A WORLD OF WONDERS.

A

WORLD OF WONDERS,

WITH

ANECDOTES AND OPINIONS

CONCERNING

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

EDITED BY
ALBANY POYNTZ.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1845.

LONDON:
Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.

PREFACE.

It is surprising, considering the gigantic strides effected by modern science, how many of the errors and prejudices engendered by the ignorance of the dark ages remain current in the world in its present days of enlightenment. Like the winged seeds of certain weeds, their light and impalpable nature renders them only the more difficult of extirpation.

A cursory review and refutation of these popular prejudices and vulgar errors has been attempted in the following Manual. A more scientific analysis of so spreading a field would have expanded into a Cyclopædia. But the ancient traditions and modern instances collected in its pages may afford the reader amusement and instruction for the passing hour, as well as an incentive to more profound investigations in hours to come.

LONDON,
NOVEMBER, 1845.

CONTENTS.

A WORLD OF WONDERS.

CHAPTER I.

LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS.

Most scholars are familiar with the quotation “cervi dicuntur diutissime vivere,” which has rendered proverbial the longevity of the stag. Among birds, crows and parrots have also been said to attain miraculous length of days; among fishes, the carp and pike; among reptiles, the tortoise. But modern investigation has sufficiently proved that the number of centuries, variously assigned as the natural age of these birds, beasts and fishes, was, in the first instance, the invention of poets and fabulists, carelessly adopted as authentic by lovers of the marvellous.

It is now ascertained that aloes frequently flower three times in a hundred years, and that three generations of the stag are included within the same space of time.

Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet whose works have only partially reached us, was the first to institute a comparative inquiry into the age of the crow and the stag. Hesiod assigns eighty-six years as the average span of human life; yet he asserts that the rook attains eight hundred and sixty-four years, and the crow thrice as many. Towards the stag, he is still more liberal; declaring that these animals have been known to attain their thirty-fifth century. Considering the age we assign to the world itself when Hesiod flourished in it, no great experience as to the average existence of so sempiternal an animal could have influenced his opinion.

According to many ancient writers besides Hesiod, the stag is the longest lived of animals; and the Egyptians have adopted it as the emblem of longevity. Pliny relates that one hundred years after the death of Alexander, several stags were taken in the different forests of Macedonia, to whose necks that great monarch had, with his own hand, attached collars. This extension of existence is, however, scarcely worth recording, in comparison with the instance commemorated by French historians, of a stag taken in the forest of Senlis, in the year 1037; having a collar round its neck on which was inscribed, “Cæsar hoc me donavit.”

A miraculous interpretation was assigned to this inscription, which has consequently formed the ground-work of a popular error in France. The “Cæsar” of the legend was admitted, without further examination, to be Julius Cæsar, thereby allotting ten centuries as the age of the animal; nay, seventy-seven years more, seeing that Julius Cæsar conquered Gaul forty-two years before the birth of Christ. Nevertheless since the days of Julius, the title of Cæsar had been bestowed on a sufficient number of imperial potentates to explain the inscription on the collar upon more rational grounds: the Cæsar who had thus adorned the stag being in all probability its contemporary. But this was too simple an interpretation to be acceptable to those wonder-seeking times.

Aristotle decided the age of the stag, not from the showing of poets and traditions, but from the indications of experiment. Having dissected a considerable number of these animals, he pronounced their ordinary age to be was from thirty to thirty-six years. Buffon was of a similar opinion, which has been adopted by most succeeding naturalists. It has been established as a law of comparative physiology, that the life of a mammiferous animal is in proportion to its period of gestation, and the duration of its growth. The sheep and goat, who bear their young five months, and whose growth lasts two years, live from eight to ten, The horse, which is borne ten months, and whose growth requires from five to six years, lives from thirty to forty. We are, of course, speaking of the horse in its natural state, uninjured by premature and excessive labour. When submitted to the hands of man, the noble animal is condemned to premature old age, by the application of spur and thong before it attains sufficient strength for the unnatural speed it is compelled to attempt, and the burthens it is forced to bear. Nor, even under these circumstances, is it allowed to attain the span of life assigned by nature; the hand of the knacker being put in request to end its days, the moment its services cease to be profitable to its master.

The camel, which is borne ten months, and requires four years for its bodily development, usually attains the age of fifty. The elephant, requiring a year’s gestation, attains the climax of its growth at thirty, and lives to a hundred. The gestation of a stag, therefore, being but of eight months, there is no reason to infer a deviation in its favour from the laws governing the nature of all other animals of the same genus.

“The stag,” says Buffon, “whose growth requires six years, lives from thirty to forty. The prodigious age originally ascribed to this animal, is a groundless invention of the poets, of which Aristotle demonstrated the absurdity.”

A variety of instances of the miraculous longevity of animals may be found in the works of the early German naturalists. It is related in the collection of Voyages and Travels of Malte Brun, on the showing of these authorities, that the Emperor Frederick II. having been presented with a singularly fine pike, caused it to be thrown into a pond adjoining his palace of Kaiserslautern, after affixing to it a collar bearing the following Greek inscription: “I am the first fish cast into this pond by the hands of the Emperor Frederick II.; October 5th, 1230.”

After remaining two hundred and sixty years in the pond, the pike was taken in 1497, and carried to Heidelberg, to be served at the table of the Elector Philip; when the collar and inscription were subjected to the examination of the curious. The pike, at that time, weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, and was nineteen feet in length—a miraculous fish in every respect; for how are we to suppose that an inscription upon an elastic collar would otherwise remain legible at the close of several centuries? This story is evidently one of the marvels that figure so profusely in the chronicles of old Germany during the middle ages.

It has, however, often been asserted that aquatic animals are longer-lived than others, from being cold-blooded, and losing nothing from transpiration; though, from their peculiar nature, the fact is very difficult of demonstration. Fordyce made some curious experiments upon the tenacity of life in fishes; by placing gold fishes in a variety of vessels filled with water; which, at first, he refreshed every day; then, every third day, with which refreshment, and without other nourishment, they lived for fifteen months. He next distilled the water; increased the proportion of air in the vessels; and closed the apertures, so that no insect could possibly penetrate. Nevertheless, the fish lived as before, and were in good condition.

The experimentalist now decided that the decomposition of the air afforded them sufficient nutriment; by this theory invalidating the proverb ‘that it is impossible to live on air.’

Without impugning the authenticity of these experiments, or the easy sustenance of fishes, we may be permitted to observe that a variety of circumstances are unfavourable to the fact of their miraculous longevity. In the first place, their organization, especially that of the carp which is supposed to be one of the longest-lived of fishes, is peculiarly delicate; and the muscular effort to move in an element eight hundred times heavier than atmospheric air, must be apt to exhaust the energies of life. Such are the suggestions of common sense; too often unavailing against the marvels of tradition, accepted by the credulity of mankind.

The Parisians delight in boasting of the age of the venerable carp in the reservoirs at Fontainebleau and Chantilly; the former especially, as contemporary with Francis I. Other credulous persons declare that there exist gigantic carp many centuries old, in the water beneath the Cathedral of Strasbourg—a fact easily asserted because impossible to disprove.

With respect to the tame old carp at Fontainebleau, which come to the surface of the water to be fed by every visitor to that curious old palace, the only grounds for asserting their great age is the inconclusive fact, that there were tame old grey carp in the moat of Fontainebleau in the reign of Francis I., as at the present time. But who is to prove that they are identical? There were also troops and courtiers at Fontainebleau at both epochs, whom it would be just as reasonable to assert were the same persons. The only difference is that the generations of men are visibly renewed; while the carp in the old moat slip away unnoticed, and are succeeded by a younger fry.

The longevity of certain species of the feathered kind has been just as much exaggerated as that of the stag and the carp. Willoughby states in his work on Ornithology, that a friend of his possessed a gander eighty years of age; which in the end became so ferocious that they were forced to kill it, in consequence of the havock it committed in the barn-yard. He also talks of a swan three centuries old; and several celebrated parrots are said to have attained from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years.

The experiments of able naturalists afford the best answer to such statements. According to the best established authorities, pigeons, fowls, and ducks, live, in a natural state, from ten to twelve years. Magpies, crows, and jays, evince symptoms of caducity at the same age. Professor Hufeland, of Jena, who has devoted considerable time and attention to the study of the duration of life, assures us that the great eagle, and other birds of the larger kind, such as the pelican and ostrich, are very long-lived and of vigorous constitution. Specimens of the eagle tribe have been known, however, to survive in a menagerie upwards of a hundred years.

Hufeland relates that a Mr. Selwand, of London, received in 1793, from the Cape of Good Hope, a falcon wearing a golden collar inscribed “To His Majesty, King James of England, 1610.” The bird was supposed to have belonged to James I., and having escaped from its keepers, in order to avoid recapture, to have traversed Europe and Africa, to end its days in a state of nature among the Hottentots! Destiny, however, was not to be defied; and the prisoner was recaptured in its old age, and sent back to England. This incident probably originated in a hoax upon the credulity of Mr. Selwand, practised by one of his colonial correspondents. Moreover, Hufeland, after publishing his conviction of the prodigious longevity of the eagle tribe, was himself very likely to become the object of one of those mystifications, for which the supporters of new theories are considered fair game.

Credulity is unfortunately a weakness common to the human race; and a tendency to exaggeration is scarcely less universal. Between the two failings, monstrous stories obtain circulation; and as it is easier to assent than examine, the world becomes overrun with errors and prejudices. A curious anecdote related from mouth to mouth, becomes exaggerated into a miracle. Thus, as regards the longevity of parrots, a bird of this species which happens to survive three generations of the same family, though the period may not exceed thirty years, is talked of in the circle of their acquaintance as a Nestor or Methuselah; till, at last, from exaggeration to exaggeration, its age becomes converted into a miracle. No one, however, can personally attest the age of a parrot beyond fifty or sixty years. All the rest must be hearsay.

Among curious examples of longevity in animals, the dog of Ulysses is cited, by many ancient authors, for the intelligence displayed in his recognition of his master after twenty years’ absence. A mule, which lived to the age of ninety years, at Athens, has also been frequently cited.

The historian, Mézéray, relates, on the authority of Flodard, that Loup Asnard, Duke of Aquitaine, on coming to do homage to Raoul, King of France, about the beginning of the tenth century, appeared before the monarch mounted on a horse a hundred years old. Such exceptions, however, even if authentic, tend no more to prove the longevity of dogs, horses or mules, than the incontestible fact that certain men, even in modern times, have survived to the age of a century and a half, tend to establish that period as the span of human existence.

CHAPTER II.

INCOMBUSTIBLE MEN.

There are instances in which it may be fairly said that seeing is not believing. In the case of a variety of persons who have exhibited themselves, in different times and countries, as endowed with the natural power of resistance to fire, the frightful feats displayed serve only to convince the spectator, that the incombustibility of the exhibitants is but a skilful effort of legerdemain.

It may be observed that the persons who pretend to this miraculous faculty, seldom expose themselves to the hazard of the investigations of the scientific world. For the exhibition of their exploits, they usually prefer small towns to great cities. In former days, incombustible men assumed, in Spain, the name of saludores; and most of those who have since exhibited in public their insensibility to fire, are descendants or imitators of these Spanish mountebanks. The saludores, however, pretended to a power of curing all sorts of diseases by means of their saliva; whereas, the incombustible individuals who have figured in France and Germany, pretend only to handle fire with impunity, to swallow boiling oil, walk upon glowing embers, or even among flames; all which exploits they accomplish with perfect self-possession. So long as two hundred years ago, however, the saludores were recognised as impostors. Leonard Vain relates a story of one of them, who, having pretended to the faculty of sustaining the heat of a kindled oven, was forced by the populace into one, without sufficient preparation; on opening which, at the close of an hour, the man was found to be calcined. A somewhat severe mode of punishing imposture!

This example, however, did not serve to extinguish the race; and in 1806, a man who called himself the miraculous Spaniard, opened an exhibition in Paris, where he renewed all the skilful marvels of his predecessors, by walking barefooted on red hot iron, drawing heated bars across his arms, face and tongue, dipping his hands in molten lead, and swallowing, as if with zest, a glass of boiling oil. This exhibition, to which the idlers of the French capital resorted, produced a careful examination into the precedents of antiquity for similar instances of incombustibility.

Some cited the well-known lines of Virgil, with reference to the exhibitions of the priests of Apollo, on Mount Soracte, where they walked unhurt, in presence of the worshippers of their divinity, upon burning embers. Others quoted the equally doubtful authority of Pliny; who relates the same fact, adding that the privilege of incombustibility was hereditary in a specific family; a fact the more remarkable, because all the modern jugglers in this branch of the black art, pretend to descend from St. Catherine.

Varro, less credulous than Pliny, expressly states that the priests of the Temple of Soracte possessed the secret of a composition which rendered them fire-proof.

Long after Varro, Strabo related that the votaries of the goddess Feronia obtained, as the price of their devotions, the faculty of walking unhurt over burning piles; and that the exhibition of this miraculous power before her altars, attracted numerous spectators.

“The worship of the goddess Feronia,” says Strabo, “is much in vogue; her temple being remarkable as the site of a miracle. Those persons whose prayers the goddess deigns to propitiate, are enabled to defy the most ardent flames. This miracle is renewed at her annual festival.”

It is also related that, not far from the city of Thyane, the birth-place of Apollonius, there was a celebrated temple dedicated to Diana Persica; the virgins devoted wherein to the worship of the goddess of Chastity, possessed the power and privilege of treading unhurt upon burning embers. A confirmation of these wonders is to be found in Aristotle and Apuleius.

When the visitors of the miraculous Spaniard had satisfied themselves, that antiquity supplied a variety of examples in substantiation of the power to which he pretended, modern history was searched for further attestation; when it appeared that Ambrose Paré and Cardan, depose to having seen mountebanks so inured to the effects of molten lead and boiling oil, that they were able to wash their faces and hands, unhurt, with those terrible materials. Delrio, Delancre, and Bodin, advance many curious facts of a similar nature.

Had these incombustible individuals existed in the days when trial by ordeal was still a form of law; or, rather, had the Art of Chemistry attained at that period the power of hardening the human skin into resistance of fire, the secret would have been invaluable.

In those barbarous ages, a culprit sentenced to the fiery ordeal of walking upon heated ploughshares, or plunging his limbs into boiling oil, was tacitly condemned to death. We may infer, however, that Kings, Queens, and Dignitaries of the Church were of a less combustible nature than humbler mortals; for when these were forced to submit to the terrible ordeal of fire, it was observed that they escaped unsinged; while serfs and beggars, burnt like tinder: an understanding with the cruel executioners of these savage laws, being essential to establish the innocence of an accused person.

It would appear as though a sinister influence had always attached itself to the ill-fated See of Autun; for one of the first instances on record of the ordeal of fire being applied to a member of the hierarchy, was that of Simplicius, Bishop of Autun, who, after submitting to it in his life-time, was canonized after death. Two later Bishops of Autun—the Abbé Roquette, said to be the original of the Tartuffe of Molière, and the Prince de Talleyrand, one of the most remarkable personages of modern times, have certainly not experienced the same posthumous distinction.

Simplicius, being a married man, when called to the honours of the See of Autun, repudiated his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached. He was, nevertheless, accused of retaining her conjugally in his palace after his promotion to the mitre; in disproof of which, he submitted, and caused his beloved wife to submit to the fiery ordeal in presence of a vast congregation; when, both having escaped unhurt, Simplicius was eventually promoted to the honour of the Calendar.

St. Brie, the successor of St. Martin in the See of Tours, was also accused of having become a father, to the discredit of his episcopal functions; a charge he is said to have defeated by bestowing powers of speech upon the infant, thereby enabling it to name its real father. In addition to this exculpation, he submitted to the fiery ordeal; and having gathered up his robe, and filled it with burning embers, proceeded in this guise to the tomb of his predecessor, St. Martin, without experiencing the slightest injury. It is not added in the legend, whether the garments of the Bishop were also uninjured.

One of the most celebrated trials by fire on record, is that of Thuitberge, wife of Lothaire, King of France. Having been accused of more than becoming intimacy with the young Prince, her brother, and condemned to the ordeal, she had the good fortune to find a champion willing to undertake it in her behalf. These champions or proxies were tantamount to the special pleaders of the present day, being mostly hired by fee or reward for the purpose. The champion of Thuitberge managed to establish her innocence, by plunging his arm without injury into a cauldron of boiling water; after which, Lothaire was compelled to admit the injustice of his accusation, and retain her as his wife. Even at that epoch, however, mistrust had arisen on this score; and certain servitors of the King openly insinuated the existence of chemical compositions, by the application of which a man might fortify his flesh against the action of boiling fluids. Appeal from the decision of an ordeal was, however, decided to be impossible.

A celebrated Father of the Oratoire, the Père Lebrun, published a recipe purporting to insure impunity against fire; consisting of equal parts of alcohol, sulphur, ammonia, essence of rosemary, and onion juice. At the moment Père Lebrun was devoting himself to experiments on the mysteries of incombustibles, an English practician, named Richardson, was amazing the world of science by the performance of prodigies. This person contrived to walk upon burning embers, to place burning sulphur upon his hand, then transferring it to his tongue, allow it to consume away without apparent injury. He also allowed a piece of meat, or an oyster, to be cooked upon his tongue; the fire for the purpose being kept up in a live coal by a pair of bellows. He was also able to grasp a red hot bar of iron, and even seize it between his teeth; to swallow molten glass and a mixture of burning pitch and sulphur, so that the flames burst from his mouth as from that of a furnace; just as common mountebanks emit fire from their mouths by means of a coal wrapt in tow, which has been previously steeped in spirits of wine.

These experiments attracted so much attention, that scientific men considered them deserving notice; and in 1677, Dodart, of the French Academy of Sciences, addressed a letter on the subject to the Journal de Science, proving that such phenomena might be achieved by time, address, and perseverance, without the intervention of chemical agency. The ordinary hardening of the hands and feet by labour and exercise, certainly induce a belief that perseverance in the same means might be made to produce absolute callosity.

It is well known, that bakers are remarkable for the muscularity of their arms and slightness of their legs; while dancers have usually slender arms and muscular legs. The difference of exercise, necessitated by their several professions, producing diverse development of limb. On the other hand, there is no need to compare the sole of the foot of a lady who seldom goes out, unless in a carriage, or treads on any other material than luxurious carpets, with that of a peasant who goes bare-footed on the flinty road, without inconvenience, to be assured that the same degree of boiling water which could be sustained by the latter without inconvenience, would blister the delicate epidermis of the former.

Dodart observes that, in the ordinary circumstances of life, some people are able to swallow their food much hotter than others; and that, as regards the experiments of Richardson, charcoal loses its heat the moment it is extinguished, and is easily extinguished by means of the human saliva. It is a common trick of jugglers to put lighted tapers into their mouths; and in the attempts made by Richardson to cook a piece of meat upon his tongue, the slice was made so to envelop the ember, as to secure his mouth from contact with the fire; while the bellows used during the process, on pretence of keeping up the flame, were on the contrary, intended to cool the mouth. As to the mixtures of boiling wax, pitch and sulphur, Dodart states their temperature to have been such, that he could hold his finger in them two seconds without pain. It is well known that the workmen in the foundries are so inured to heat, as to touch, without injury, metals in a state of fusion; frequently plunging their hands into molten lead, in order to recover articles of value. Moreover, as regards any ignited substance placed in the mouth, it naturally becomes extinguished the moment the lips are reclosed; the gas from the human lungs tending especially to that purpose.

About the year 1774, there lived at the foundry of Laune, a man who could walk unharmed over bars of red-hot iron, and hold burning coals in his hands. The skin of this man was observed to emit a sort of unctuous transpiration, which served as his preservative.

These facts suffice to prove that the miraculous Spaniard, who affected preternatural incombustibility, had no need of magic for the working of his wonders. For another case, equally remarkable, we are indebted to Sementini, an eminent Professor of Chemistry at Naples.

A Sicilian, named Lionetti, came to that city for the purpose of exhibiting feats of incombustibility; and soon excited public astonishment by his power of drawing a red-hot plate of iron over his hair without singeing it, on which he afterwards stamped with his naked feet. He also drew rods of red-hot iron through his mouth, swallowed boiling oil, dipped his fingers in molten lead, and dropped some on his tongue. He fearlessly exposed his face to the flames of burning oil; poured sulphuric or muriatic acid upon lighted embers, and imbibed the fumes; ending by allowing a thick gold pin to be thrust deep into his flesh.

The Neapolitans were as much enchanted by the feats of Lionetti as the Parisian with those of the incombustible Spaniard. But at Naples, Sementini, who was on the watch, perceived that, at the moment the fire-proof man applied the heated materials to his skin, there escaped a whitish vapour. Instead of swallowing a glass of boiling oil, according to his announcement, he introduced only a quarter of a spoonful into his mouth, and a few drops of molten lead upon his tongue, which was covered with a white fur, like the secretion perceptible in cases of fever. When he took the hot iron between his teeth, symptoms of suppressed pain were perceptible; and the edges of his teeth were evidently charred by previous performances of a similar description. From these appearances, Sementini inferred that Lionetti made use of certain preparations which secured him against the influence of heat, by hardening the epidermis; and that his skin having become callous from use, was in itself able to resist, to a certain degree, the action of fire. These conclusions, which concur with those made by Dodart, in the case of Richardson, were verified by personal observation and careful experiment.

After many fruitless attempts to discover the chemical agents used by the Incombustibles, the persevering Sementini found that by frequent frictions of sulphuric acid, he was able to inure his flesh to the contact of red-hot iron; and we are bound to admire the patience and courage of those who, for the benefit of scientific discovery, attempt experiments of so powerful and perilous a nature. To have exposed a fallacy in matters of science, is equal to the discovery of a fact; and the extirpation of a single error or false conclusion from the popular mind, is an act deserving of gratitude.

Sementini found that by bathing the parts thus deprived of their usual sensitiveness with a solution of alum, their former sensibility to heat was restored; and one day, happening to smear with soap the parts he had re-softened in this manner with alum, he found, to his great surprise, that they became hardened anew against the action of heat. The experimentalist instantly applied to his tongue a preparation of soap, and found that it enabled him to defy the contact of iron heated to a white heat. To neutralize the faculty thus acquired, he had only to sprinkle his tongue with sugar; a new application of soap serving at any moment to render it fire-proof.

By these experiments, in various countries, the pretension to a supernatural power of incombustibility has been reduced to its true level. The Priests of Soracte, the Virgins of Diana, the Champion of Queen Thuitberge, and the Bishop of Autun, were doubtless adepts in the art of the miraculous Spaniard; and according to the recipe of Sementini, a man may be enabled to defy the element of fire as successfully as an expert swimmer overmasters that of water, or an experienced aëronaut of air.

CHAPTER III.

VENTRILOQUISTS.

Ventriloquists are a better order of jugglers than the Incombustibles. The feats of the latter are doubtless more surprising—the former, far more amusing. To behold a man expose himself to even the semblance of a cruel torture, affords a disgusting species of excitement; and such exhibitions as those we have described, the feat of swallowing naked swords, or the favourite practice of placing in contact with half-tamed beasts of prey a human being who submits to the risk for the sake of a scanty remuneration, is an order of public entertainment that does little honour to the taste of the listless spectator.

To witness feats of ventriloquism, on the contrary, is a diverting and harmless pastime; though, had Messieurs Comte and Alexandre exhibited their marvellous powers in the olden time, there is some probability that they might have been exposed to jeopardy as sorcerers and magicians, or to exorcism, as possessed of devils.

Ventriloquism derives its name from an error of the ancients. So far from being effected through the body, the mouth is the sole instrument of the art or faculty we call ventriloquism. The first inference formed on this subject was by the Greeks, who conceived the oracles of the Pythoness to consist of the emanation of the soul from the viscera; and as the lips of ventriloquists assumed the same form in the exercise of their art as those of the Pythoness during her pretended inspirations, they ascribed the effort to the same region of the body.

Archbishop Eustatius, in treating of the Witch of Endor, attributes the exploits of the magician Ob, in invoking the shade of Samuel, and obtaining a reply from the apparition, to a devil, or the power of ventriloquism. In the Book of the Septanti, the Witch of Endor is described as a ventriloquist.

Father Delrio, as an interpreter of the opinion of the ancients, and Henri Boguet, the great legist, declared from the bench, that all persons endowed with a natural power of ventriloquism, had hoarse, harsh voices, and that the spirit by which they were possessed, must be dislodged by exorcism.

In the earlier days of ventriloquism, from the Witch of Endor downwards, the art appears to have been almost peculiar to the female sex; though in our own times professed only by males. In the fifteenth century, Rolande du Vernois, accused of the exercise of ventriloquism, was condemned and burnt as a witch; and about the middle of the sixteenth, the inhabitants of Lisbon were amazed by the feats of a woman named Cecilia, who possessed the art of causing her voice to issue from her elbow, foot, or any other part of her body. In exhibiting this apparently preternatural power, she pretended to have an invisible colleague, named Pierre Jean, with whom she appeared to hold conversations; an exploit that exposed her to a charge of witchcraft. She was tried for magic, and exiled to the Island of St. Thomas, in remission of a sentence to be burnt alive.

In the same century, a little old woman who had very much the air of a witch, and whose voice appeared to issue from the centre of her body, made her appearance in Italy, where she was arraigned for sorcery; but her further history is unrecorded.

A female ventriloquist, named Barbara Jacobi, narrowly escaped being burnt at the stake in 1685, at Haarlem, where she was an inmate of the public hospital. The curious daily resorted thither to hear her hold a dialogue with an imaginary personage with whom she conversed as if concealed behind the curtains of her bed. This individual, whom she called Joachim, and to whom she addressed a thousand ludicrous questions, which he answered in the same familiar strain, was for some time supposed to be a confederate. But when the bystanders attempted to search for him behind the curtains, his voice instantly reproached them with their curiosity from the opposite corner of the room. As Barbara Jacobi had contrived to make herself familiar with all the gossip of the city of Haarlem, the revelations of the pretended familiar were such as to cause considerable embarrassment to those who beset her with impertinent questions.

The celebrated Thiémet used to exhibit at Paris a scene of a similar nature, afterwards copied in London in the Monopolylogues of Matthews. Having concealed himself in a sentry-box, which occupied the centre of his small stage, the distant sound of a horn became audible; then, the cry of a pack of hounds gradually approaching; during the intervals of which, a miller and his wife were heard familiarly conversing in bed concerning their household affairs. In the midst of their conversation, a knock was heard; and a strange noise became audible from without, entreating the miller to rise and show the way through the forest to a young Baron, who had lost the track of the hounds. The miller promised compliance; when an altercation ensued between him and his wife; the former wishing to rise, the latter preventing him with a declaration that she had not courage to be left alone in the mill. At length, the miller gets the better; and, having risen, is about to put on his clothes, when the sobs and cries of his abandoned spouse determine him to return to bed; and the scene used to terminate with a loud exclamation on the part of the lady when the cold knees of the miller apprized her of his return. This somewhat too familiar exhibition used to elicit roars of laughter from the most fashionable audiences; nor, till Thiémet issued from his sentry-box, could they be prevailed upon to believe that he had been alone.

Ventriloquism is, in truth, the working of a curious problem in acoustics; the art resulting from a careful computation of distances and effects in the science of sound. The resources afforded by such an art to the priesthood of antiquity, who were thus enabled to create an oracle wherever they thought proper, may easily be understood. When exercised with dexterity, it was no wonder that the bewildered populace should exclaim, like the Sybil of Cumæ, “Deus! ecce Deus!” Dodona and Delphos are now generally believed to have been simply the scene of a clever exhibition of ventriloquism. Fontenelle, and the learned Benedictine, Dom Calmet, have both written extensively on the subject; the latter, more especially, labouring to prove that a variety of marvels related by Lucian, Philostratus, Iamblicus, and other eminent authors, are easily explained by ventriloquism.

Many French historians attribute to the same origin the apostrophe of the pretended Spectre in the Forest of Mans, which so terrified the feeble Charles VI., as to deprive him of reason. Such was the opinion of the Abbé de la Chapelle; who, in 1772, published a volume on ventriloquism, in which, among other examples, he cites the wonderful faculty of a grocer named St. Gilles, residing at St. Germain en Laye; who, when visited by the Abbé, made his voice appear to issue from every part of the house. St. Gilles appears to have been a facetious personage as well as a skilful ventriloquist; for as he was one day walking in the forest of St. Germain, with a rich Prebendary, celebrated for his avarice and clerical abuses, a voice was heard to reproach him with his pluralities and covetousness, threatening to bury him under the ruins of his prebendal house, unless he reformed the errors of his ways. The grocer being careful to assume an appearance of the same terror that paralyzed his companion, the priest regarded this interposition as the voice of his good angel; and instantly proceeding to the nearest church, dropped the whole contents of his purse into the poor’s box; and on his return to Paris, devoted the remainder of his days to repentance and good works.

