Footnote 48: [(return)]
In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St. James's Street, may be seen stumps, or, as the Scotch call them, doups of wax-lights, with the announcement "Candle-ends from Buckingham Palace." These are eagerly bought up by the gentility-mongers, who burn, or it may be, in the excess of their loyalty, eat them!
Footnote 49: [(return)]
"There is," says M. Comte here in a note, which consists of an extract from a previous work—"there is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit to the principles established in these sciences by competent men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the ancient principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed, there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established principles."
Footnote 50: [(return)]
Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand, and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only who never read The Doctor, will be surprised to find it quoted on a grave occasion:—
"The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, feitiço; the vernacular name is Bossum, or Bossifoe. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish. The king's is usually the largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one, take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless—a stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance, and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god, in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this superstition, but believed in it, and practised it themselves."—Vol. V. p. 136.
Footnote 51: [(return)]
At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is taken, the Doctor tells a story which, if faith could be put in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves, (and such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,) might deserve a place in the history of superstition.
"One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged."