecstasy. See what Engelbert Kempfer states concerning the monks and mystics of Japan; and the account of those of India by Francis Bernier." Strange that Mosheim, observing the uniformity both of the process and of its results in so many different parts of the world, should not have suspected that there was something more in this species of lucidity than the merely casual effects of a distempered imagination. By fixing the gaze even of the lower animals on an immovable point, they fall into a condition equally unnatural, and which, if they had language to express their visions, would probably be found equally clairvoyant.

A favorite subject of mediæval art is the life of the Christian ascetic in the Desert. In these representations a human skull may generally be seen placed before the eyes of the devotee. Such an object would fix the gaze and induce the ecstasy as well as any other. The charm of this species of contemplation must have been intense, since in search of its exaltations and illuminations the very convents were deserted; and during the fourth and fifth centuries the deserts of Idumea, of Egypt, and of Pontus, swarmed with anchorites, who seemed to live only for the sake of escaping from life, and in their fasts and mortifications rivalled, if they did not for a time even surpass, the Fakirs of the East. To such an extent was this religious enthusiasm carried, that in Egypt the number of the monks was thought to equal that of the rest of the male population. Strange consideration, if it be the fact, that a few passes of a mesmeric operator should produce the same effects which these multitudes procured through toils so painful and sacrifices to themselves and to society so costly.

The Egyptian method of inducing clairvoyance in boys, by causing them to gaze on a pool of ink in the palm of the hand, has already been identified with the practice of Dr. Dee, whose blank spherical mirror is now said to be in the possession and use of a distinguished modern mesmeriser. Divination by the crystal is a well-known mediæval practice; and from the accounts of it which Delrio and others have handed down it appears to have resembled, in some remarkable particulars, the method now in use among the soothsayers of Cairo. It does not appear to make any difference whether the polished object be black or white, a mirror, a solid ball, or a transparent globe containing water: the same extraordinary series of appearances is alleged to follow an earnest inspection of it. Before proceeding to Delrio's singular corroboration of this use of the crystal, it will be well to state what is known of divination by the phial and by the mirror. Divination by the phial is technically known as gasteromancy. "In this kind of divination," says Peucer, "the response is given by pictures, not by sounds. They procured glass vessels of a globular shape, filled with fair water, and set round them lighted tapers; and after invoking the demon with a muttered incantation, and proposing the question, they brought forward a pure boy-child, or a pregnant woman, who, gazing intently on the glass, and searching it with their eyes, called for, and demanded, a solution of the question proposed. The devil then answered these inquiries by certain images, which, by a kind of refraction, shone from the water on the polished and mirror-like surface of the phial."

Catoptromancy, or divination by the mirror, is as old as the time of the Roman Emperors. In one of the passages relating to this method of inducing what is called clairvoyance, we have an illustration of the early acquaintance of mankind with some of the forms of mesmerism. The passage is found in Spartian's life of Ditius Julian, the rich Roman who purchased the Empire when it was put up to auction by the Prætorian guards. "Julian was also addicted to the madness of consulting magicians, through whom he hoped either to appease the indignation of the people, or to control the violence of the soldiery. For they immolated certain victims (human?) not agreeable to the course of Roman sacrifice; and they performed certain profane incantations; and those things, too, which are done at the mirror, in which boys with their eyes blindfolded are said, by means of incantations, to see objects with the top of the head, Julian had recourse to. And the boy is said to have seen (in the mirror) both the approach of Severus and the death of Julian."

The passage may be variously rendered, according to different readings and punctuations, either as "boys, who can see with their[pg 200] eyes blindfolded, by reason of incantations made over the top of the head;" or, "boys, who, having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, by reason of incantations;" or, "boys, who, having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, it being operated on by way of incantation." This seeing, or seeming to see, with the top of the head, is one alleged variety of the modes of modern clairvoyance. It seems difficult to imagine that the boy Horner, whose case is related by Mr. Topham, in a letter to Dr. Elliotson, dated May 31, 1847, could have heard any thing of these pagan practices. Mr. Topham, a barrister and man of credit, states: "After five or six weeks' mesmerism, he began spontaneously to exhibit instances of clairvoyance. The first occasion was on the 11th of September. It was in the dusk of the evening, so that the room where he was mesmerised was nearly dark. My previous mode of mesmerising him had been by pointing at his eyes, but on this occasion I began by making passes over the top of his head, and continued them after he was in the sleep. In the course of five or six minutes after the sleep was induced, he suddenly exclaimed that he could see into the room above us (the drawing-room). I said, 'Your eyes are closed; how can you see?' And he replied, 'I don't see with my eyes; I see from the top of my head. All the top of my head seems open.' He then described, &c. I found every thing as he had described, &c." Mr. Topham, it need scarcely be added, does not appear to have been at all aware of the passage in Spartian, which, indeed, has not been cited or referred to in any published work for nearly two hundred years back.

A like use of the suspended ring, indicating the early acquaintance of practitioners in these arts with one of the alleged evidences of the so-called odylic force, is thus described by Peucer among various modes of hydromancy: "A bowl was filled with water, and a ring suspended from the finger was librated in the water; and so, according as the question was propounded, a declaration or confirmation of its truth, or otherwise, was obtained. If what was proposed was true, the ring, of its own accord, without any impulse, struck the sides of the goblet a certain number of times. They say that Numa Pompilius used to practise this method, and that he evoked the gods, and consulted them in water, in this way."

Crystallomancy is the art of divining by figures, which appear on the surface of a crystal ball, in like manner as on the phial filled with water. Concerning this practice, Delrio has the following remarkable passage, citing his contemporary, Spengler: "A man well versed in the Greek and Latin fathers, and happy, if he had not presumed, with unclean hands, to dabble in the mysteries of our faith (Spenger), has published in Germany a learned commentary on the nature of demons, which he has prefixed to Plutarch's Essay, De Defectu Oraculorum. From this (says Delrio) I extract, in his own words, the following narrative. There are some (he says) who, being consulted on matters unknown, distinctly see every thing that is inquired after in crystals; and a little further on proceeds to state, that he once had an acquaintance, a man of one of the best families of Nuremberg, and that this acquaintance of his came to him on one occasion, bringing with him a crystal gem, of a round form, wrapped up in a piece of silk, which he told him he had received from a stranger, who encountering him several years before in the market-place, had asked his hospitality, and whom he had brought home with him and lodged for the space of three days; and that when the stranger was departing, he had left him the crystal as a present, in token of his obligation, and had taught him the use of it; thus, that if there was any thing he particularly wished to be informed of, he should take out this crystal and desire a pure male child to look into it and say what he should see there; and that it would come to pass that whatever he desired to be informed of, would be indicated by appearances seen by the boy. And he affirmed that he never was deceived in any instance, and that he learned matters of a wonderful kind from the representations of those boys, although no one else, by the closest inspection, could see any thing except the clear and shining gem. At a certain time, however, when his wife was pregnant of a male child, appearances were visible to her also in the crystal. First of all, there used to appear the form of a man clad in the ordinary habit of the times, and then would open the representation of whatever was inquired after; and when all was explained, the same figure of the man would depart and disappear; but in his departure would often appear to perambulate the town and enter the churches. But the report of these appearances having spread in all directions, they began to be threatened by the populace. It also appeared, that certain men of learning had read in the crystal some statements respecting doubts entertained by them in their studies; and moved by these and other reasons, Spengler stated that the owner of the crystal came to him, representing that he thought the time was come when he ought to cease making such a use of it; for that he was now persuaded he had sinned in no light degree in doing so, and had for a long time suffered grievous pangs of a disturbed conscience on that account, and had come to the determination of having nothing further to do with experiments of that kind, and had accordingly brought the crystal to him to do with it whatever he pleased. Then Spengler, highly approving his resolution, states that he took the crystal, and having pounded it into minute fragments, threw them, together with[pg 201] the silk wrapper, into a draw-well." So far Delrio.

Another variety of this process is found in the Onuchomanteia, or nail-divinition, also spoken of by Delrio. "In this species," says he, "male children, before they have lost their purity, smear their nails with oil and lamp-black, and then, holding up the nail against the sun, repeating some charm, see in it what they desire. This mischief," he goes on to say, "has gone even farther in our own time. I myself knew one Quevedo, a veteran Spanish soldier, but more distinguished in war and arms than in piety, who, being in Brussels at the time when the Duke of Medina Cæli set sail from Gallicia for Belgium, clearly showed in more than one of his nails the fleet leaving the port of Corunna, and soon after dreadfully tossed by a tempest. Thus this man, who could also cure the wounds of others by his words alone, rendered his own spiritual state incurable by any one."

The like use of the crystal ball and spherical phial, containing water, suggests a version of the epigrams of Claudian—"De crystallo in quo aqua inclusa"—which has not been afforded by any of the commentators. Globules of water are sometimes found inclosed in crystals, as well as in amber. On one of those singular gems Claudian has composed a series of epigrams, which ascribe properties to the stone, and make allusion to uses of it hardly reconcileable with the idea of its being a merely puerile curiosity. The earlier epigrams of the series are neat and playful, but insignificant:—

"The icy gem its aqueous birth attests,

Part turned to stone, while part in fluid rests;

Winter's numbed hand achieved the cunning feat,

The perfecter for being incomplete.

"Nymphs who your sister nymphs in glassy thrall

Hold here imprisoned in the crystal ball;

Waters that were and are, declare the cause

That your bright forms at once congeals and thaws.

"Scorn not the crystal ball, a worth it owns,

Greater than graven Erythrean stones;

Rude though it seems, a formless mass of ice,

'Tis justly counted 'mongst our gems of price."

And so on through several others, until he comes to that one which seems to indicate something beyond a merely figurative use of the word "nymphs;" though, after all, it is possible that the word was originally written with an l, instead of n, which would make all the difference between "nymphs" and "waters":—

"While the soft boy the slippery crystal turns,

To touch the waters in their icy urns,

Safe in its depths translucent he beholds

The nymphs, unconscious of the winter colds:

And the dry ball exploring with his lip,

Seems, while he fails, the illusive lymph to sip."

The Latin is subjoined:—

"Dum crystalla puer contingere lubrica gaudet

Et gelidum tenero pollice versat onus,

Videt perspicuo deprensas in marmore nymphas,

Dura quibus solis parcere novit hyems:

Et siccum religens labiis sitientibus orbem,

Irrita quæsitis oscula figit aquis."

Not the least remarkable of the qualities here ascribed to the crystal ball is its energy in imparting the sensation of cold. Dom Chifflet, who, in 1665, published his learned treatise at Antwerp on the objects then recently discovered in the supposed tomb of King Childeric, at Tournay, says of the crystal ball which was found amongst them, "You would say it was petrified ice; so cold it was, that my palm and fingers, after handling it, were quite torpid." And cites Anslem Boetius, in his book on stones and gems, as saying, "the crystal is of so cold and dry a nature, that placed beneath the tongue of a feverish person, it allays the thirst; and held in the hands even of those violently fevered, it refreshes and cools them, especially if it be of considerable size, and of a spherical figure;" and another writer on the same subject, Andreas Cisalpinus, who states of the marble called ophite, that "they make of it little globes, for the handling of such as are in burning fever, the coldness of the stone expelling the disease." So far Dom Chifflet. It seems almost as if we were reading Reichenbach. "He (Reichenbach) found that crystals are capable of producing all the phenomena resulting from the action of a magnet on cataleptic patients. Thus, for instance, a large piece of rock crystal, placed in the hand of a nervous patient, affects the fingers so as to make them grasp the crystal involuntarily, and shut the fist. Reichenbach found that more than half of all the persons he tried were sensible of its action." Chifflet probably was a man of a nervous temperament. Those who desire to see the crystal ball in question, may inspect it, where it is still preserved, with other objects found in the tomb, at the Gallerie de Medailles, in Paris. Two similar balls may be seen here in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy.

The use of water in communicating an ecstacy similar to the mesmeric lucidity, is largely dwelt on by the mystical writers known as the Neo-Platonists. Psellus describes a mode of divinition among the Assyrians by a basin, which smacks strongly of the mesmeric practice. "The water, which is poured into the basin, seems, as to its substance, to differ in nothing from other water; but it possesses a certain virtue, infused into it by incantations, whereby it is rendered more apt for the reception of the demon." The effect of the waters of some sacred places on those accustomed to their influence, was also such as is claimed for the mesmerized waters of our present practitioners. Jamblichus gives this account of the Colophonian oracle:—"There was a subterranean place at Colophon, near Ephesus, in which was a fountain. The priest on stated nights sacrificed, then drank the water, and afterwards prophesied, being rendered invisible to the spectators. It might seem," he says, "to some that the Divine Spirit passed into the priest through the water. But this is not so; for the divine influence is not transmitted thus according to the laws of distance and division,[pg 202] through these things which participate in it, but comprehends them from without, and inwardly illuminates and fills them with lucidity, and fills the water also with a certain virtue conducive to the prophetic faculty, that is, a clarifying virtue; so that when the priest drinks, it purifies the luminous spirit which is implanted in him, and accommodates it to God, and by that purifying and accommodating process, enables him to apprehend the deity. But there is another kind of presence of the god, besides the virtue infused into the wafer, which illumines all around, above, and within us, and which no man wants, if he can only attain to the necessary state of congruity. And so of a sudden it falls on the prophet, and makes use of him as an instrument; and he in the meantime has no command of himself, and knows not what he says, nor where he is, and with difficulty comes to himself again, after the response given. Moreover, before drinking the water, he abstains for a day and night from food, and partakes of certain mysteries inaccessible to the vulgar; from which it is to be collected that there are two methods by which man may be prepared for the reception of the divine influence: one by the drinking of purgatorial water, endowed by the Deity with a clarifying virtue; the other, by sobriety, solitude, the separation of the mind from the body, and the intent contemplation of the Deity."

One might here suppose he read of the rites of St. Patrick's Purgatory. The water of the lake there is usually called wine, and it may be that on minds and bodies "which have attained to the needful congruity," it has operated as wonderful effects as the Colophonian fount itself. The proceedings of the priestess at Brancidæ, who also, from amongst other sources, derived the afflatus, or Waren, from a fountain, are to the same purpose. "The prophetic priestess at Brancidæ either sits on an axis [exposing herself to the influence, as the Pythoness on her Tripod], or holds a wand in her hand, given by some god, or dips the hem of her garment, in water, or inhales a certain vapor of water, and by these methods is filled with the divine illumination, receives the god, and prophesies. But, that the prophetic faculty comes from no corporeal or animal source, and from no local or material instrumentality, but solely and extrinsically from the presence of the incoming deity, appears from this, that the priestess, before she gives her oracle, performs many ceremonious rites, observes strict purity, bathes, abstains for three days from food, dwells apart, and so, by little and little, begins to be illuminated and enraptured." What the exact meaning of sitting on an axis may be, it is difficult to divine; but those who allege that a patient may be thrown into the mesmeric trance by holding a magnetized branch—and those also who have read of all the phenomena of exorcism being as fully elicited by a satchel of feathers as by a bag of reliques—will readily apply the wand "presented by some deity," and placed in the hand of the priestess at the moment when she should receive the final cataleptic impulse. If there be truth in the alleged modern cases of clairvoyance, we need not be surprised at the singular coincidences which have sustained the credit of Colophon and Delphi.

Not to dwell on other methods of inducing the afflatus, such as by characters and amulets, by music, by dancing, and by movements of the body, I shall now proceed with the effects alleged to have been produced on the afflati. Jamlichus must still be our principal authority. Lucidity and prevision have already been sufficiently indicated, and have doubtless been readily recognized: the other symptoms will be found not less remarkable and equally familiar:—"Man has a double life—one annexed to the body, the other separate from every thing bodily.... In sleep we have the capacity of being wholly loosed from the chains that confine our spirit, and can make use of the life which is not dependent on generation. When the soul is thus separate from the body in sleep, then that (latter) kind of life which usually remains separable and separate by itself, immediately awakes within us, and acts according to its proper nature,... and in that state has a presaging knowledge of the future." Then, omitting a distinction between sleeping and waking inspiration, and coming to the latter, in which, also, the offlati have a presaging power, he proceeds:—"Yet those (latter) are so far awake that they can use their senses, yet are not capable of reasoning,... for they neither (properly speaking) sleep when they seem to do so, nor awake when they seem awake; for they do not of themselves foresee, nor are they moved by any human instrumentality; neither know they their own condition; nor do they exert any prerogative or motion of their own; but all this is done under the power and by the energy of the deity. For that they who are so affected do not live an ordinary animal life is plain, because many of them, on contact with fire, are not burnt, the divine inward afflatus repelling the heat; or, if they be burnt, they do not feel it; neither do they feel prickings, or scratchings, or other tortures. Further, that their actions are not (merely) human, is apparent from this, that they make their way through pathless tracks, and pass harmless through the fire, and pass over rivers in a wonderful manner, which the priestess herself also does in the Cataballa. By this it is plain that the life they live is not human, nor animal, nor dependent on the use of senses, but divine, as if the soul were taking its rest, and the deity were there instead of the soul. Various sorts there are of those so divinely inspired, as well by reason of the varying divinity of the inspiring gods as of the modes of inspiration. These modes are[pg 203] of this sort—either the deity occupies us, or we join ourselves to the deity, &c.... According to these diversities, there are different signs, effects, and works of the inspired; thus, some will be moved in their whole bodies, others in particular members; others, again, will be motionless. Also they will perform dances and chants, some well, some ill. The bodies, again, of some will seem to dilate in height, of others in compass; and others, again, will seem to walk in air."

Taking these various manifestations in order, and beginning with the alleged power of resisting the action of fire, the reader will not need to be reminded of many seemingly well-authenticated cases of escape from the fire-ordeal. It has been usual to ascribe the preservation of those who have walked bare-footed over heated ploughshares to the use of astringent lotions: and where opportunity existed for preparation of that kind, their escape may perhaps be so explained. But in most instances the accused was in the custody of the accusers, and not likely to have access to such phylacteries. The exemption from the effects of fire was not confined to those cases of exaltation attendant on the enthusiasm of conscious virtue. Bosroger (La Piéte Affligée, Rouen, 1752) states of one of the possessed sisters of St. Elizabeth at Louviers, in 1642: "One morning Sister Saint-Esprit was rapt as in an ecstasy. The bishop commanded the devil to leave her. Immediately she experienced dreadful contortions, and an access of rage, and, on a sudden, says the exorcist, her demon left her like a flash of lightning, and threw the young woman into the fire, which was a considerable one, casting her with her face and one hand direct between the two andirons; and when they ran to drag her away, they found that neither her face nor her hand were in anywise burnt."

It would be idle to multiply instances of this sort from the monkish writers. The preservation of the three youths in the Chaldæan furnace was one of the miracles most adapted to the servile yet audacious imitations of the Thaumaturgists. It is only when their statements correspond in unsuspected particulars with the phenomena of experience—as, for example, in the case of Barlaam and the monks of Mount Athos—that they can be adduced without offending the judgment of rational inquirers. But the action of burning is an operation of mechanical and chemical forces; and how any amount of spiritual or electrical effusion could prevent the expansion of the fluids in the tissues and the disruption of the skin, seems hard to imagine. Something more must, one should think, have been needed; and if the mesmeric and Pagan oracular ecstasies be identical, this testimony of Jamblichus would lead us to suppose that that something was supplied by the mind. However this may be, we shall be better able to judge after the investigation of some other of the alleged concomitants of Pagan inspiration.

The insensibility to prickings and pinchings is perhaps the commonest test of the cataleptic condition; and, as will doubtless suggest itself to every reader, was, until modern times, a popular test of witchcraft. That the unhappy wretches who were put to death in such numbers during the middle ages for this offence were actually in an unnatural and detestable state of mind and body, cannot be doubted. They really were insensible to punctures; for if they had winced when pricked with pins and needles by their triers, it would have been deemed a proof of their innocence. A person feigning the mesmeric sleep, and whose interest it is to feign, may endure such prickings with seeming insensibility; but it was not the interest of the ancient witch to affect an insensibility, which would be taken as one of the surest proofs of guilt. A perverse desire to be believed guilty is the only motive that can be suggested as likely to lead to such conduct; and those who have studied human nature most profoundly will be disposed to give great credit to that suggestion. The same nature which in the fourth century ran into the epidemic frenzy of anchoritism, and impelled the Circumcellionist multitudes to extort the boon of martyrdom from reluctant tribunals, may be admitted capable even of the madness of a voluntary aspiration to the stake and pyre of the witch. Certain it is that many of the convicts boasted of their interviews with the Devil, and seemed to be, if they were not, possessed with the conviction of having actually partaken of the orgies imputed to them. Had they really been there in imagination? Was it that the popular mind had realized to itself an epidemic idea, and that the effect of the contagion was to put its victims en rapport with the distempered picture present to the minds of the multitude? In a moral epidemic the crowd, possessed with one idea, are the operators: it is the Panic possession of the ancients, which was not confined to general terrors, but applied to general delusions of every kind. The multitude itself radiates its own madness; witness the Crusaders, the Flagellants, the Dancing Fanatics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; perhaps even we might add the Mathewites of our own day.

The next symptom of possession was the power of passing through trackless places, the disposition to run to wilds and mountains, like that rage of the votary of Bacchus:

"Quo me Bacche, rapis tui

Plenum? Quæ in nemora aut quos agor in specus

Velox mente nova?"

The Bacchic ecstasy was not merely drunkenness, but an epidemic madness induced by long-continued dancing and gesticulating to the sound of cymbals and other noisy instruments, in all respects identical with the methods of inducing the Hindoo Waren. The dancing mania also of the fifteenth century,[pg 204] described by Hecker in his Epidemics of the Middle Ages, was induced in the same manner, and its effects were the same,—possession, illumination, and insensibility to external influences. That the Bacchic and Corybantic frenzies were, in all respects, identical with the middle age dancing manias, and with the possession of those who still exhibit the influences of Waren in Hindoostan, can hardly be doubted. "As for the Bacchanalian motions and friskings of the Corybantes," says Plutarch in his Essay on Love, "there is a way to allay these extravagant transports, by changing the measure from the Trochaic to the Spondaic, and the tone from the Phrygian to the Doric:" just as with the dancers of St. Vitus, and those bit by the Tarantula. Hecker states, "The swarms of St. John's dancers were accompanied by minstrels playing those noisy instruments which roused their morbid feelings; moreover, by means of intoxicating music, a kind of demoniacal festival for the rude multitude was established, which had the effect of spreading this unhappy malady wider and wider. Soft harmony was, however, employed to calm the excitement of those affected, and it is mentioned as a character of the tunes played with this view to the St. Vitus's dancers, that they contained transitions from a quick to a slow measure, and passed gradually from a high to a low key." After the termination of the frenzy the conduct of the dancers, as well indeed as of all the victims of this species of possession, whether Taratati, convulsionnaires, or revivalists, tallied precisely with that of the Bacchic women. Plutarch, in his thirteenth example of the Virtues of Woman, has this graphic picture of the condition of a band of Bacchante after one of their orgies. "When the tyrants of Phocea had taken Delphos, and the Thebans undertook that war against them which was called the Holy War, certain women devoted to Bacchus (which they called Thyades) fell frantic, and went a gadding by night, and, mistaking their way, came to Amphissa, and being very much tired, and not as yet in their right wits, they flung themselves down in the market-place and fell asleep, as they lay scattered up and down here and there. But the wives of the Amphisseans, fearing because the city was engaged to aid in the Phocean war, and abundance of the tyrants' soldiers were present in the city, the Thyades should have any indignity put upon them, ran forth all of them into the market-place, and stood silently round about them; neither would offer them any disturbance while they slept, but when they were awake they attended their service particularly, and brought them refreshments; and, in fine, by persuasion, obtained leave of their husbands that they might accompany them in safety to their own borders."

In the same way, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, might groups of both sexes be seen lying, exhausted from their agitations, in the streets of Aix-la-chapelle, Cologne, Strasburg, Naples, and elsewhere; and even in our own century sights not dissimilar have been witnessed at revival assemblages in Wales and Scotland, and at camp-meetings in North America. The rending of Pentheus on Mount Citheron by his own mother and sisters, who, while under the influence of the Bacchic afflatus, imagined they saw in his form the appearance of a wild beast, might be adduced as an example at once of the furious character of the frenzy, and of the liability of the afflated to optical illusions. Has what we read of fairy-gifts and glamour any foundation in this alleged power of the biologist to make his patient imagine different forms for the same object? But we are still among the mountain tops, and must descend to the remaining symptoms enumerated by Jamblichus.

"They pass over rivers in a wonderful manner, which the priestess herself also does in the Cataballa." We here again encounter the indicia, of that possession which went by the name of witchcraft in the middle ages. A witch, really possessed, could not sink in the water, any more than she could feel the insertion of a needle. The vulgar belief is, that the suspected witch was cast into a pond, where, if she floated, she was burned, and if she sank she was drowned. The latter alternative was not so; if she betrayed no preternatural buoyancy, the trial was so far in her favor, and she was taken up.

Nor was water the only test, in some parts of Germany the triers, less philosophically, employed scales; and had fixed weights (from 14 to 15 lbs.), which, if the accused did not counterpoise, they concluded them to be possessed. But it will be asked, how can there be degrees of philosophy in practices equally insane, and which have been condemned by the common consent of enlightened nations for near three hundred years? Insanity there certainly was, and on a prodigious scale, in these ages; but the judges and executioners were not so insane as the multitudes who either believed themselves possessed by others, or believed that they themselves exercised the power of possessing. To us, living in an age of comparative rest from spiritual excitement, it seems almost incredible that thousands of persons, in all ranks and conditions of life, should simultaneously become possessed with the belief that they were in direct communication with the devil: should cease to attend to their duties and callings, passing their time in hysterical trances and cataleptic fits, during which they seemed to themselves to be borne through the air to witch orgies and assemblies for devil-worship, in deserts and mountains; and that while one portion of society gave themselves up to these hallucinations, another class should, with an equal abandonment of every duty of life, have betaken themselves to mope and pine, going into convulsions, and[pg 205] wasting to skeletons, under the idea of having been bewitched; yet nothing is more certain than that it was such a frenzy as this the heads of the Church and the temporal Government had to contend against in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There were no mad-houses; if there had been, even to the extent we now possess them, they would not have sufficed to hold a tenth part of the numbers whose contact and example would have been fatal to the peace, perhaps even to the existence, of society. If such frenzies were, unhappily, to burst out among mankind at present, civilized nations might transport their energumeni to distant possessions; but the middle-age magistrates had no facilities of that kind: they should deal with the terrible plague by the only means at their disposal; and these were, either to let the madness wear itself out, or to repress it by the rope and faggot. If they had adopted the former course, the epidemic would probably have passed through the usual stages of popular distempers; would have had its access, its crisis, and decline; and when the scourge had passed, the public would have awakened to a full sense of the madness of which they had been the victims; but in that process there was the danger of society going to pieces—of the visionary frenzy of the possessed being taken up by fanatics as the foundation of a new and abominable religion, and of the hostility of the ignorant and uneducated class, among whom chiefly the possession prevailed, being directed against the restraints of government and the principle of property. Having adopted the other course, they pushed it to cruel and inexcusable lengths; punished many innocent persons, and suffered many of the really possessed to go free. For they whose madness was most to be apprehended, as most contagious, were not the wretches who fancied they possessed the power of bewitching others; but the convulsionnaires, who deemed themselves bewitched, and were their accusers. Certainly if the same epidemic should ever again break out among a European population, or even among a British population, the arm of the magistrate would be again required to suppress it, and we would be better able to judge of the conduct of those whom it has been the fashion of modern historians to represent as altogether ignorant and brutal executioners. So long as possession is only the result of manual passes, or of fixing the gaze on indifferent objects; so long as the effects are regarded as physical or psychological phenomena, due to a physical cause, and the pretensions of the practitioner are not rested on any peculiar religious sanction, there is no danger of mesmerism degenerating into a dangerous epidemic; but we might have seen a very different state of affairs if the magnetizers and biologists had referred their powers to any species of supernatural agency; and possibly would have found ourselves long since under the necessity of reviving those penal proceedings which we have so generally been taught to abhor, as among the most revolting remnants of mediæval superstition.[5] Even as it is, these[pg 206] powers of the biologist, if in truth they exist, are capable of fearful abuse. Let us take, for example, one of the oldest methods of exercising influence, for good or evil, on an absent person:—

"As fire this figure hardens, made of clay,

And this of wax with fire consumes away;

Such let the soul of cruel Daphnis be,

Hard to the rest of women, soft to me."

If the waxen or clay image be but a concentrator of the good or evil will of the operator towards the distant object, and the witchcraft of the love-sick magician in Virgil, or of the evil-disposed wizard of the middle ages, be in truth no more than an exertion of biological power, it behoves society to take care how individuals should be suffered to acquire mesmerical relations with others, over whom they may exercise malignant as well as healing influences. If the pretensions of the biologists be established, biology must soon be put under medical supervision. But to return to the phenomena of possession.

The propriety of trying alleged witches by water, has been impugned and defended with abundance of scholastic learning; and, singular to say, its opponents have been chiefly found among the Roman Catholic writers, and its advocates among the Reformers. Delrio, by far the most learned of all the writers on demonology, vigorously assails Rickius, the only notable Roman Catholic advocate of the practice. The arguments on both sides being based entirely on scholastic definitions and distinctions respecting the nature of demons, and the baptismal and other spiritual virtues of water, are of little relevance in the present method of discussing physical phenomena. Both parties assume that the persons of witches exhibit a preternatural levity—Delrio admitting that something less than fourteen or fifteen pounds was the actual weight which popular belief throughout Germany ascribed to persons in that possessed state, no matter how large or fat they might seem to the eye; and Rickius gives an example of a woman, executed by drowning in 1594, whom the executioner could hardly keep under with repeated thrusts of his pole, so high did she bound upwards from the surface, and "so boil up," as it were, out of the depths of the water. The levity of possessed persons in water might be accounted for by a phenomenon attendant on those preternatural conditions of the body which follow excitements of an analogous kind. The victims of the flogging and dancing manias in the middle ages, and subjects of the fanatical fervors of camp-meetings and revivals, alike experienced a windy intestinal distension, consequent on the departure of their mental frenzy. To control this disagreeable symptom, the candidates for both species of afflatus used to come to their meetings provided with napkins and rollers with which to bind their middles, and prevent the supervening inflation. Persons so puffed up would certainly float with all the buoyancy ascribed to the German witches, if cast into water; but they would still preserve their proper corporeal gravity if placed in a scale. Unless, then, we suppose Delrio to have been the dupe of some singular and unaccountable delusion on this point, the typanitic affections of the convulsionnaires will not account for the anti-gravitating phenomena ascribed to medieval witchcraft. There are some reasons, however, for the belief that these appearances may not have been wholly imaginary; for if any reliance can be placed on the concurrent traditions of all religions, Pagan as well as Christian, supported by wide-spread popular belief, the high mental exaltation induced by religious abstraction, and also by other vehement affections of the mind, is actually attended with a diminished specific gravity. Of alleged ecclesiastical miracles of this kind it is better to say nothing. The Roman Catholic and the Hindoo devotees equally claim for their adepts in religious contemplation an exemption from (among other earthly liabilities) the hindrance of weight. In the rapture of prayer, the ascetic and the saint alike rise in the air, and spurn the law of gravitation with the other incidents of matter. Suspected evidences of this kind are, however, of no weight in philosophical inquiry. It will be safer to leave the Etstaticas and the Fakirs[pg 207] to their respective believers, and to take a story of the people, into which religious considerations do not so directly enter. The native Irish, then, have a remarkable tradition, as old, at least, as the seventh or eighth century, that phrenetic madmen lose the corporeal quality of weight. A picturesque and romantic example of this belief is found in the story of the fate of Suibhne, son of Colman, King of Dalnaraidhe, as related in the bardic accounts of the battle of Moyra. Suibhne, a valiant warrior, has offered an insult to Saint Ere, Bishop of Slane; the affront is avenged by a curse, the usual retaliation of aggrieved ecclesiastics in those days. The curse falls on Sweeny in the most grievous form of visitation that could afflict a warrior:—a fit of cowardice seizes him in the very onset of the battle, and drives him frantic with terror. "Giddiness came over him at the sight of the horrors, grimness, and rapidity of the Gaels; at the fierce looks, brilliance, and ardor of the foreigners; at the rebounding furious shouts of the embattled tribes on both sides, rushing against and coming into collision with one another. Huge, flickering, horrible, aërial phantoms, rose up (around him), so that from the uproar of the battle, the frantic pranks of the demons, the clashing of arms, and the sound of the heavy blows reverberating on the points of heroic spears, and keen edges of swords, and warlike borders of broad shields, the hero Suibhne was filled and intoxicated with horror, panic, and imbecility; his feet trembled as if incessantly shaken by the force of a stream; the inlets of his hearing were expanded and quickened by the horrors of lunacy; his speech became faltering from the giddiness of imbecility; his very soul fluttered with hallucinations, and with many and various phantasms. He might be compared to a salmon in a weir, or to a bird after being caught in the strait prison of a crib," &c. "When he was seized with this frantic fit, he made a supple, very light leap, and where he alighted he was on the boss of the shield of the warrior next him; and he made a second leap, and perched on the crest of the helmet of the same hero, who, nevertheless, did not feel him. Then he made a third active, very light leap, and perched on the top of the sacred tree which grew on the smooth surface of the plain in which the inferior people and the debilitated of the men of Erin were seated, looking on at the battle. These shouted at him when they saw him, to press him back into the battle again; and he in consequence made three furious leaps to shun the battle, but through the giddiness and imbecility of his hallucination, he went back into the same field of conflict; but it was not on the earth he walked, but alighted on the shoulders of men and the tops of their helmets," &c.

In this state, Suibhne flits off the field of battle like a bird, or a waif of the forest, without weight, and betakes himself to the wilds, where he "herds with the deer, runs races with the showers, and flees with the birds," as a wild denizen of the wilderness; but with his ecstacy of terror, he receives the gift of prophecy. Dr. O'Donovan, in a note on this curious passage, observes, "it was the ancient belief in Ireland, and still is in the wilder mountainous districts, that lunatics are as light as feathers, and can climb steeps and precipices like the somnambulists."—See Buile Suibhne, a bardic romance on the madness of this unfortunate warrior. This latter romance is occupied with Suibhne's adventures as a mad prophet, Omadh, in Irish. Query did the Bacchus Omadios of the Greeks derive his name from a similar source? It would be a singular coincidence that would make a Greek god an omadran. Keats, with a fine intuition, has depicted those mores afflatorum, in the satyrs who do the benevolent biddings of Pan:

"Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies,

For willing service; whether, to surprise

The squatted hare, while, in half-sleeping fit,

Or upward ragged precipices flit

To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;

Or by mysterious enticement draw

Bewildered shepherds to their paths again."

Compare with this picture of the Irish lunatic among the boughs of the tree on the field of Moira, the following extracts from Bosroger's account of the possession of the nuns of Louviers, in a.d. 1642. One of the sisters, surnamed De Jesus, conceived herself to be possessed by a demon whom she called Arracon. "On the occasion of a procession of the host by Monseigneur the Bishop of Evreux, Arracon exhibited another example of his quality, causing sister De Jesus to pour forth a torrent of blasphemies and furious expressions all the time of the procession. When she was brought into the choir, and held fast by an exorcist, for fear of her offering some insult, the holy sacrament was borne past her. Arracon immediately caused her to be shot forward through the air to a considerable distance, so as to strike the gilt sun in which the adorable eucharist was placed, out of the hands of the lord bishop; and the exorcist making an effort to detain her, the demon lifted her up in the air over an accoudoir, or leaning place, of three feet in height, intending to lift her, as he declared, into the vault, but the exorcist holding fast, all he could do was to cast the nun and exorcist back to the floor together," &c. Putiphar, the possessor of Sister Saint Sacrement, "made her with wonderful impetuosity run up a mulberry tree, of which the stem was easy enough of ascent; but when she got up the stem, he forced her onward till she approached the extremities of the slenderest branches, and caused her to make almost the entire circuit of the mulberry tree, in such sort that a man who saw her from a distance cried out that she flew like a bird. Then the demon permitted her to see her peril; she grew pale, and cried out with alarm. They ran in haste to bring a ladder, but Putiphar mocked[pg 208] them, crying, 'As I made this chienne get up without a ladder, so she shall go down,' and caused her descend the same slender branches to the stem, and thence to the ground."

Pere de la Menarday, in his Examen Critique de l'Histoire des Diables de London, gives a letter from a missionary priest in Cochin China, describing a case of demonopathy, in the course of which, if we could believe the narrator, the patient seemed for a time to have conquered all the ordinary tendencies of gravitation. The missionary, M. Delacourt, writing from Paris, 25th November, 1738, begins by protesting his unwillingness to expose himself to the repulses of public incredulity; but for his friends' sake consents to give the particulars. "Voici donc le fait dans ses principales circonstances tel que je l'ai vu de mes propres yeux." In the month of May, 1733, a young native communicant, named Dodo, residing at the town of Cheta, in the province of Cham, and kingdom of Cochin China, being reproached by his conscience for the suppression of some facts in his confession, fell into violent convulsions on attempting to take the host in his mouth. He was brought to the missionary, foaming, leaping, and blaspheming in the manner usual among victims of his malady. After many exorcisms, both by the missionary and by two other ecclesiastics, which only increased his sufferings, he was at length, by gentler entreaties, brought to make a confession. The missionary then renewed his exorcisms, which he continued for a month with little success. "At last," says he, "I determined to make a last effort, and to imitate the example of Monseigneur the Bishop of Tilopolis on a like occasion, namely, in my exorcism to command the demon in Latin to transport him to the ceiling of the church, feet up and head down. On the instant his body became rigid, and as though he were impotent of all his members, he was dragged from the middle of the church to a column, and there, his feet joined fast together, his back closely applied to the pillar, without aiding himself with his hands, he was transported in the twinkling of an eye to the ceiling, just like a weight run up by a cord, without any visible agency. While he hung there, with his feet glued to the ceiling, and his head down, I made the demon, for I had determined to confound and humiliate him, confess the falsehood of the Pagan religion. I made him confess that he was a deceiver, and at the same time admit the holiness of Christianity. I kept him for better than half an hour in the air, and not possessing enough of constancy to hold him there any longer, so frightened was I myself at what I saw, I at length commanded him to lay the patient at my feet without harming him. Immediately he cast him down before me with no more hurt to him than if he had been a bundle of foul linen." It is by no means improbable that Pere Delacourt himself had become infected with the madness of the monomaniac whom he was engaged in exorcising, before his eyes conceived that extraordinary image of the patient ascending by invisible agency to the ceiling of the church. But his letter bears evident marks of having been written under a sincere belief of the reality of all that he describes, and he refers to several living witnesses of the scene.

Reverting to this subject of optical illusion, already glanced at, we find still another resemblance between the mysticism of the ancients and moderns. The priestess rendering herself invisible to the bystanders, appears to transcend all the rest of Jamblichus's wonders. Strange to say, even this pretension of the Colophonian prophetess is not without something analogous among the alleged phenomena of mesmerism. "I requested a young lady," says Dr. Elliotson, "whom I had long mesmerised, with the never-tiring devotion of a parent, and in whom I produced a variety of phenomena, to promise to be unable on waking to see her maid, who always sat in the room at work during my visit, till I left the room, and then at once to discern her. On waking, she said she did not see the maid, but said she saw the chair on which the maid sat. Presently, however, she saw the maid, was agitated, had an hysteric fit, and passed into the sleep-waking state. I now inquired how she came to see her maid, as I had not left the room, and told her she must not (see the maid), when I awoke her again. I then awoke her again; she could not see the maid, was astonished at the maid's absence, and at first supposed she was in an adjoining room; but presently rang the bell twice, though the woman was standing before her, I moved just out of the room, leaving the door open, and she saw the maid instantly, and was astonished, and laughed." In the Colophonian oracle, they were the spectators, not the prophetess, who had need thus to be put under the influence of the mesmeric glamour. Can it be that, in certain diseased states of the optic nerve, it really is subject to the illusion of seeing objects rise in air, as well as go round in horizontal motion? They who saw these sights in the adyta of temples, in caves and sacred groves, in initiations and oracular consultations, were all prepared by fasting, watching, and prayer, for the reception of biological influence, and possibly may have seemed to themselves to see what others desired they should believe themselves to have actually seen. Was Lord Shrewsbury under this influence at Caldaro?

But the reader will begin to suspect that his credulity is about to be solicited for the aërial flights of witches on their sweeping brooms. This apprehension may be dismissed. Witchcraft, or, to call it by its proper pathological name, demonopathy, was a true delusion, true so far as the belief of the monomaniacs themselves was concerned, but resting[pg 209] wholly in their own distempered imagination.

From a learned and philosophic review of the great work of Calmeil, De la Folie, in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medicine, we extract the following resumé of the symptoms of this dreadful epidemic malady: "The leading phenomenon was the belief of the sufferers that Satan had obtained full mastery over them; that he was the object of their most fervent worship, a certain portion of their life being spent in the actual company of himself and his legion of darkness, when every crime that a diseased imagination could suggest was committed by them. Both sexes attended at the Devil's Sabbaths, as they were termed, where the sorcerers met, danced, and enjoyed every wild pleasure. To these meetings they travelled through the air, though, by the power of Satan, their bodies seemed to remain at home. They killed children, poisoned cattle, produced storms and plagues, and held converse with Succubi and Incubi, and other fallen spirits. At the Sabbath all agreed, that from every country the sorcerers arrived transported by demons. Women perched on sticks, or riding on goats, naked, with dishevelled hair, arrived in thousands; they passed like meteors, and their descent was more rapid than that of the eagle or hawk, when striking his prey. Over this meeting Satan presided; indecent dances and licentious songs went on, and an altar was raised, where Satan, with his head downward, his feet turned up, and his back to the altar, celebrated his blasphemous mass."

Each individual sufferer believed herself or himself to have seen these sights, to have gone through these origies, and to have been transported to them through the air. If there had been but a few confessions, and these exacted by torture, it might be thought that the fancies of the examiners supplied the phenomena, to which the sufferers merely gave an enforced and worthless assent. But the confessions were as often voluntary as forced, and were indeed rather triumphant bravadoes than confessions of anything that the sufferers themselves deemed shameful. It was a true belief in the minds of the parties affected. The question has already been asked, were they en rapport with the rest of the diseased multitude, in whose minds the common delusion existed? The question presupposes a mental sympathy and participation, by one mind, of images existing in another, which is one of the alleged manifestations of clairvoyance. But there is another mode of accounting for these and similar phenomena, which as yet obtains the approval of physicians, more than any suggestions of clairvoyant communications. It is, that there are certain states of the body in which the patient truly believes himself to see particular objects, to do particular acts, and to possess special powers, which to the rest of the world have no existence, but in respect of the patient himself are realities as visible, tangible, and perceptible, as the actual existences which surround him. For example, it is a fact which admits of no dispute, that a certain quantity of alcohol taken into the human stomach will cause the drinker to fall into delirium tremens; and that in that state the patient will, with his waking eyes, see objects of a particular kind; in nine cases out of ten, the forms of rats and mice running over his bed, and about his person. There is no public delusion here, no popular mind possessed with a fixed idea of these appearances, to which the individual delusions might be referred; yet the swallower of the alcohol in Dublin, and the swallower of the alcohol in Calcutta, will both see exactly the same sorts of appearances, and will both express precisely the same horror and disgust at their supposed tormentors. Is it the case, then, that, as the forms of rats and mice come into the minds of men in one kind of mental sickness, the forms of men and women riding on goats and broomsticks through the air, and the other apparatus of the witch-sabbaths, may have been but the manifestations of another disordered state of the mental organism, a symptom merely and concomitant of an epidemical disease? It is easy enough to understand how symptoms so simple as the appearance of what are usually called "blue devils" should be constant in their attendance on a particular state of cerebral disorder; but when the hallucination becomes so complex as in the fantasies of witchcraft, it is difficult to suppose that that long train of appearances and imaginary transactions should follow on a merely pathological derangement of the brain. Between the two alternatives of referring these hallucinations to such a cause, on the one hand, or to a mesmeric sympathy, as above suggested, between the individual and the crowd of the possessed, on the other, it is hard to choose; but, perhaps, the latter will appear to offer the less amount of difficulty. In the present state of knowledge, however, it would be rash to say that a particular state of diseased cerebral action might not be attended with a perfect set of supposed phenomena as complex and constant in the minds of the sufferers, as those which existed among the victims of demonomania.

An example less difficult of reconcilement with the theory of cerebral disorder than that of the witchcraft of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and yet more complex than that of the fantasies of delirium tremens, may be found in the case of lycanthropism, or that form of mania in which men have fancied themselves transformed into wolves. This disease also is contagious; and on many occasions has exhibited itself in all the terrors of a maniacal epidemic. As early as the time of Herodotus the belief was rife among the Græco-Scythian colonies that a people called the Neuri were subject to this species of metamorphosis; and Giraldus Cambrensis, in[pg 210] the twelfth century, found the same superstition in full force in Ireland. It again broke forth in Livonia, its ancient seat, with all the symptoms of a periodical annual epidemic, in the sixteenth century. Peucer gives the following account of what these maniacs themselves believed to happen to them. "Immediately after Christmas day, in each year, a club-footed boy appears, who goes round the country, and summons all those slaves of Satan, of whom there are great numbers, to assemble and follow him. If they hesitate or refuse, a tall man appears, armed with a whip of flexible iron wires, and compels them with blows of his scourge to come forth and proceed. He whips them so severely, that oft-times the stripes left by the iron thongs remain impressed on their bodies and torment them cruelly. As soon as they go out and follow in the train, they seem to lose their human form, and to put on the appearance of wolves. Several thousands thus assemble. The leader walks before with his iron scourge; the crowd of those who, in their delusion, imagine that they have become wolves, follow after. Wherever they meet with cattle they rush upon them and rend them; they carry off such portions as they can, and do much destruction; but to touch or injure mankind is not permitted to them. When they come to rivers, the leader with a stroke of his whip divides the waters, which stand apart, leaving a dry channel by which they cross. After twelve days the band disperses, and every man resumes his own form, the vulpine mask dropping off him. The way in which the change takes place is this, as they allege: those who undergo the change, which occupies but a moment, drop suddenly down as if struck with a fit, and so lie senseless and like dead persons; but they do not in fact go away or change their places at all; nor while lying in that seemingly lifeless state do they exhibit any vulpine appearance whatever, but they go out of themselves (and leave themselves) like dead bodies; and save that they are convulsed, and roll about somewhat, they exhibit no sign or evidence of life. Hence the opinion has arisen that their spirits only are taken forth of their bodies, and put for a time into the phantasms of vulpine forms; and then, after doing the bidding of the devil in that way, are remitted back to their proper bodies, which thereupon are restored to animation; and the were-wolves themselves confirm this belief by acknowledging that in truth the human form is not withdrawn from their bodies, nor the vulpine appearance substituted for it; but that it is their spirits only which are impelled to leave their human bodily prisons, and enter into the bodies of wolves, in which they dwell and are carried about for the prescribed space of time. Some of those who have stated that they came long distances after escaping from the chains of their wolfish imprisonment, being questioned how they got out of that confinement, and why they returned, and how they could cross such wide and deep rivers, gave answer that the imprisoning forms no longer confined them, that they felt coerced to come out of them, and passed over the rivers by aërial flight."

The same features marked the outbreak of lycanthropy in the years 1598-1600, among the Vaudois. The possessed fell into catalepsy, and lay senseless during the time they imagined themselves in their bestial transformation. The disease was almost uniformly complicated with demonopathy, or the possession of witchcraft.

There seems no reason to doubt that lycanthropism was a disease as constant in its character and as well defined in its symptoms as delirium tremens, or any of the ordinary forms of mania. The evidences of its existence are, however, considerably stronger than those of witchcraft; for where on the one hand no credible witness ever saw a witch either at the sabbath, or on her way to it, or on her return from it, there are not wanting distinct proofs on oath, corroborated by admitted facts in judicial proceedings, of persons afflicted with lycanthropy traversing the woods on all-fours, and being found bloody from the recent slaughter both of beasts and human victims; and in one of these cases, that of Jacques Roulet, tried before the Parliament of Paris in 1598, the body of a newly slain child, half mangled, and with all the marks of having been gnawed by canine teeth, was found close to the place where the maniac was arrested. It is worthy of remark that both lycanthropists and witches ascribed the power of disembodying themselves to the use of ointments. Antiquity furnishes no parallel to the horrors of these malignant and homicidal manias. Their analogues may be found in the fabled styes of Circe, or in the frenzied raptures of the Sybilline and Delphic priestesses; but the extent, the variety, and the hideousness of the disease in modern times, infinitely surpass all that was ever dreamt of in Pagan credulity. The points of resemblance, however, are not yet exhausted.

"A chief sign of the divine afflatus," says Jamblichus, citing Porphyry, "is, that he who induces the numen into himself, sees the spirit descending, and its quantity and quality. Also, he who receives the numen sees before the reception a certain likeness of a fire; sometimes, also, this is beheld by the bystanders, both at the advent and the departure of the god. By which sign, they who are skilful in these matters discern, with perfect accuracy, what is the power of the numen, and what its order, and what are the things concerning which it can give true responses, and what it is competent to do.... Thus it is that the excellence of this divine fire, and appearance, as it were, of ineffable light, comes down upon, and fills, and dominates over the possessed person, and he is wholly involved in it, so that he cannot do[pg 211] any act of himself.... But after this comes ecstacy, or disembodiment."

Thomas Bartholin (brother of Gaspar) has anticipated the inquiries of Sir Henry Marsh, and of Reichenbach himself, on the subject of light from the human body. In a treatise, full of singular learning, "De luce Animalium," he has adduced a multitude of examples of the evolution of light from the living as well as the dead body, and in the cases of secular and pagan, as well as of ecclesiastical and Christian, persons; and this, without having recourse to any testimony of the Hagiologists. The Aureolæ of the Christian saints may not, after all, have been the merely fanciful additions of superstitious artists.

The convulsive distortions of the Pythoness were but a feeble type of the phenomena of demonopathy, or the supposed possession of the middle ages. It was chiefly in convents, among the crowd of young girls and women, that these dreadful disorders were used to break out; but the visitation was not confined to convents, nor to the profession of any particular creed. Wherever religious excitation prevailed among the young and susceptible, especially when they happened to be brought together in considerable numbers, there the pest was attracted, as a fever or other malady would be attracted by a foul atmosphere. No patient in the magnetic coma ever exhibited such prodigies of endurance as thousands of the involuntary victims of these contagious manias. Who in any modern seance has beheld a patient supported only on the protuberance of the stomach, with the head and limbs everted, and the arms raised in the air, and so remaining curved into the appearance of a fish on a stall, tied by the tail and gills, motionless for hours at a time? Or what rigidity of muscle in magnetic catalepsy has ever equalled that of a convulsionnaire, who would weary the strongest man, inflicting blows of a club, to the number of several thousands a day, on her stomach, while sustaining herself in an arc solely by the support of the head and the heels? Madame de Sazilli, who was exorcised in presence of the Duke of Orleans, at London, in 1631, "became, at the command of Pere Elisce, supple as a plate of lead. The exorcist plaited her limbs in various ways, before and behind, to this side and to that, in such sort that her head would sometimes almost touch the ground, her demon (say her malady) retaining her in each position immovably until she was put into the next. Next came the demon Sabulon, who rolled her through the chapel with horrible convulsions. Five or six times he carried her left foot up higher than her shoulder; all the while her eyes were fixed, wide open, without winking; after that he threw out her limbs till she touched the ground, with her legs extended straight on either side, and while in that posture, the exorcist compelled her to join her hands, and with the trunk of the body in an erect posture, to adore the holy sacrament." We seem to read the proceedings of an electro-biologist, rather than of a pastor of the church: but the parallel is not yet at an end. "The same nun," says Calmeil, "towards the close of her exorcism, executed a command which the Duke imparted secretly to her exorcist." Then follows this remarkable admission of the learned and cautious physiologist:—"On hundreds of occasions one might believe, in effect, that the Energumenes read the thoughts of the ecclesiastics who were charged with the combating of their demons. It is certain that these young women were endowed, during their excesses of hysteria or nervous exaltation, with a penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies, spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular propriety. The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the Pythian priestess. "Though it cannot be divined," says Plutarch, in his "Inquiry," "why the Pythian priestess ceases to deliver her oracles in verse; but that her parentage was virtuous and honest, and that she always lived a sober and chaste life, yet her education was among poor, laboring people, so that she was advanced to the oracular sect rude and unpolished, void of all the advantages of art or experience. For, as it is the opinion of Xenophon, that a virgin, ready to be espoused, ought to be carried to the bridegroom's house before she has either seen or heard the least communication, so the Pythian priestess ought to converse with Apollo illiterate and ignorant almost of every thing, still approaching his presence with a truly virgin soul."

We might here, without any stretch of imagination, suppose we are reading a commentary on the birth and character of Joan of Arc, or of any of the prophetesses of the Swiss Anabaptists. But to return to the possessions recorded by Calmeil.

The biological relations alleged by the mesmerists appear in still stronger development in the case of the nuns of Auxonne in 1662. The Bishop of Chalons reports, speaking of the possessed, "that all the aforesaid young women, being in number eighteen, as well seculars as regulars, and without a single exception, appeared to him to have obtained the gift of tongues, inasmuch as they accurately replied to the matters in Latin, which were addressed to them by their exorcists, and which were not borrowed from the ritual, still less arranged by any preconcert; they frequently explained themselves in Latin—sometimes in entire periods, sometimes in broken sentences;" "that all or almost all of them were proved to have introvision (cognizance de l'interieur) and knowledge of whatever thought might be secretly addressed to them, as appeared particularly in the[pg 212] case of the internal commands which were often addressed to them by the exorcists, and which in general they obeyed implicitly, although without any external signification of the command, either verbal or by way of sign; as the said Lord Bishop experienced in many instances, among others, in that of Denise Parisot, whom the exorcist having commanded, in the depths of his own mind, to come to him for the purpose of being exorcised, she came incontinently, though dwelling in a remote part of the town; telling the Lord Bishop that she had received his commands and was come accordingly; and this she did on several occasions; likewise in the person of Sister Jamin, a novice, who, on recovering from her fit, told him the internal commandment which he had given to her demon during the exorcism; also in the case of the Sister Borthon, to whom having issued a mental commandment in one of her paroxysms to come and prostrate herself before the Holy Sacrament, with her face to the ground and her arms stretched forward, she executed his command at the very instant that he willed it, with a promptitude and precipitation altogether wonderful."

Sister Denise Parisot, one of those who exhibited these singularities, also displayed a farther and very remarkable manifestation of what would now be called biological influence. "Being commanded by his Lordship to make the pulse of her right arm entirely cease beating while that of the left continued, and then to transfer the pulsation so as to beat in the right arm while it should stop in the left, she executed his orders with the utmost precision in the presence of the physician (Morel), who admitted and deposed to the fact, and of several ecclesiastics. Sister de la Purification did the same thing two or three times, causing her pulse to beat or to stop at the command of the exorcist."

Instead of exorcist we may, without much apprehension of offending either the reason or the belief of any candid person, read "Mesmerist." The passes seem similar, the phenomena identical. Again, in the case of the girls of the parish of Landes, near Bayeux, in 1732, the orders given by the exorcists in Latin appeared to be well understood by the patients. "In general," says Calmeil, quoting the contemporaneous account of their possession, "during the ecstatic access, the sense of touch was not excited even by the application of fire; nevertheless the exorcists affirm that their patients yielded immediate attention to the thoughts which they (the exorcists) refrained from expressing, and that they described with exactness the interior of distant houses which they had never before seen."

This long and varied survey of different forms of physical and mental malady brings us to a point where we may, with some confidence, take our stand on inductive conclusions. It seems evident, then, that all the phenomena of animal magnetism have been from an early period known to mankind under the various forms of divinatory ecstasy, demonopathy or witchmania, theomania, or fanatical religious excitation, spontaneous catalepsy, and somnambulism. That, in addition to the ordinary manifestations of insensibility to pain, rigidity, and what is called clairvoyance, the patients affected with the more intense conditions of the malady have at all times exhibited a marvellous command of languages; a seeming participation in the thoughts, sensations, and impulses of others; a power of resisting, for some short time at least, the action of fire; and, perhaps, a capacity of evolving some hitherto unknown energy counteractive of the force of gravitation. That the condition of mind and body in question can be induced by means addressed to each and all of the senses, as well as involuntarily by way of sympathy or contagion. That the fixing of the eyes on a particular point, as a wafer, or the umbilicus, or on a polished ball or mirror, is one of the most general and efficacious means of artificially inducing the condition of clairvoyance. That it may also, on those prepared for its reception by strong mental excitement, be induced by tumultuous music, as by the sound of drums and cymbals, by odors, and, perhaps, by unguents; and that the same condition also frequently supervenes on long-continued and intense emotion, as well as on those hysterical and convulsive movements of the body which sometimes attend on excessive religious excitation. That, induced by the latter means, clairvoyance has a tendency to become contagious, and has often afflicted whole communities with the most dangerous and deplorable epidemic hallucinations, as in the fancied witch-sabbaths of the domonomaniacs, and prowling excursions of lycanthropes and vampyres; but that, although in these demotic frenzies, the prevailing ideas and images presented to the minds of the sufferers are merely illusory, they possess the capacity of being put in such a relation with ideas and images derived from actual existence in the mind of others, as to perceive and appropriate them. Beyond this it would be difficult to advance our speculation with any degree of certainty; but if speculation may be at all indulged in such a question, it might, perhaps, be allowed to a sanguine speculator to surmise that, possibly, the mind in that state may be put en rapport with not only the ideas and emotions of another particular mind, but with the whole of the external world, and with all its minds. Another step would carry us to that participation in the whole scheme of nature, pretended to by divinators and seers; but it must be owned that, in the present state of the evidences, there is no solid ground on which to rest the foot of conjecture in taking either the one step or the other.

In the mean time, many practitioners are[pg 213] playing with an agency, the dangerous character of which they little suspect. In ancient exorcisms, it sometimes happened that the exorcist himself became the involuntary recipient of the contagious frenzy of the patient. If such an event happened now, it would not be more wonderful than when it befel the Pere Surin, at Loudon, in 1635, as he has himself described his disaster in his letter to the Jesuit Attichi: "For three months and a half I have never been without a devil in full exercise within me. While I was engaged in the performance of my ministry, the devil passed out of the body of the possessed, and coming into mine, assaulted me and cast me down, shook me, and traversed me to and fro, for several hours. I cannot tell you what passed within me during that time, and how that spirit united itself with mine, leaving no liberty either of sensation or of thought, but acting in me like another self, or as if I possessed two souls; these two souls making, as it were, a battle ground of my body. When I sought, at the instigation of the one, to make the sign of the cross on my mouth, the other suddenly would turn round my hand and seize the fingers with my teeth, making me bite myself with rage. When I sought to speak, the word would be taken out of my mouth; at mass I would be stopped short; at table I could not carry the food to my mouth; at confession I forgot my sins; in fine, I felt the devil go and come within me as if he used me for his daily dwelling-house."

Or, if instead of passing into a single operator, as in the case of Surin, the diseased contagion should suddenly expand itself among a crowd of bystanders, there would be nothing to wonder at, although enough to deplore, in such a catastrophe. It would be no more than has already happened in all the epidemics of lycanthropy and witchmania, of the dancers of St. Vitas, of the Jumpers, Quakers, and Revivalists, of the Mewers, Barkers, and Convulsionnaires. The absence of religious pretensions among the operators seems as yet to be the chief guarantee against such results. If instead of being made rigid and lucid by the manipulations of a professor, the patients should find themselves cast into that state by contact with the tomb of a preacher, or with the reliques of a saint, society would soon be revisited with all the evils of pseudo-miracles and supposed demoniacal possessions. The comparatively innocent frenzy of the followers of Father Mathew, was the nearest approach to a social disturbance of that kind that our country has been visited by since the barking epidemic of the fourteenth century. "In the county of Leicester, a person travelling along the road," says Camden, "found a pair of gloves, fit for his hands, as he thought; but when he put them on, he lost his speech immediately, and could do nothing but bark like a dog; nay, from that moment, the men and women, old and young, throughout the whole country, barked like dogs, and the children like whelps. This plague continued, with some eighteen days, with others a month, and with some for two years; and, like a contagious distemper, at last infected the neighboring counties, and set them a barking too."

If mesmerism did no more than demonstrate, as it has done, that all the supposed evidences of modern inspiration, as well as of modern demoniacal possession and ghost-craft, are but the manifestations of a physical disorder, capable of being induced by ordinary agencies, it would have done a great service to the cause of social and religious stability. In addition to this, it has furnished surgery with a new narcotic, perhaps with a new anti-spasmodic. It is not impossible that here, at length, a means may have been found for combating the horrors of hydrophobia. Its higher pretensions of clairvoyance and provision, if not proved, are at least not yet satisfactorily disproved. Its admitted usefulness may, perhaps, counterbalance its perils; but in every exercise of it, whether curative or speculative, it is never to be forgotten, that the phenomena are those of disease, and that the production of disease, save for the counteraction of other maladies more hurtful, is in itself an evil.

S. F.

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A CHAPTER OF EPITAPHS.

From Sharp's Magazine.

By F. Lawrence.

The best epitaphs, according to our notion, are generally the shortest and the plainest. In no description of composition is elaborate and ornate phraseology so much out of place. Where a world-wide reputation has been achieved, the name alone, with the addition perhaps of a date, is often calculated to produce a more impressive effect than an ostentatious inscription. It has been observed that the simple words—

Catherine the Great to Peter the First,

inscribed on the monument erected by the Empress Catherine to the memory of her husband, arrogant as they are, contain the essence of the sublime. And, in like manner, among the most impressive memorials in Westminster Abbey are the words, "O rare Ben Jonson," chiselled beneath the great play-wright's bust, and the name of J. Dryden, with the date of his birth and death, and the simple statement, that the tomb was erected, in 1720, by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. We doubt whether the effect of the latter would have been improved by the addition of the couplet written for it by Pope, admirable as it is:

This Sheffield raised: the sacred dust below

Was Dryden once—the rest who does not know?

Among the best epitaphs in the Poet's Corner, we are inclined to number that on Spenser, which combines in an eminent degree dignity and simplicity, and possesses a character which at once attracts attention. The[pg 214] monument on which it appears had been originally erected by Anne, Countess of Dorset, and having fallen into decay, was restored, in 1768, precisely in its old form:

Heare lyes (expecting the second

Comminge of our Savior Christ

Jesus) the body of Edmond Spencer,

The Prince of Poets in his tyme,

Other witnesse than the works

Which he left behinde him.

He was borne in London in the yeare 1553,

And died in the year 1598.

The epitaph of Michael Drayton, another of the Elizabethan poets, said by some to be the composition of Ben Jonson, and by others to be by Quarles, has also a species of quaint beauty and solemnity which raises it above the ordinary level. It was originally in gilt letters:

Michael Draiton, Esq.

A memorable poet of this age,
Exchanged his laurell for a crowne of glorye,
Ao. 1631.

Doe, pious Marble! let thy readers knowe

What they and what their children owe

To Draiton's name, whose sacred dust

We recommend unto thy trust:

Protect his memory, and preserve his storye,

Remaine a lastinge monument of his glorye;

And when thy ruines shall disclaime

To be the treas'rer of his name,

His name that cannot fade shall be

An everlasting monument to thee.

We cannot say that the Latin compositions of this sort in Westminster Abbey are much to our taste. One however, we cannot pass over—that to the memory of Goldsmith, by Dr. Johnson—a scholar-like production, dictated by affection, and full of grace and tenderness. In the delineation of the personal and literary character of his friend, we recognize all the grander traits of the honest giant's loving heart and powerful pen. Nothing can be in better taste than his commendation of Goldsmith's genius:

Affectuum potens et lenis Dominator;

Ingenio sublimis—vividus, versatilis,

Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus—

Of the English epitaphs, one of the most remarkable for elegance and simplicity is that on Purcell, the composer, reputed, on the authority of Malone, to be by Dryden, It certainly is not unworthy of his pen:

Here lyes

Henry Purcell, Esq.

Who left this life,

And is gone to that blessed place

Where only his Harmony

Can be exceeded.

Obiit 21 die Novembris

Anno Ætatis suæ 37

Annoque Domini 1695.

Among more modern inscriptions, those on the great engineers, Watt and Telford, are particularly worthy of notice. The former is from the pen of Lord Brougham:

Not to perpetuate a name,

Which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish,

But to show

That mankind have learned to know those

Who best deserve their gratitude,

The King,

His ministers, and many of the nobles

And commoners of the realm

Raised this monument to

James Watt,

Who, directing the force of an original genius,

Early exercised in philosophic research,

To the improvement of the Steam Engine,

Enlarged the resources of his country,

Increased the power of man,

And rose to eminent place

Among the most illustrious followers of science,

And the real benefactors of the world.

The inscription on Telford's monument is equally chaste and beautiful. It presents this noble summary of his life and character:

The orphan son of a shepherd, self-educated,

He raised himself,

By his extraordinary talents and integrity,

From the humble condition of an operative mason,

And became one of the

Most eminent Civil Engineers of the age.

This marble has been erected near the spot

Where his remains are deposited,

By the friends who revered his virtues,

But his noblest monuments are to be found amongst

The great public works of his country.

Every visitor will reverently pause before the magnificent cenotaph of the great Earl of Chatham, which, though somewhat too confused and elaborate in its decorations, is not unworthy of the greatest of English ministers. Having achieved a higher reputation as a statesman and orator than any other public man which his country had produced, and having fallen, as it were, in her service, the national gratitude was displayed in an unprecedented manner by honors paid his memory. His body lay in state three days in the painted chamber in the House of Lords—his public funeral exceeded in splendor the obsequies of princes—his debts were paid by the nation—and finally, the stately tomb to which we have drawn attention, was placed over his remains. The inscription whilst exceedingly plain and simple, is impressive and appropriate:

Erected by the King and Parliament

As a testimonial to

The Virtues and Ability

of

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham,

During whose administration, in the reigns of

George II. and George III.

Divine Providence

Exalted Great Britain

To a height of Prosperity and Glory

Unknown in any former age.

Of poetical epitaphs in the Abbey some of the most important are by Pope. Like everything else from his pen, they are carefully written, but viewed as monumental inscriptions, not distinguished for any striking excellence. Among the best of them is that on the Honourable James Craggs, a secretary of state, rather discreditably mixed up with the South Sea Bubble:—

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,

In action faithful, yet in honour clear!

Who broke no promise, served no private end,

Who gained no title, and who lost no friend;

Ennobled by Himself, by all approved,

Praised, wept, and honored by the Muse he loved.

The one on Gay is interesting as a tribute of friendship, and as a faithful portrait of that pleasing and amiable poet, the simplicity of whose character is admirably delineated in the first couplet:—

Of manners gentle, and affections mild,

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

Altogether it is a beautiful and appropriate[pg 215] composition, and we cannot but regret that the monument on which it appears should be disfigured by the doggerel, said to have been written by Gay himself, and inscribed on the ledge just above Pope's epitaph;

Life is a jest, and all things show it;

I thought so once, but now I know it.

That of Nicholas Rowe, the dramatist (also by Pope), has been admired for the pathos of the concluding lines, the beauty of which, however, it is a matter of notoriety, was considerably marred by a prosaic circumstance, which proves the danger of assuming facts even in poetical compositions. The monument is commemorative of the poet and of his only daughter, the wife of Henry Fane. His widow survived him, and her inconsolable affliction was beautifully depicted:-

To these so mourned in death, so loved in life,

The childless parent and the widowed wife,

With tears inscribes this monumental stone,

That holds their ashes, and expects her own.

Almost, however, before "the monumental stone" was finished, the disconsolate widow dried her eyes, and married a gallant colonel of dragoons, without considering that she was spoiling the beauty of her husband's epitaph.

Among the most flagrant instances of false taste, we must specify that on the tomb of David Garrick. The tomb itself has been described as "a theatrical conceit, of which the design exhibits neither taste nor invention." The epitaph was the production of Pratt, author of Harvest Home and other lucubrations which have long since been consigned to the tomb of the Capulets; and both epitaph and monument are thus spoken of by Charles Lamb in the Essays of Elia. Alluding principally to the eccentric attitude of the actor's effigy, he observes, "Though I would not go so far, with some good Catholics abroad, as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this burlesque figure a farrago of false thought and nonsense." The farrago in question is in verse, and represents Shakspeare and Garrick as "twin stars," who as long as time shall last are to "irradiate earth with a beam divine."

There are but few epitaphs in St. Paul's Cathedral—the other great resting-place of illustrious dead—worthy of remark or reproduction. The best in the whole edifice, and one of the most perfect compositions of its kind, is the well-known inscription commemorative of its renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren:

Subditus conditur hujus Ecelesiæ at Urbis

Conditor, Christopherus Wren, qui vixit

Annos ultra nonaginta, non sibi, sed

Bono publico. Lector, si monumentum requiris,

Circumspice.

We need not point out the beauties of this celebrated epitaph:—its terseness of phraseology (to which no translation could do justice)—its suggestiveness, grandeur and dignity. Another Latin inscription in St. Paul's is also deserving notice, both on account of its merit, and the individual it commemorates—that on Dr. Samuel Johnson, written by the famous Dr. Parr. Of English inscriptions in this Cathedral, the most striking is that on the monument of John Howard. It concludes with the well-known sentence: "He trod an open and unfrequented path,to immortality, in the ardent and unremitting exercise of Christian charity. May this tribute to his fame excite an emulation of his truly glorious achievements."

It is no very easy matter to produce a good epitaph. Great practice in composition is required—great power of condensation—and the exercise of judgment and discrimination. In efforts at epitaph-writing, few English poets have appeared to advantage. One or two perfect specimens, indeed, we possess, but the success of a single writer must be set against the failure of a great many. Of our good epitaphs, the very best, in our opinion, is that on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, by Ben Jonson. Although it has been often quoted, we cannot exclude it from this paper:

Underneath this sable hearse

Lies the subject of all verse,

Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:

Death, ere thou hast slain another,

Fair, and wise, and good as she,

Time shall throw his dart at thee.

Another of Jonson's epitaphs, although more rugged in versification, is also deserving of quotation;

Underneath this stone doth lie

As much virtue as could die;

Which, when alive, did vigor give

To as much beauty as could live.

If she had a single fault,

Leave it buried in this vault.

Not a few of Pope's epitaphs, as we have before hinted, appear tame, insipid, and characterized by a false taste. We except the well-known couplet for the monument of Sir Isaac Newton, in which there are dignity of language and boldness of conception:

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;—

God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

David Garrick is the author of some very good and characteristic epitaphs. The best, is that on Claudius Philips, the musician, who lived and died in great poverty. It was some time ascribed to Dr. Johnson, but is now known to be the production of Garrick:

Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove

The pangs of guilty power and hapless love,

Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more,

Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;

Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine,

Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.

Another of Garnet's epitaphs, is that on Mr. Havard, the comedian, who died in 1778. It is described by the author as a tribute "to the memory of a character he long knew and respected." Whatever its merits as a composition, the professional metaphor introduced is sadly out of place:

"An honest man's the noblest work of God."

Havard, from sorrow rest beneath this stone;

An honest man—beloved as soon as known;

Howe'er defective in the mimic art,

In real life he justly played his part!

The noblest character he acted well,

And heaven applauded when the curtain fell.

The one on William Hogarth, in Chiswick Churchyard, by Garrick, is in better taste:

Farewell, great painter of mankind,

Who reach'd the noblest point of art;

Whose pictur'd morals charm the mind,

And through the eye correct the heart!

If genius fire thee, reader, stay;

If nature touch thee, drop a tear:-

If neither move thee, turn away,

For Hogarth's honor'd dust lies here.

Some distinguished men have amused themselves, while living, by inditing epitaphs for themselves. Franklin, and the great lawyer and orientalist, Sir William Jones, have left characteristic performances of this kind in prose, and from Matthew Prior we have a mock-serious one in verse. The latter has been often quoted, but it will bear repetition:

Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior:

The son of Adam and of Eve,

Can Bourbon or Nassau go higher?

In the same spirit, but superior in tone and quality, is the following, the authorship of which is unknown, "on a poor but honest man:"

Stop, reader, here, and deign to look

On one without a name,

Ne'er enter'd in the ample book

Of fortune or of fame.

Studious of peace, he hated strife;

Meek virtues fill'd his breast;

His coat of arms, "a spotless life,"

"An honest heart" his crest.

Quarter'd therewith was innocence,

And thus his motto ran:

"A conscience void of all offence,

Before both God and man."

In the great day of wrath, through pride

Now scorns his pedigree,

Thousands shall wish they'd been allied

To this great family.

The thought in Prior's is ludicrously expressed in the following, from a monument erected in 1703, in the New Church burying-ground, Dundee, to the memory of J. R.

Here lies a Man,

Com'd of Adam and Eve;

If any will climb higher,

I give him leave.

Amongst poetical epitaphs, of the more elaborate class, we must notice two by Mason; one to the memory of his mother, in Bristol Cathedral, and the other on a young lady named Drummond, in the church of Brodsworth, Yorkshire. We have space for only the latter.

Here sleeps what once was beauty, once was grace;

Grace, that with tenderness and sense combined

To form that harmony of soul and face,

Where brainy shines the mirror of the mind.

Such was the maid that, in the morn of youth,

In virgin innocence, in nature's pride,

Blest with each art that owes its charms to truth,

Sank in her father's fond embrace, and died.

He weeps; O venerate the holy tear!

Faith lends her aid to ease affliction's load;

The parent mourns his child upon the bier,

The Christian yields an angel to his God.

Of whimsical and satirical epitaphs—some actually inscribed on tombstones, and others intended for pasquinades—a large collection might be made. We have little taste for these anomalous compositions, nor do we consider it creditable to the national character, that so many English churchyards can be pointed out where they occur. But there are those who will make even the tomb a subject of pleasant humors. The epitaph for the tomb of Sir John Vanbrugh, distinguished as a dramatist and architect, and reflecting on his achievements in the latter capacity, is as follows:

Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he

Laid many a heavy load on thee.

The original of the following is among the epigrams of Boileau:—

Here lies my wife; there let her lie;

She is at rest—and so am I.

We do not suppose that this was ever engraved on a tombstone, either in French or English; but the following lines are said to have been copied from a slab in an English church:—

Here lies the body of Sarah Sexton,

Who as a wife did never vex one;

We can't say that for her at the next stone.

The next specimen is also known to have appeared on a tomb in Essex:—

Here lies the man Richard,

And Mary his wife;

Their surname was Pritchard;

They lived without strife;

And the reason was plain;

They abounded in riches,

They no care had nor pain,

And the wife wore the breeches.

We will not multiply examples of these compositions. Lines of the description we have quoted have often found their way into print, and we have selected one or two of the least offensive as examples of eccentricity.

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THE GOOD OLD TIMES IN PARIS.

An Adventure With Robbers.

From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal.

The world, since it was a world at all, has ever been fond of singing the praises of the good old times. It would seem a general rule, that so soon as we get beyond a certain age, whatever that may be, we acquire a high opinion of the past, and grumble at every thing new under the sun. One cause of this may be, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and that the history of the past, like a landscape travelled over, loses in review all the rugged and wearisome annoyances that rendered it scarcely bearable in the journey. But it is hardly worth while to speculate upon the causes of an absurdity which a little candid retrospection will do more to dissipate than whole folios of philosophy. We can easily understand a man who sighs that he was not born a thousand years hence instead of twenty or thirty years ago, but that any one should encourage a regret that his lot in life was not cast a few centuries back, seems inexplicable on any rational grounds. The utter folly of praising the[pg 217] good old times may be illustrated by a reference to the wretched condition of most European cities; but we shall confine ourselves to the single case of Paris, now one of the most beautiful capitals in the world.