On another occasion, St. Gilles exercised his art in restoring family peace to a young couple. The husband who had abandoned a young and lovely wife, having accompanied him into the depths of the forest of St. Germain for a morning walk, was also addressed by a supernatural voice, threatening him with eternal punishment unless he renounced his dissolute habits, and returned to the bosom of domestic life; a stratagem which produced the happiest results.

One of the most skilful proficients in the art, appears to have been a Baron von Mengen, a German nobleman, as celebrated at Vienna, as St. Gilles in France. The Baron never appeared in society without carrying a doll in his pockets, with which he used to hold imaginary conversations. An English traveller, amazed by the wit and wisdom of the doll, became at length so excited by curiosity, as to insinuate his hand into the Baron’s pocket, in the hope of discovering his secret; when the doll instantly shrieked aloud, and bitterly reproached the Englishman for his breach of decorum. The amazement of the abashed foreigner increasing, the Baron produced his doll, and explained the nature of the mystery.

Philippe, a favourite actor of the Théâtre des Variétés, on his marriage with Mademoiselle Volnais, the actress, proceeded with her into Lorraine to visit an estate they had purchased; when the tenants having thought proper to favour them with a magnificent reception, in the course of the day, the bridegroom, deserting his place of honour, strolled out among the revellers. While he appeared to be only conversing in a grave manner with the Mayor of the place, to the dismay of the simple villagers, strange voices were heard to issue from tuns of wine, reproaching them with their excesses; and from wheelbarrows, reproving them for their idleness. The whole village fancied itself bewitched; while Philippe enjoyed, for the first time of his life, on his own account, a talent he had so often exercised for the amusement of others.

Comte, the best ventriloquist now extant, has performed a thousand similar exploits. When on his travels in Belgium, he caused the voice of Margaret of Austria, to issue from her tomb in the Church of Bron, addressing a reprimand to the verger. At Rheims, he was nearly the cause of depopulating the quarter of St. Nicholas, by causing voices to issue from a variety of graves in the church-yard; while at Nevers, he revived the miracle of Balaam, by enabling an overladen ass to reproach its master with his cruelty.

Another time, Monsieur Comte, when travelling by night in a diligence, the travellers of which had fallen asleep, roused them from their slumbers by a confusion of voices of robbers at the windows, calling aloud upon the postillions to stop. The greatest consternation prevailed; when Monsieur Comte offered to negociate for them with the robbers, and become the depositary of their purses for the purpose. Having alighted from the carriage for this object, he was heard conversing in the dark road with a variety of voices, breathing the most frightful threats; and the travellers considered themselves fortunate in being allowed to purchase their lives by the cession of all they had about them. When daylight broke, their adroit fellow-traveller restored their property; the mere mention of his name sufficing to explain the nature of the jest which had produced their alarm.

On another occasion, he preserved the statues and carvings of a village church from mutilation, by causing a voice to issue from the altar, commanding the forbearance of the rustic population. He was, however, very near falling a victim to the marvels of his art, at Fribourg; where the populace, asserting him to be a sorcerer, fell upon him, and would have thrown him into a heated oven to be consumed, but for the intervention of the authorities.

Nevertheless, in defiance of these well-known facts, ventriloquism still appears miraculous to the vulgar. Thirty years ago, the learned Abbé Fiard wrote a treatise to prove that the ancients were justified in their belief that it proceeded from spiritual possession. Fortunately, the great majority are content to accept it as a fertile source of recreation, without troubling themselves concerning the origin of the faculty.

CHAPTER IV.

POPE JOAN AND THE WANDERING JEW.

In the history of the world a variety of imaginary personages have found a place, whom it has become difficult to dislodge. Created in the first instance by the blunders of some careless writer, or by the sickly fancy of some unsound judgment, they are adopted by popular favour, tricked up according to its caprices, and committed to the hands of tradition to mislead the opinions of posterity. The pretensions of a false Demetrius, a false Dauphin, a false Heraclius, a Lambert Simnel, or a Perkin Warbeck, are more easily disproved and set aside than those of the mere shadows which flit over the surface of history; too impalpable to be seized upon and compelled to render an account of themselves.

Among these phantoms are Pope Joan, and the Wandering Jew; of whom every one has heard something, though nothing to the purpose. Yet these imaginary personages are too closely connected with the mysteries of our faith to be otherwise than generally interesting.

For how many years did the legend of the Wandering Jew, the porter of Pilate, condemned to roam the earth till the second coming of Christ, and having his necessities provided for by five-pence, which remained inexhaustibly in his purse, obtain favour with the world—perpetually renewed and brightened by the inventive hand of genius! Even now, though no longer an article of belief among the enlightened classes, his story obtains sufficient credit with the vulgar to merit a certain degree of examination.

The first writer who signalized the existence of the Wandering Jew, was Matthew Paris, an English chronicler of the thirteenth century; who was perhaps ignorant that he was only renewing a fable of the Greeks; Suidas having recorded that a Greek named Pasès possessed a miraculous piece of money, which as often as he expended it returned again into his pocket.

Some inventors have too much modesty to pretend to originality. So it was with Matthew Paris; who affected to have learned the legend of the Wandering Jew from an Armenian Bishop, who spent some time in England. This eastern dignitary, he asserts, had actually seen and conversed with the Wandering Jew, whose name he stated to be Cartophilax; that he was porter to the tribunal to which Jesus was conveyed by the Roman soldiers; and had familiarly known the Virgin Mary and the Apostles. All the romantic incidents of his story which have passed into an article of popular faith, were first related by Matthew Paris.

But may there not have been some allegorical or concealed sense connected with the first creation of the Wandering Jew? At this period, Jews were objects of universal persecution, and often publicly burnt. Is it not likely enough that Matthew Paris intended to typify the whole persecuted and wandering people of the Jews in the person of Cartophilax; or, may he not have purposed to afford a means of safety and impunity to any Jew who saw fit to take up the character?

