THE CONJURERS.
No head is a vacuum. Some, like a paltry cottage, are ill accommodated, dark, and circumscribed; others are capacious as Westminster-Hall. Though none are immense, yet they are capable of immense furniture. The more room is taken up by knowledge, the less remains for credulity. The more a man is acquainted with things, the more willing to give up the ghost. Every town and village, within my knowledge, has been pestered with spirits; which appear in horrid forms to the imagination in the winter night--but the spirits which haunt Birmingham, are those of industry and luxury.
If we examine the whole parish, we cannot produce one old witch; but we have plenty of young, who exercise a powerful influence over us. Should the ladies accuse the harsh epithet, they will please to consider, I allow them, what of all things they most wish for, power, therefore the balance is in my favor.
If we pass through the planitary worlds, we shall be able to muster up two conjurers, who endeavoured to shine with the stars. The first, John Walton, who was so busy in calling the nativity of others, he forgot his own.
Conscious of an application to himself, for the discovery of stolen goods, he employed his people to steal them. And though, for many years confined to his bed by infirmity, he could conjure away the property of others, and, for a reward, reconjure it again.
The prevalence of this evil, induced the legislature, in 1725, to make the reception of stolen goods capital. The first sacrifice to this law was the noted Jonathan Wild.
The officers of justice, in 1732, pulled Walton out of his bed, in an obscure cottage, one furlong from the town, now Brickhill-Lane, carried him to prison, and from thence to the gallows--they had better have carried him to the workhouse, and his followers to the anvil.
To him succeeded Francis Kimberley, the only reasoning animal, who resided at No. 60, in Dale-End, from his early youth to extreme age.--An hermit in a crowd! The windows of his house were strangers to light! The shutters forgot to open; the chimney to smoak. His cellar, though amply furnished, never knew moisture.
He spent threescore years in filling six rooms with such trumpery as is just too good to be thrown away, and too bad to be kept. His life was as inoffensive as long. Instead of stealing the goods which other people use, he purchased what he could not use himself. He was not anxious what kind of property entered his house; if there was bulk he was satisfied.