In the thirteenth century the streets of Paris were not paved; they were muddy and filthy to a very horrible degree, and swine constantly loitered about and fed in them. At night there were no public lights, and assassinations and robberies were far from infrequent. At the beginning of the fourteenth century public lighting was begun on a limited scale; and at best only a few tallow candles were put up in prominent situations. The improvement, accordingly, did little good, and the numerous bands of thieves had it still pretty much their own way. Severity of punishment seldom compensates the want of precautionary measures. It was the general custom at this period to cut off the ears of a condemned thief after the term of his imprisonment had elapsed. Thia was done that offenders might be readily recognized should they dare again to enter the city, banishment from which was a part of the sentence of such as were destined to be cropped. But they often found it easier to fabricate false ears than to gain a livelihood away from the arena of their exploits; and this measure, severe and cruel as it was, was found inefficient to rid the capital of their presence.

Among the various adventures with thieves, detailed by an author contemporaneous with Louis XIII., the following affords a rich example of the organization of the domestic brigands of the time, and of the wretched security which the capital afforded to its inhabitants.

A celebrated advocate named Polidamor had by his reputation for riches aroused the covetousness of some chiefs of a band of brigands, who flattered themselves that could they catch him they would obtain possession of an important sum. They placed upon his track three bold fellows, who, after many fruitless endeavors, encountered him one evening accompanied only by a single lackey. Seizing fast hold of himself and attendant, they rifled him in a twinkling; and as he had accidentally left his purse at home, they took his rich cloak of Spanish cloth and silk, which was quite new, and of great value. Polidamor, who at first resisted, found himself compelled to yield to force, but asked as a favor to be allowed to redeem his mantle. This was agreed to at the price of thirty pistoles; and the rogues appointed a rendezvous the next day, at six in the evening, on the same spot, for the purpose of effecting the exchange. They recommended him to come alone, assuring him that his life would be endangered should he appear accompanied with an escort. Polidamor repaired to the place at the appointed hour, and after a few moments of expectation he saw a carriage approaching in which were seated four persons in the garb of gentlemen. They descended from the vehicle, and one of them, advancing towards the advocate, asked him in a low voice if he were not in search of a cloak of Spanish cloth and silk. The victim replied in the affirmative, and declared himself prepared to redeem it at the sum at which it had been taxed. The thieves having assured themselves that he was alone, seized him, and made him get into the carriage; and one of them presenting a pistol to his breast, bade him hold his tongue under pain of instant death, while another blindfolded him. As the advocate trembled with fear, they assured him that no harm was intended, and bade the coachman drive on.

After a rapid flight, which was yet long enough to inspire the prisoner with deadly terror, the carriage stopped in front of a large mansion, the gate of which opened to receive them, and closed again as soon as they had passed the threshold. The robbers alighted with their captive, from whose eyes they now removed the bandage. He was led into an immense saloon, where were a number of tables, upon which the choicest viands were profusely spread, and seated at which was a company of gentlemanly-looking personages, who chatted familiarly together, without the slightest demonstration of confusion or alarm. His guardians again enjoined him to lay aside all fear, informed him that he was in good society, and that they had brought him there solely that they might enjoy the pleasure of his company at supper. In the mean while water was served to the guests, that they might wash their hands before sitting at table. Every man took his place, and a seat was assigned to Polidamor at the upper and privileged end of the board. Astonished, or rather stupefied at the strange circumstances of his adventure, he would willingly have abstained from taking any part in the repast; but he was compelled to make a show of eating, in order to dissemble his mistrust and agitation. When the supper was ended and the tables were removed, one of the gentlemen who had assisted in his capture accosted him with polite expressions of regret at his want of appetite. During the interchange of courtesies which ensued, one of the bandits took a lute, another a viol, and the party began to amuse themselves with music. The advocate was then invited to walk into a neighboring room, where he perceived a considerable number of mantles ranged in order. He was desired to select his own, and to count out the thirty pistoles agreed upon, together with one for coach-hire, and one more for his share of the reckoning at supper. Polidamor, who had been apprehensive that the drama of which his mantle had been the occasion might have a very different dénouement, was but too well pleased to be quit at such a cost, and he took leave of the assembly with unfeigned expressions[pg 218] of gratitude. The carriage was called, and before entering it he was again blindfolded; his former conductors returned with him to the spot where he had been seized, where, removing the bandage from his eyes, they allowed him to alight, presenting him at the same moment with a ticket sealed with green wax, and having these words inscribed in large letters, "Freed by the Great Band." This ticket was a passport securing his mantle, purse, and person against all further assaults. Hastening to regain his residence with all speed, he was assailed at a narrow turning by three other rascals, who demanded his purse or his life. The advocate drew his ticket from his pocket, though he had no great faith in it as a preservative, and presented it to the thieves. One of them, provided with a dark lantern, read it, returned it, and recommended him to make haste home, where he at last arrived in safety.

Early in the seventeenth century the Parisian rogues availed themselves of the regulations against the use of snuff to pillage the snuff-takers. As the sale of this article was forbidden by law to any but grocers and apothecaries, and as even they could only retail it to persons provided with the certificate of a medical man, the annoyance of such restrictions was loudly complained of. The rogues, ever ready to profit by circumstances, opened houses for gaming—at that period almost a universal vice—where "snuff at discretion" was a tempting bait to those long accustomed to a gratification all the more agreeable because it was forbidden. Here the snuff-takers were diligently plied with wine, and then cheated of their money; or, if too temperate or suspicious to drink to excess, they were unceremoniously plundered in a sham quarrel. To such a length was this practice carried, that an ordinance was at length issued in 1629, strictly forbidding all snuff-takers from assembling in public places or elsewhere, "pour satisfaire leur goût!"

The thieves of the good old times were not only more numerous in proportion to the population than they are at present, but were also distinguished by greater audacity and cruelty. They had recourse to the most diabolical ingenuity to subdue the resistance and to prevent the outcries of their victims. Under the rule of Henry IV. a band of brigands arose, who, in the garb, and with the manners of gentlemen, introduced themselves into the best houses under the pretext of private business, and when alone with the master, demanded his money at the dagger's point. Some of them made use of a gag—a contrivance designated at the period the poire d'angoisse. This instrument was of a spherical shape, and pierced all over with small holes; it was forced into the mouth of the person intended to be robbed, and upon touching a spring sharp points protruded from every hole, at once inflicting the most horrible anguish, and preventing the sufferer from uttering a single cry. It could not be withdrawn but by the use of the proper key, which contracted the spring. This device was adopted universally by one savage band, and occasioned immense misery not only in Paris but throughout France.

An Italian thief, an enterprising and ingenious rogue, adopted a singular expedient for robbing women at their devotions in church. He placed himself on his knees by the side of his intended prey, holding in a pair of artificial hands a book of devotion, to which he made a show of the most devout attention, while with his natural hands he cut the watch or purse-string of his unsuspecting neighbor. This stratagem, favored by the fashion, then general, of wearing mantles, met with great success, and of course soon produced a host of clumsy imitators, and excited the vigilance of the police, who at length made so many seizures of solemn-faced devotees provided with wooden kid-gloved hands, that it fell into complete discredit, and was at last abandoned by the profession.

Cunning as were the rogues of a past age, they were liable to capture like their modern successors. A gentleman having resorted to Paris on business, was hustled one day in the precincts of the palace, and robbed of his well-filled purse. Furious at the loss of a considerable sum, he swore to be avenged. He procured a clever mechanic, who, under his directions, contrived a kind of hand-trap for the pocket, managed in such a manner as to preclude the possibility of an attempt at purse-stealing without detection. Having fixed the instrument in its place, impatient for the revenge he had promised himself, he sallied forth to promenade the public walks, mingled with every group, and stopped from time to time gazing about him with the air of a greenhorn. Several days passed before any thing resulted from his plan; but one morning, while he was gaping at the portraits of the kings of France in one of the public galleries, he finds himself surrounded and pushed about, precisely as in the former instance; he feels a hand insinuating itself gently into the open snare, and hears immediately the click of the instrument, which assures him that the delinquent is safely caught. Taking no notice, he walks on as if nothing had happened, and resumes his promenade, drawing after him the thief, whom pain and shame prevented from making the least effort to disengage his hand. Occasionally the gentleman would turn round, and rebuke his unwilling follower for his importunity, and thus drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon his awkward position. At last, pretending to observe for the first time the stranger's hand in his pocket, he flies into a violent passion, accuses him of being a cut-purse, and demands the sum he had previously lost, without which he declares the villain shall be hanged. It would seem that compounding a felony was nothing in those days; for it is[pg 219] upon record that the thief, though caught in the act, was permitted to send a messenger to his comrades, who advanced the money, and therewith purchased his liberty.

The people were forbidden to employ particular materials in the fabrication of their clothing, to ride in a coach, to decorate their apartments as they chose, to purchase certain articles of furniture, and even to give a dinner party when and in what style they chose. Under the Valois régime strict limits were assigned to the expenses of the table, determining the number of courses of which a banquet should consist, and that of the dishes of which each course was to be composed. Any guest who should fail to denounce an infraction of the law of which he had been a witness, was liable to a fine of forty livres; and officers of justice, who might be present, were strictly enjoined to quit the tables of their hosts, and institute immediate proceedings against them. The rigor of these regulations extended, even to the kitchen, and the police had the power of entry at all hours, to enforce compliance with the statutes.

But it was during the prevalence of an epidemic that it was least agreeable to live in France in the good old times. No sooner did a contagious malady, or one that was supposed to be so, make its appearance, than the inhabitants of Paris were all forbidden to remove from one residence to another, although their term of tenancy had expired, until the judge of police had received satisfactory evidence that the house they desired to leave had not been affected by the contagion. When a house was infected, a bundle of straw fastened to one of the windows warned the public to avoid all intercourse with the inmates. At a later period two wooden crosses were substituted for the straw, one of which was attached to the front door, and the other to one of the windows in an upper story. In 1596 the provost of Paris having learned that the tenants of some houses infected by an epidemic which was then making great ravages, had removed these badges, issued an ordinance commanding that those who transgressed in a similar manner again should suffer the loss of the right hand—a threat which was found perfectly efficient.

By an ordinance of 1533, persons recovering from a contagious malady, together with their domestics, and all the members of their families, were forbidden to appear in the streets for a given period without a white wand in their hands, to warn the public of the danger of contact. Three years after the authorities were yet more severe against the convalescents, who were ordered to remain shut up at home for forty days after their cure; and even when the quarantine had expired, they were not allowed to appear in the streets until they had presented to a magistrate a certificate from the commissary of their district, attested by a declaration of six householders, that the forty days had elapsed. In the preceding century (in 1498) an ordinance still more extraordinary had been issued. It was at the coronation of Louis XII. when a great number of the nobles came to Paris to take part in the ceremony. The provost, desiring to guard them from the danger of infection, published an order that all persons of both sexes, suffering under certain specified maladies, should quit the capital in twenty-four hours, under the penalty of being thrown into the river!

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THE LEGEND OF THE WEEPING CHAMBER.

From Household Words.

A strange story was once told me by a Levantine lady of my acquaintance, which I shall endeavor to relate—as far as I am able with the necessary abridgments—in her own words. The circumstances under which she told it were peculiar. The family had just been disturbed by the visit of a ghost—a real ghost, visible, if not palpable. She was not what may be called superstitious; and though following with more or less assiduity the practices of her religion, was afflicted now and then with a fit of perfect materialism. I was surprised, therefore, to hear her relate, with every appearance of profound faith, the following incidents:—

There is an old house in Beyrout, which, for many successive years, was inhabited by a Christian family. It is of great extent, and was of yore fitted for the dwelling of a prince. The family had, indeed, in early-times been very rich; and almost fabulous accounts are current of the wealth of its founder, Fadlallah Dahân. He was a merchant; the owner of ships, the fitter-out of caravans. The regions of the East and of the West had been visited by him; and, after undergoing as many dangers and adventures as Sinbad, he had returned to spend the latter days of his life in his native city. He built, accordingly, a magnificent dwelling, the courts of which he adorned with marble fountains, and the chambers with silk divans; and he was envied on account of his prosperity.

But, in the restlessness of his early years, he had omitted to marry, and now found himself near the close of his career without an heir to inherit his wealth and to perpetuate his name. This reflection often disturbed him; yet he was unwilling to take a wife because he was old. Every now and then, it is true, he saw men older than he, with fewer teeth and whiter beards, taking to their bosoms maidens that bloomed like peaches just beginning to ripen against a wall; and his friends, who knew he would give a magnificent marriage-feast, urged him to do likewise. Once he looked with pleasure on a young person of not too tender years, whose parents purposely presented her to him; but having asked her in a whisper whether she would like to marry a withered old gentleman[pg 220] like himself, she frankly confessed a preference for his handsome young clerk, Harma, who earned a hundred piastres a month. Fadlallah laughed philosophically, and took care that the young couple should be married under happy auspices.

One day he was proceeding along the street gravely and slowly—surrounded by a number of merchants proud to walk by his side, and followed by two or three young men, who pressed near in order to be thought of the company, and thus establish their credit—when an old woman espying him, began to cry out, "Yeh! yeh! this is the man who has no wife and no child—this is the man who is going to die and leave his fortune to be robbed by his servants or confiscated by the governor! And yet, he has a sagacious nose"—(the Orientals have observed that there is wisdom in a nose)—"and a beard as long as my back! Yeh! yeh! what a wonderful sight to see!"

Fadlallah Dahân stopped, and retorted, smiling: "Yeh! yeh! this is the woman that blames an old man for not marrying a young wife. Yeh! yeh! what a wonderful sight to see!"

Then the woman replied, "O my lord, every pig's tail curls not in the same direction, nor does every maiden admire the passing quality of youth. If thou wilt, I will bestow on thee a wife, who will love thee as thou lovest thyself, and serve thee as the angels serve Allah. She is more beautiful than any of the daughters of Beyrout, and her name is Selima, a name of good augury."

The friends of Fadlallah laughed, as did the young men who followed in their wake, and urged him to go and see this peerless beauty, if it were only for a joke. Accordingly, he told the woman to lead the way. But she said he must mount his mule, for they had to go some distance into the country. He mounted, and, with a single servant, went forth from the gates—the woman preceding—and rode until he reached a village in the mountains. Here, in a poor little house, he found Selima; clothed in the very commonest style, engaged in making divan cushions. She was a marvellously beautiful girl, and the heart of the merchant at once began to yearn towards her; yet he endeavored to restrain himself, and said, "This beautiful thing is not for me." But the woman cried out, "Selima, wilt thou consent to love this old man?" The girl gazed in his face awhile, and then, folding her hands across her bosom, said, "Yes; for there is goodness in his countenance." Fadlallah wept with joy; and, returning to the city, announced his approaching marriage to his friends. According to custom, they expressed civil surprise to his face; but, when his back was turned, they whispered that he was an old fool, and had been the dupe of a she-adventurer.

The marriage took place with ceremonies of royal magnificence; and Selima, who passed unmoved from extreme poverty to abundant riches, seemed to merit the position of the greatest lady in Beyrout. Never was woman more prudent than she. No one ever knew her previous history, nor that of her mother. Some said that a life of misery, perhaps of shame, was before them, when this unexpected marriage took place. Selima's gratitude to Fadlallah was unbounded; and out of gratitude grew love. The merchant daily offered up thanks for the bright diamond which had come to shine in his house.

In due time a child was born; a boy lively as his mother; and they named him Halil. With what joy he was received, what festivities announced the glad intelligence to the town, may easily be imagined. Selima and Fadlallah resolved to devote themselves to his education, and determined that he should be the most accomplished youth of Bar-er-Shâm. But a long succession of children followed, each more beautiful than the former—some boys, some girls; and every new comer was received with additional delight and still grander ceremonies; so that the people began to say, "Is this a race of sovereigns?"

Now, Halil grew up to the age of twelve—still a charming lad; but the parents always fully occupied by the last arrival, had not carried out their project of education. He was as wild and untamed as a colt, and spent more of his time in the street than in the company of his mother; who, by degrees, began to look upon him with a kind of calm friendship due to strangers. Fadlallah, as he took his accustomed walk with his merchant friends, used from time to time to encounter a ragged boy fighting in the streets with the sons of the Jew butcher; but his eyes beginning to grow dim, he often passed without recognizing him. One day, however, Halil, breathless and bleeding, ran up and took refuge beneath the skirts of his mantle from a crowd of savage urchins. Fadlallah was amazed, and said, "O, my son—for I think thou art my son—what evil hath befallen thee, and wherefore do I see thee in this state?" The boy, whose voice was choked by sobs, looked up into his face, and said, "Father, I am the son of the richest merchant of Beyrout, and behold, there is no one so little cared for as I."

Fadlallah's conscience smote him, and he wiped the boy's bleeding face with the corner of his silk caftan, and blessed him; and, taking him by the hand, led him away. The merchants smiled benignly one to the other, and, pointing with their thumbs, said, "We have seen the model youth!"

Whilst they laughed and sneered, Fadlallah, humbled yet resolved, returned to his house, leading the ragged Halil, and entered his wife's chamber. Selima was playing with her seventh child, and teaching it to lisp the word "Baba"—about the amount of education which she had found time to bestow on[pg 221] each of her offspring. When she saw the plight of her eldest son she frowned, and was about to scold him; but Fadlallah interposed, and said, "Wife, speak no harsh words. We have not done our duty by this boy. May God forgive us; but we have looked on these children that have bloomed from thee, more as playthings than as deposits for which we are responsible. Halil has become a wild out-of-doors lad, doubting with some reason of our love. It is too late to bring him back to the destiny we had dreamt of; but he must not be left to grow up thus uncared for. I have a brother established in Bassora; to him will I send the lad to learn the arts of commerce, and to exercise himself in adventure, as his father did before him. Bestow thy blessing upon him, Selima (here the good old man's voice trembled), and may God in his mercy forgive both thee and me for the neglect which has made this parting necessary. I shall know that I am forgiven, if, before I go down into the tomb, my son return a wise and sober man; not unmindful that we gave him life, and forgetting that, until now, we have given him little else."

Selima laid her seventh child in its cradle of carved wood, and drew Halil to her bosom; and Fadlallah knew that she loved him still, because she kissed his face, regardless of the blood and dirt that stained it. She then washed him and dressed him, and gave him a purse of gold, and handed him over to his father; who had resolved to send him off by the caravan that started that very afternoon. Halil, surprised and made happy by unwonted caresses, was yet delighted at the idea of beginning an adventurous life; and went away, manfully stifling his sobs, and endeavoring to assume the grave deportment of a merchant. Selima shed a few tears, and then, attracted by a crow and a chuckle from the cradle, began to tickle the infant's soft double chin, and went on with her interrupted lesson, "Baba, Baba!"

Halil started on his journey, and having passed through the Valley of Robbers, the Valley of Lions, and the Valley of Devils—this is the way in which Orientals localize the supposed dangers of travelling—arrived at the good city of Bassora; where his uncle received him well, and promised to send him, as supercargo on board the first vessel he dispatched to the Indian seas. What time was spent by the caravan upon the road, the narrative does not state. Travelling is slow work in the East; but almost immediately on his arrival in Bassora, Halil was engaged in a love adventure. If travelling is slow, the approaches of manhood are rapid. The youth's curiosity was excited by the extraordinary care taken to conceal his cousin Miriam from his sight; and having introduced himself into her garden, beheld, and, struck by her wonderful beauty, loved her. With an Oriental fondness he confessed the truth to his uncle, who listened with anger and dismay, and told him that Miriam was betrothed to the Sultan. Halil perceived the danger of indulging his passion, and promised to suppress it; but whilst he played a prudent part, Miriam's curiosity was also excited, and she too beheld and loved her cousin. Bolts and bars cannot keep two such affections asunder. They met and plighted their troth and were married secretly, and were happy. But inevitable discovery came. Miriam was thrown into a dungeon; and the unhappy Halil, loaded with chains, was put on board a vessel, not as supercargo, but as prisoner, with orders that he should be left in some distant country.

Meanwhile a dreadful pestilence fell upon Beyrout, and among the first sufferers was an eighth little one that had just learned to say "Baba!" Selima was almost too astonished to be grieved. It seemed to her impossible that death should come into her house, and meddle with the fruits of so much suffering and love. When they came to take away the little form which she had so often fondled, her indignation burst forth, and she smote the first old woman who stretched out her rough unsympathetic hand. But a shriek from her waiting-woman announced that another victim was singled out; and the frantic mother rushed like a tigress to defend the young that yet remained to her. But the enemy was invisible; and (so the story goes) all her little ones drooped one by one and died; so that on the seventh day Selima sat in her nursery gazing about with stony eyes, and counting her losses upon her fingers—Iskender, Selima, Wardy, Fadlallah, Hanna, Hennenah, Gereges—seven in all. Then she remembered Halil, and her neglect of him; and, lifting up her voice, she wept aloud; and, as the tears rushed fast and hot down her cheeks, her heart yearned for her absent boy, and she would have parted with worlds to have fallen upon his breast—would have given up her life in return for one word of pardon and of love.

Fadlallah came in to her; and he was now very old and feeble. His back was bent, and his transparent hand trembled as it clutched a cane. A white beard surrounded a still whiter face; and as he came near his wife, he held out his hand towards her with an uncertain gesture, as if the room had been dark. This world appeared to him but dimly. "Selima," said he, "the Giver hath taken. We, too, must go in our turn. Weep, my love, but weep with moderation, for those little ones that have gone to sing in the golden cages of Paradise. There is a heavier sorrow in my heart. Since my first-born, Halil, departed for Bassora, I have only written once to learn intelligence of him. He was then well, and had been received with favor by his uncle. We have never done our duty by that boy." His wife replied, "Do not reproach me; for I reproach myself more bitterly than thou canst do.[pg 222] Write, then, to thy brother to obtain tidings of the beloved one. I will make of this chamber a weeping chamber. It has resounded with merriment enough. All my children learned to laugh and to talk here. I will hang it with black, and erect a tomb in the midst; and every day I will come and spend two hours, and weep for those who are gone and for him who is absent." Fadlallah approved her design; and they made a weeping chamber, and lamented together every day therein. But their letters to Bassora remained unanswered; and they began to believe that fate had chosen a solitary tomb for Halil.

One day a woman, dressed in the garb of the poor, came to the house of Fadlallah with a boy about twelve years old. When the merchant saw them he was struck with amazement, for he beheld in the boy the likeness of his son Halil; and he called aloud to Selima, who, when she came, shrieked with amazement. The woman told her story, and it appeared that she was Miriam. Having spent some months in prison, she had escaped and taken refuge in a forest in the house of her nurse. Here she had given birth to a son, whom she had called by his father's name. When her strength returned, she had set out as a beggar to travel over the world in search of her lost husband. Marvellous were the adventures she underwent, God protecting her throughout, until she came to the land of Persia, where she found Halil working as a slave in the garden of the Governor of Fars. After a few stolen interviews, she had again resumed her wanderings to seek for Fadlallah, that he might redeem his son with wealth; but had passed several years upon the road.

Fortune, however, now smiled upon this unhappy family, and in spite of his age, Fadlallah set out for Fars. Heaven made the desert easy, and the road short for him. On a fine calm evening he entered the gardens of the governor, and found his son gaily singing as he trimmed an orange tree. After a vain attempt to preserve an incognito, the good old man lifted up his hands, and shouting, "Halil, my first-born!" fell upon the breast of the astonished slave. Sweet was the interview in the orange grove, sweet the murmured conversation between the strong young man and the trembling patriarch, until the perfumed dew of evening fell upon their heads. Halil's liberty was easily obtained, and father and son returned in safety to Beyrout. Then the Weeping Chamber was closed, and the door walled up; and Fadlallah and Selima lived happily until age gently did its work at their appointed times: and Halil and Miriam inherited the house and the wealth that had been gathered for them.

The supernatural part of the story remains to be told. The Weeping Chamber was never again opened; but every time that a death was about to occur in the family, a shower of heavy tear-drops was heard to fall upon its marble floor, and low wailings came through the walled doorway. Years, centuries passed away, and the mystery repeated itself with unvarying uniformity. The family fell into poverty, and only occupied a portion of the house, but invariably before one of its members sickened unto death, a shower of heavy drops, as from a thunder-cloud, pattered on the pavement of the Weeping Chamber, and was heard distinctly at night through the whole house. At length the family quitted the country in search of better fortunes elsewhere, and the house remained for a long time uninhabited.

The lady who narrated the story went to live in the house, and passed some years without being disturbed; but one night she was lying awake, and distinctly heard the warning shower dripping heavily in the Weeping Chamber. Next day the news came of her mother's death, and she hastened to remove to another dwelling. The house has since been utterly abandoned to rats, mice, beetles, and an occasional ghost seen sometimes streaming along the rain-pierced terraces. No one has ever attempted to violate the solitude of the sanctuary where Selima wept for the seven little ones taken to the grave, and for the absent one whom she had treated with unmotherly neglect.

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THE BULL FIGHT OF MADRID.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE CASTILIAN."

It was one of those clear, bright days, peculiar to a Spanish summer, when the deep blue skies seem to reflect their warmth in radiance over the earth; a slumberous influence hung over the tranquil streets of Madrid, and although it was still early in the morning, the fervid rays of the sun gave a certain indication of the meridian power he was about to display in a few hours.

Such was the day appropriated for the splendid and soul-stirring celebration of a bull-fight; and accordingly, the inhabitants soon began, by an unusual bustle, to evince the absorbing interest they are accustomed to take in this favorite amusement. Before the hour of nine, the beautiful street of Alcala was thronged with a promiscuous multitude, eager to witness the first exhibition of the morning; the Spanish bull-fight being in fact composed of two acts, if I may so term them, the morning and the evening encounters.

On such days, a general cessation of labor takes place throughout the city, and the whole population is occupied with speculations on the approaching festival. On the morning in question, the inhabitants of Madrid, the lower classes in particular, attired in their holiday finery, began at an early hour to issue from their narrow and obscure dormitories, and, with tolerably cleanly appearance and much importance of demeanor, to take up a position in that famous Puerta del sol which, on less momentous occasions,[pg 223] seems destined only as a lounge for all the ennuyés, news-hunters, and petit-maitres of Madrid. The Manolos, too, began to congregate in great numbers, casting around those terrible glances of recklessness and conscious courage, which, in the estimation of foreigners, are the certain prognostics of as many concealed daggers.

I soon made up my mind to add one to the vast concourse now on the alert to witness this grand and terrific spectacle, although, for many reasons, I prudently resolved to postpone my share of the entertainment until the evening.

It is at this hour that the higher classes prefer visiting the arena: a number of the more desperate amateurs, however, regardless of the influence of a meridian sun, do not hesitate to present themselves at the morning exhibitions.

At about four in the afternoon, the Calle de Alcala was, if possible, more crowded than it had been in the morning. This majestic street, which commands a full view of the superb triumphal arch which bears its name, now presented a most striking and animated scene: various groups, fancifully contrasted in dress and deportment, were all hurrying towards the same spot. Here you might see the gorgeous equipage of the haughty grandee, sweeping by in all the imposing consciousness of pomp and greatness, while carriages of more humble pretensions were rattling as briskly, if not as proudly, along the gay and lively street. The Calesines, too, were seen in great numbers hurrying to the scene of anticipated pleasure, and diversifying, by the singularity of their appearance, and the ringing of small bells, the stately cortege of more splendid equipages.

Next, an army of majos attracted attention by their fanciful dresses, and the easy swagger with which they accompanied their morenas, who were not the less conspicuous for their graceful though somewhat confident demeanor. They were all, of course, attired in their peculiar costume, bedizened with ribbons, and the short saya reaching only to the middle of the calf, and showing the most polished ancle and the prettiest foot in the world. These gay and lively individuals were picturesquely contrasted with crowds of monks and friars, of all orders and colors—

White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery—

here and there intermingled with military idlers, in the uniforms of their several regiments.

Here you might see the rosy and jolly abbate, ambling along upon a mule, having an appearance scarcely less clerical than himself, jostling the less fortunate friar on the back of the humbler donkey, and the sturdy mendicant, as he strode along on foot, supported only by his staff. The streets, and every avenue leading to the Plaza de los Toros, were lined with noisy vendors of delicious fruits, who made a grateful display upon their stalls of the Seville orange and the cooling water-melon; whilst a number of Valencians carried about large vasijas, or trays of lemonade, and other refreshments, for the accommodation of the thirsty pedestrians, who had no time to squander upon a visit to the neveras, or ice-houses. The effect of this animated picture was farther heightened by the cries of the venders, the harmony of some neighboring barber's guitar, the continual jingling of the mules' bells, and the clicking of castanets.

Amidst this stunning, yet not unpleasing variety of sounds, we at length reached the Plaza de los Toros, and it was with some difficulty we obtained places in the stage seats. A vast concourse of persons of all classes were already assembled, and I observed with a smile the effect which the novelty of the scene had produced upon an English friend, whom I had, with great difficulty, prevailed upon to accompany me; having, as he declared, but little taste for such brutal and demoralizing exhibitions. He seemed quite excited, and made some passing observation relative to the Roman Circus, to which the present exhibition bore no unapt resemblance. I directed his attention to many of his countrymen, as well as other foreigners, who, after having been quite as clamorous as himself against the sport, had terminated their philosophical philippics by becoming constant visitors both at the morning and afternoon encounters. We arrived at the scene of action just in time to witness El despejo, or the clearing of the arena; a ceremony which is effected by a band of soldiers, who enter the place and drive every loiterer away, to the sound of drums and fifes. In a few minutes, not a single person was to be seen in the circus; and, consequently, the body of spectators, thus driven back upon the crowd, gave rise to various energetic expostulations, hearty curses, and not a few random cuffs. The only inconvenience, however, of these frequent melées, was the loss of a few ribbons and a quantity of hair, of which the manolus most assiduously set about easing themselves. This operation is a source of considerable amusement to those who stand aloof from the field of strife. We had been happy in securing good places, and had nothing to complain of but the immediate vicinity of an amateur, or aficionado, who kept his tongue in continual motion, and favored his neighbors with a tremendous display of erudition on the tauromachia.