For thirteen centuries, then—as for eighteen, now—the Jewish people had been driven from place to place, tracked like a beast of prey, and subjected to every species of ignominy. Their destiny, in short, was a mere extended exemplification of the fortunes of the Wandering Jew. May not, moreover, the eternal five-pence have been intended to show, that wherever he finds himself, a Jew can never be long in want of money? Montesquieu only expresses the general opinion on this subject, in saying, “Wherever you find gold, you will find a Jew.”

This theory will probably be regarded as more apocryphal than the existence of Cartophilax! Nevertheless we would rather pin our faith on a fanciful interpretation, than admit that a writer of so much moment to the History of the World as the famous Matthew Paris, could voluntarily shake the stability of his Chronicles by the wanton fabrication of such a miracle.

The invention of Pope Joan is still more easily accounted for; as originating in the desire of the Reformed Church to expose to contempt the honour of the See of Rome. No contemporary writer so much as alludes to her existence; nor till sixty years after the period assigned as that of her adventures, do we find the monk Radulphus relating the scandalous chronicle of her pretended pontificate. A story of this description once set afloat, will never want for commentators; and a variety of other writers instantly seized upon it, improving the details at leisure.

Seldom, however, has an imposture been adopted by such grave judgments, or promulgated by such authoritative voices, as that of Pope Joan. But the fact is that party spirit, or rather sectarian spirit, blinded the eyes of these abettors of fraud. At the moment of the grand schism originating the Reformed Church, the partizans of the new Faith seized upon the old wife’s tale of Pope Joan, and converted it into a serious argument against the infallibility of Rome.

“You boast of the assistance of divine grace, you pretend to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,” said they to the Catholics; “that it directs your councils and suggests your elections. How came it, then, that with so omniscient a counsellor, you were deluded into promoting a woman to the Papal See?—The single name of Pope Joan ought to suffice to attest the incompetency of your Church!”

The history of this pretended personage has been too often related, and is of too gross a nature to deserve recital. Even the historians who have been most serious in its attestation, disagree in the leading incidents; some of them naming the female Pope Agnes, some Joan, and some Gilberta. Voltaire, who was little prone to defend the purity of the See of Rome, utterly discredits her existence; and in all Protestant countries, where the fable was first called into existence, the name of Pope Joan is cited only as a matter of jest and derision.

CHAPTER V.

THE FABLES OF HISTORY.

It is surprising how many of the facts of history have been reduced into fictions by the careful investigations of modern enlightenment. For centuries, it was established as an undeniable enormity of the empire, that the Emperor Justinian put out the eyes of Belisarius. Tragedies, operas and romances, were grounded upon this cruel incident; and the arts have lent their aid to the perpetuation of a popular error.

Let us examine the real state of the case. In 563, a conspiracy was discovered against the Emperor Justinian; and the conspirators were arrested on the eve of executing their criminal design. Certain of his favourites, envious of the great name of Belisarius, suborned false witnesses, whose testimony made it appear that he was included in the plot; upon which, Justinian indulged in the bitterest reproaches against his perfidy. Belisarius, strong in his sense of innocence, and the consciousness of the great services he had rendered to the empire, disdained to justify himself; and Justinian, weak, versatile, and mistrustful, influenced by a paltry pusillanimity, caused him to be stripped of his offices, made prisoner in his house, and deprived of all attendants or companions.

This state of things continued for the space of seven months; when the innocence of Belisarius was, by the intervention of others, brought to light; and he was at once restored to his former honours and the confidence of his master. So far from being deprived of sight, and guided about by a youth, as our imaginations have been misled into depicting him by a variety of artists and men of letters, Belisarius died at an advanced age in the full enjoyment of his senses.

The two first authors who thought proper to load the memory of Justinian with the odium of having put out the eyes of Belisarius, were Crinitus and Raphael Mafféi, both belonging to the sixteenth century. No anterior writer makes the smallest allusion to this act of barbarity; which, had it been authentic, could scarcely have been buried in obscurity for a period of ten centuries. The event which probably gave rise to so monstrous a supposition was, the disgrace of Carpocratian; who, after being the chief favourite of Justinian, was driven into exile in Egypt, and compelled to beg his bread on the highways. But even in this instance, the fallen man was not deprived of sight.

One day, a village priest who was preaching in France, on the instability of riches and the misfortunes of the great, perceiving his simple flock to be melted into tears by the pathetic nature of his recital, comforted them by adding, “Nevertheless, my brethren, take comfort, for, after all, these traditions may be greatly exaggerated.” It were as well, perhaps, if historians were equally candid, more especially the one who first treated of the cruel fortunes of Belisarius.

This great man had, in truth, no need of factitious enhancements to secure the sympathies of the sixteenth century; the nobleness of his character having fully equalled the greatness of his exploits. As the conqueror of the Goths, he sustained the fortunes of the empire; sacrificing himself for his master, and refusing a crown when the throne was easily accessible. After he had achieved the conquest of Italy, the jealousy of Justinian recalled him from his command. Yet when the fortunes of his country stood a second time in need of his sword, he did not hesitate to lay down his resentment, and take up arms for its defence.

A far more authentic instance of undeserved misfortune is the case of Œdipus, who, born the heir of the throne, was secretly removed from the palace in consequence of a prediction that he would become the murderer of his father. To avoid the accomplishment of the oracle, the infant was about to be destroyed; the servant, to whom the task was assigned, having literally pierced his feet, and suspended him to the branches of a tree; when unfortunately a shepherd, taking pity on the tortured babe, relieved him and conveyed him to the Court of the Queen of Corinth, by whom, being childless, he was reared as her son. At eighteen years of age, an oracle enjoined him to go in search of his parents; and on his travels, having killed a man by whom he was insulted, the victim proved to be his father.

