For the Every-Day Book.
Notwithstanding the flood of information which has been poured over the country during the last half century, superstition, at once the child and mother of ignorance, still holds no inconsiderable sway over the minds of men. It is true, that the days of ghosts and apparitions are nearly over, but futurity is as tempting as ever, and the seventh son of a seventh son is still potent enough to charm away the money and bewilder the senses of the credulous, and Nixon’s and Mother Shipton’s prophecies still find believers. The coincidences by which these legendary predictions are sometimes fulfilled, are often curious. The present year may be said to witness the accomplishment of one. It has been said—
When my Lord falls in my Lady’s lap,
England beware of some mishap.
Meaning thereby, that when the festival of Easter falls near to Lady-day, (the 25th of March,) this country is threatened with some calamity. In the year 1818, Easter-day happened on the 22d of March, and in the November of that year, queen Charlotte died. In 1826, Easter-day happening on the 26th of March, distress in the commercial world may be regarded as a fulfilment of the prediction. Spanish history affords a curious instance of this kind. It is related, that Peter and John de Carvajal, who were condemned for murder, (A. D. 1312,) on circumstantial evidence, and that very frivolous, to be thrown from the summit of a rock, Ferdinand IV., then king of Spain, could by no means be prevailed upon to grant their pardon. As they were leading to execution, they invoked God to witness their innocence, and appealed to his tribunal, to which they summoned the king to appear in thirty days’ time. He laughed at the summons; nevertheless, some days after, he fell sick, and went to a place called Alcaudet to divert himself and recover his health, and shake off the remembrance of the summons if he could. Accordingly, the thirtieth day being come, he found himself much better, and after showing a great deal of mirth and cheerfulness on that occasion with his courtiers, and ridiculing the illusion, retired to rest, but was found dead in his bed the next morning. (See Turquet’s general History of Spain 1612, p. 458, cited in Dr. Grey’s notes to Hudibras, part iii. canto 1. lines 209, 210.)
The same author (Dr. Grey,) quotes from Dr. James Young, (Sidrophel vapulans, p. 29,) that Cardan, a celebrated astrologer lost his life to save his credit; for having predicted the time of his own death, he starved himself to verify it: or else being sure of his art, he took this to be his fatal day, and by those apprehensions made it so. The prophecy of George Wishart, the Scottish martyr, respecting the death of cardinal Beatoun, is a striking feature in a catalogue of coincidences. In such light may be cited the stories of the predicted death of the duke of Buckingham, in the time of Charles I., that of lord Lyttleton in later days, and many others.
Lord Bacon, who, on many points illuminated the sixteenth with the light of the nineteenth century, after referring in his chapter on prophecies (see his Essays) to the fulfilment of many remarkable fulfilments, delivers his opinion on that point in the following words:—“My judgment is, that they ought all to be despised, and ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside. Though when I say despised, I mean for belief.——That that hath given them grace, and some credit consisteth in these things. 1st. that men mark when they hit, and never when they miss; as they do, also of dreams. 2d. that probable conjectures and obscure traditions many times turn themselves into prophecies: while the nature of man which coveteth divination, thinks it no peril to foretell that, which indeed they do but collect.——The 3d. and last (which is the great one) is, that almost all them, being infinite in number, have been impostures, and by idle and crafty brains, merely contrived and feigned after the event passed.”
J. W. H.
Easter Day.
The editor is favoured with a hint, which, from respect to the authority whence it proceeds, is communicated below in its own language.