Whilst the immense multitude were beguiling their impatience in a thousand ways, and among others by bandying jests—eating oranges—smoking—whistling—love-making and quarrelling—the champions of the fète, namely, the picadores, the espadas, and the chulos, were very piously engaged in prayer in a chapel contiguous to the circus, it being customary for combatants to solicit the protection of the holy Virgin against the tremendous[pg 224] animal they are about to encounter before they venture to provoke its ferocity.

While they proceed in their laudable occupation, we will return to the circus, which now presented a most striking spectacle. The corregidor and the corporation of the town had already taken their seats near the splendid box fitted up for the use of the king, directly opposite to the entrance from which the bull was expected to rush into the arena. Above this entrance was a platform, occupied by a band of musicians, who continued at intervals to mingle their animating strains with the clamor of the noisy multitude. An officer of the town now entered the arena, mounted on a fine charger. He was dressed in complete sables, and carried in his hand the staff of office. Attended by alguazils, he advanced,—saluted the box where the king was not,—and then proceeded to the master of the ceremonies, from whom he received the keys of the cells, where the terrible animals who were to take so conspicuous parts in the evening spectacle were confined.

At this critical juncture, a breathless silence pervaded the spectators, who by their eager looks evinced the absorbing interest they took in the soul-stirring spectacle. Anon, a band of martial instruments struck up;—a general buzz arose on every side, and, amidst the overwhelming din that prevailed throughout the circus, the picadores and the rest of their party made their entrance into the arena. First came the picadores, with their horses blindfold, wearing enormous boots to protect them from the blows of the bull; next paced on the espadas, or matadores, on foot, attired in rich silk dresses, each wearing a robe of a different color, together with ribbons or some other distinctive mark of favor from his mistress. The procession closed with a numerous troop of chulos, or banderilleros, a set of young men lightly and fancifully apparelled, whose business is to distract the attention of the bull from a fallen cavalier, and to harass the animal with the banderillas. In this splendid troop we perceived some traces of the ancient spirit of chivalry, although, strange to say, the favorite sport of the fine cavaliers of the land is now confined to the lowest orders. It is only from the slaughter-house that the bull-fighters now, for the most part, proceed.

The procession moved on, at a slow and stately pace, amidst strains of music and the vociferations of the lower classes, many of whom soon recognized in the heroes of the fète, some near relation, some dear friend, or at least, well-known acquaintance, whom they were desirous of encouraging by their shouts. The champions having made their respective obeisances to the royal box and to the corregidor, retired to the places set apart for them in the arena.

The picadores, according to the order of precedence, ranged themselves in the circus, close to the baranda, or wooden barrier, which, though elevated to the height of five feet, is sometimes scarcely sufficient to prevent the most furious amongst the bulls from breaking over it. Suddenly the music ceased—the silence was intense—the signal is given—the doors were flung open—and, with one tremendous burst, forth sprang the bull into the middle of the circus! It was a fearful animal; not large, but of that peculiar color and breed which are accounted the most ferocious.

Dark is his hide on either side, but the blood within doth boil,

And the dun hide glows as if on fire, as he paws to the turmoil,

His eyes are jet, and they are set in crystal rings of snow;

But now they stare with one red glare of brass upon the foe.

Upon the forehead of the bull the horns stand close and near,

From out the broad and wrinkled skull like daggers they appear;

His neck is massy, like the trunk of some old knotted tree,

Whereon the monster's shagged mane like billows curled ye see.

His legs are short, his hams are thick, his hoofs are black as night,

Like a strong flail he holds his tail in the fierceness of his might;

Like something molten out of iron, or hewn forth from the rock,

Harpado of Xarama stands, to bide the Alcayde's shock.[6]

The appearance of the bull was hailed by loud acclamations from the multitude; whilst hats, handkerchiefs, and scarfs fluttered in the air, in every direction.

The noble animal appeared at first as though he were undecided how to act, or on whom to wreak his fierce vengeance. He turned on every side, and scanned the appalling number and firmness of his tormentors; gradually he became more and more excited, till, exasperated by the clamors of the impatient multitude, he tore the ground with his hoofs, tossed his head in proud indignation, and then stared intently before him, as if to awe the circus with the lightnings of his angry eye. Again he lowered his head, and blew the dust in clouds with the burning breath of his distended nostrils, and lashed his sides with his tail, as if to work himself up to the proper pitch of frenzy; at length, with a sudden bound, he rushed furiously against the first picador. The cavalier received the charge with perfect coolness and intrepidity, and having succeeded in planting his pica in the higher part of the animal's neck, the theatre rung with acclamations at the strength and dexterity with which he kept his tremendous opponent for some moments fixed to the spot. Smarting with pain, the bull then retired for a short time; but his rage prevailing over his fears, he again rushed forward, and was received by a second picador. Less fortunate, however, than his companion, he was unable to withstand the overwhelming shock; and, after a fruitless effort to stem the animal's fury with his pica, it at length broke, and the bull, with one tremendous thrust on the horse's breast, overthrew its rider. Fortunately for the fallen picador, he was protected by the bulk of his horse;[pg 225] and the bull, as it often happens, sated his fierceness on the helpless animal, whose blood spouted round the arena, from a wound evidently mortal. The excitement of the spectators now became intense; when the bull, having fully disabled his enemy, advanced toward the third cavalier. The champion, however, had penetration enough to perceive that the bull was of a dangerous kind, and evinced no particular solicitude to come to closer quarters with him. He kept, therefore, retreating, under pretext of gaining an advantageous position; but the people, who guessed his real motive, unanimously protested against such dilatory proceedings. Men and women, old and young, began to assail the luckless, or rather, prudent picador, with a violent storm of abuse.

During the whole of this noisy altercation, our erudite neighbor, the aficionado, had been very scientifically descanting on the various points of the combat, to our no small annoyance; for he could not rest a moment in his seat, and was continually intercepting our view. The picador, provoked by the bitter sarcasms lavished upon him by the more vulgar part of the spectators, now advanced with an air of determination a little farther into the arena; but the sagacious bull kept retreating as his enemy advanced, in order to render escape more difficult, and his vengeance certain. At length he rushed on the cavalier with such fury and overwhelming force, that both picador and horse rolled on the ground: unluckily, the man not being very dexterous, could seek no protection from the horse, but lay exposed to the fury of his powerful antagonist.

Cries of horror and alarm for the safety of the unfortunate picador were now heard on every side, and strange to say, those very persons, who had but just driven him to encounter the danger, were now the most clamorous in shouting for protection for him. The chulos lost no time in applying their art to extricate their companion, by harassing the animal on all sides, who was thus compelled to abandon his prey in order to meet his new tormentors. Thus the fallen cavalier was rescued from his jeopardy, whilst his poor horse, dreadfully gored, ran wildly about the arena. The bull, as if satisfied with these feats, now stood tranquilly looking on the spectators, who filled the air with vivas in praise of his prowess.

The trumpet again sounded the signal for the second part of the combat, and forthwith the chulos advanced nimbly with their banderillas, each striving to fix his weapon in the neck of the animal, as in their hazardous course he passed under their extended arms. The smart of the banderillas tended to goad the bull to greater fury, and tormented on every side he bellowed out in agony, and bounded from place to place, turning first to one, and then to another of his aggressors.

Thus, after he had vented his rage, foaming at the mouth and flashing fire from his eyes, the moment arrived when it was deemed expedient to put an end to his protracted sufferings, and at a given signal the chulos retired and made place for the prima-espada.

This was Candido, who though arrived at an advanced age, still retained much of the strength and agility of his youth, which, combined with the experience he had acquired in the game, rendered him a very formidable opponent. He advanced with a stately pace, bearing in one hand a piece of scarlet cloth to entice the animal, and in the other his sword. Having arrived in front of the seat of the presiding authorities, he made a graceful salute, and then performed the same ceremony before his friends, who hailed him with many hearty vivas; whilst a deadly silence was observed on the part of the admirers of his rival Leoncito. Candido proceeded slowly, and warily towards the bull, endeavoring to entice him by waving the red cloth. The animal, however, would not suddenly rush against his foe; but calmly watched for the moment when he might find him less upon his guard.

Candido, with all the skill of a practised matador, appeared to guess the sinister intentions of the bull, and followed his every movement with an active eye—nay, he seemed to penetrate into the inmost feelings of the animal.—Irritated by the defiance, the bull sprang upon his foe; but was baffled in his vengeance, for he pierced only the floating piece of cloth; the matador very adroitly turning aside, and plunging his sword into his flank as he passed. The wound however was not mortal, and the combat was renewed. The bull, somewhat intimidated, did not again charge his adversary; but preferred awaiting his approach;—after some appropriate evolutions, Candido at last boldly advanced towards him, and with a successful thrust pierced him to the heart. Nothing had been wanting to complete the success of Candido but the solitary triumph of retaining his sword in his hand after the death-blow was inflicted, this being considered the ne plus ultra of the art. The bull had no sooner fallen to the ground than a set of most beautiful mules, splendidly caparisoned, and ornamented with a profusion of ribbons and small flags, were brought into the circus to convey from it the lifeless carcass. This operation was performed amid the stormy sounds of martial music, and the shouts of the multitude; the tremendous animal was dragged from the field, leaving in its progress a long crimson track upon the scattered sand.

The signal now sounded for a second fight; the doors were once more thrown open, and a huge bull rushed forward, and without a moment's loss ran furiously at the nearest picador. He was, however, soon sobered, and smarting with the pain of the first wound he received, prudently retreated, in no hurry to taste a like favor from the second cavalier.[pg 226] In vain did the picadores provoke him by advancing into the arena, he invariably declined the re-offered combat. The spectators, impatient at this delay, grew expressively clamorous, some crying shame! shame! and others vaca! vaca! (poor cow! poor cow!)—but all these energetic remonstrances were lost upon the pacific animal.

With much difficulty, and after a pretty long interval, the three wounds of the pica (according to rule) were at length inflicted; and the chulos came forward to perform their part. It was here that the same difficulty arose, for alas! it could not be expected that the poor bull, who had shown no relish whatever for the pica, should evince any taste for the banderillas. Consequently a great confusion arose, and a simultaneous call for banderillas de fuego, was heard on every side. This it was expected would prove a stimulus to the too tranquil temperament of the animal.

Accordingly the furs was planted upon his neck; but scarcely had the fireworks began to crack and whiz around his head, than stunned no doubt by the noise as well as the pain, he actually turned and fled. The chulos ran after him, and thus continued nolens volens to thrust their spears into his unresisting carcass, until it was thought expedient to desist in order to give him the coup de grace. Leoncito the second espada then came forward, and was hailed with joyful acclamations by his partisans, especially the manolas, for he was a young, light-made, dapper man. It proved however an exceedingly difficult task to kill the bull according to the rules of art, owing to the animal's unequivocal disinclination for the combat. Leoncito was a brave, daring man; but hardly so well skilled as Candido. He rushed boldly against the bull, and strove to inflict upon him a mortal wound. He missed, however, his aim at the right place, and the animal began to pour forth its blood in a stream. This is considered an enormous fault in the art—and it met with a becoming storm of groans and hisses. The bull, agonized by his wounds, ran wildly about. Leoncito gave him another blow—when he sat down, and quietly looked around him, as the wounds were not immediately mortal. This reposing attitude gave immense annoyance both to the combatants and the spectators. Of course it was out of all question to inflict on so gentle and resigned an enemy another estocada—and yet the public could not afford to wait the bull's leisure to die, as it was necessary to continue the sport. To expedite, therefore, the animal's last moments, and the progress of public business, the eachetero, a butcher, came forward and performed his function of inflicting the death-blow on occasions when, owing to the perversity of the bull or the clumsiness of the matador, his final assistance becomes requisite. Grasping firmly a short sharp dagger, he by a steady and well directed blow put a period to the agonies of the animal—applauses and abuse were then liberally bestowed upon Leoncito; after which the fight was suffered to proceed, and the third bull sprang into the arena. We will not, however, follow the perils and chances of this encounter. It may e sufficient to mention, that the sport went on much upon the same principle as before. The usual number of horses were killed, good spanking falls were endured by the combatants, and the same tumult and confusion prevailed throughout the circus. The combat had now lasted three hours, and the shadows of evening were gradually descending over the scene. Yet the spectators appeared by no means satisfied; some even grew clamorous, and required that a fourth bull should be brought forward. Amongst these unreasonable requisitionists, the aficionado particularly distinguished himself. He was (unhappily for his neighbors) blessed with most stentorian lungs, of which he made a liberal use, upon the most trifling occasion,—no other bull, however, was produced, and accordingly the spectators began slowly and discontentedly to disperse.

The fight being ended, the picadores and the rest of the troop withdrew to the little chapel, to return thanks for their escape. However, the veracity expected from an historian compels me to say, that their evening prayers were by no means of the same length as those which had preceded the encounter of the morning. At the entrance of the chapel we perceived many a dark-complexioned manola—many a terrible looking, fierce-whiskered, cigar-smoking majo—awaiting the egress of their friends; who, as soon as their devotions were concluded, stalked out with a martial and haughty air to receive the congratulations of their comrades. Meantime, the vast concourse of people so lately assembled together, had gradually dispersed through the various avenues of the Prado, affording the beholder a most striking and enlivening picture. The Prado itself, that beautiful promenade, which has attracted the attention of all who have visited Spain, now presented a most brilliant spectacle: it was crowded with carriages, as well as with pedestrians, all pressing to enjoy the coolness of the evening in that delightful spot. Having strolled a few times up and down this fashionable promenade, we retired to the Neverria de Solos, contiguous to the Prado, to take our refresco. To this place, as to many others of the like nature, the more elegant class of society retire early in the evening to eat ices, and drink lemonade and other refreshing beverages. From hence each person retires to his own tertulia for the evening, and thus ends a day wholly consecrated to pleasure.

Bull fights are now daily decreasing, both in number and splendor of appearance, from what they were in former times. Either the Spaniards are losing their relish for such spectacles, or the scarcity of good picadores[pg 227] and espades detracts from the interest which attaches to them. Not long since, the matadores were favorites with the public, and were regarded with considerable interest even by their superiors. Many singular and gallant adventures are related of them and ladies of rank. It was a common custom, no great while ago, to throw purses of gold to the combatants, upon the achievement of some skilful feat. But unhappily the secret of long purses is lost, and there is but little chance of a stranger seeing any money thrown away in Spain at the present time.

The most renowned of the Matadores were Romero and Pepe-Hillo, the author of a treatise entitled Tauromachia. The first retired from the arena full of honors and considerable wealth. But being desirous of obtaining for his son a canonship, he was commanded, in order to obtain that favor from the queen, Maria Louisa, to re-appear in the arena, on some grand festival.

Romero joyfully obeyed; but his age and feebleness were inadequate to cope with the fearful bull, and he would certainly have been killed, had not his friends forcibly withdrawn him from the arena.

The will, however, was taken for the deed, and his son was accordingly made a canon. With regard to Pepe-Hillo, like a gallant general, he met his death in the field of his exploits. On a certain occasion, contrary to the opinion of his friends, who knew him to be suffering from a wound in the hand, he appeared in the arena. Unhappily he had to encounter a tremendous animal. The bull hurled him on high twice; and when the unfortunate man fell on the ground he was frightfully gored, and shortly afterwards expired, amidst the most excruciating torments.

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