Œdipus arrives at Thebes. A riddle is proposed to him, the sense of which he is so unfortunate as to guess; and having by this feat rid the country of the Sphinx, he receives the promised reward in the hand of the Queen of Thebes, who, in process of time, proves to be the mother of her young husband. In consequence of this parricide and incest, a frightful pestilence afflicts Thebes; and Œdipus in despair, puts out his own eyes, banishes himself from his native country, and is followed into exile by his daughter Antigone, who officiates as his guide.

Such misfortunes naturally inspired the minds of the heathens with a belief in the doctrine of fatality—a blind interpretation of events which also served to induce a belief in the marvellous, and confirm half the preposterous superstitions perpetuated by the weakness of the human race.

Nothing can be more groundless, by the way, than our vain assertion of being the only created beings who “contemplate Heaven with brow erect.” Not only do we share this distinction with the ourang-outangs, but with a variety of birds, such as the crane and the ostrich; which, on this point, are better qualified than ourselves, seeing that instead of the upper eyelid falling, the lower eyelid rises over the eye; thus leaving them more at liberty to raise their eyes to Heaven.

False pretensions and vulgar errors of this kind abound in the world:—as for instance, the belief that the pelican pierces her bosom to feed her little ones with her blood—that the scent of bean-flowers produces delirium—that the mole is blind—that the dove is a model of gentleness and conjugal fidelity; and how often are the questions still mooted whether Hannibal really worked a passage through the Alps with vinegar—whether the coffin of Mahomet be really suspended at Mecca between two loadstones—whether shooting stars be fragments of shattered planets, or souls progressing from purgatory—whether beasts of prey are afraid of fire; and whether human nature have ever exhibited affinities with the brute creation in the form of fauns, dryads, satyrs, or centaurs.

The fable of the centaurs explains itself naturally enough by the wonder created in the world by the first man hardy enough to reduce the horse to a state of submission, and convert it into a domestic animal. We know that a man on horseback has been regarded as a complex animal by many savage nations; just as the Peruvians, when attacked by the artillery of Pizarro, believed their invaders to be Gods, seeing that thunder was at their disposal.

As to fauns and satyrs, which probably consisted of shepherds whose lower extremities were clad in goat skins, Herodotus declares that a whole nation of them existed among the mountains of Scythia. Plutarch relates that, in the time of Sylla, a faun was caught at Nymphea near Apollonia, which was brought as a present to the Dictator. The creature could utter no articulate sound,—its voice consisting of a noise between the cry of a goat and the neighing of a horse; but exhibited social qualities, and was much addicted to female society. This was probably some deaf and dumb idiot, left by unnatural parents to perish in infancy, and miraculously preserved; as in the case of Peter, the Wild Boy, found during the last century in the forests of Westphalia, and maintained at the cost of the King of England to a good old age. A similar specimen of degraded humanity was exhibited at Paris under the name of the Savage of Aveyron; and the historical fable of Valentine and Orson was probably founded on some similar circumstance.

According to Philostratus, a satyr was taken in Ethiopia of so mild and gentle a disposition, as to have been easily tamed; and that certain of the simeous tribes, such, for instance, as the ourang-outang called the Wild Man of the Woods, should have been considered a satyr by both Greeks and Romans, on a first inspection seems natural enough. St. Jerome, in his life of St. Anthony, asserts that he encountered a satyr in the desart, and that they conversed and breakfasted together.

We should have thought these holy personages more in danger of an encounter with wild beasts; concerning which peril, a passing remark may be made, that the idea of frightening them away by fire is a popular prejudice. Tavernier relates that some soldiers having lighted a great fire to preserve themselves from the damp, in a forest of Africa, were set upon by a lion, and that one of the men was greatly injured by this midnight intruder, which was luckily shot dead by one of his comrades.

As regards the popular opinion concerning the tomb of Mahomet, it is now proved to be at Medina instead of Mecca, where the belief of many centuries assigned it a place; but so far from being suspended in the air by a loadstone, the coffin lies on the ground surrounded by an iron balustrade. A learned Jesuit, by dint of many patient experiments, ascertained the possibility of sustaining a human body in the air by the power of the loadstone. But the quantity employed only served to realize the miracle for the space of two seconds. On the discovery of the singular properties of the loadstone, as affecting the polarization of the needle, the vulgar naturally began to endow it with miraculous powers. In 1765, the Journal Encyclopédique published an Essay attributing to the loadstone the power of curing the tooth-ache; the person afflicted being required to turn his face towards the North Pole, and touch the aching tooth with the southern point of a magnetic needle. The system was pursued for a time by a variety of quack dentists, but soon fell to the ground.

With respect to shooting stars, philosophy remains undecided as to their origin. But vulgar superstition clings to the belief that any wish formed during the transit of one of these luminous bodies will be accomplished. This idea probably purported in the first instance to demonstrate the transitory nature of human wishes, as exemplified in the momentary glimpse of the meteor. Some philosophers attribute shooting stars to the encounter of the electric fluid with inflammable molecules in the atmosphere. Descartes asserts that they are terrestrial particles which, meeting in the air the second element, take fire and fall back to earth; leaving where they fall a viscous matter. The truth is that they have never been known to fall back upon the earth. Monsieur Biot has hazarded a conjecture that they may be fragments of comets, falling with immense rapidity through the realms of space.

If this point of popular prejudice remain unremoved, nothing can be more certain than that the mole possesses organs of vision—though small; and that the fable of the maternal tenderness of the pelican, originated in the flexible pouch in which she deposits the fish she collects for her own food, and that of her young. The proverbial fidelity of the dove to her mate has been equally disproved by naturalists; no person having ever kept a pair of doves without noticing that they are birds of a peculiarly irascible and quarrelsome nature.

CHAPTER VI.

MELONS AND MONSTERS.

It might form an important matter of inquiry for naturalists, whether the fruits appropriated by Providence to certain climates, do not become unwholsome when transferred to others by the intervention of art. Certain it is, that in various countries of the South, melons constitute an article of national food; whereas, in the North, they pass for one of the most pernicious productions of the vegetable kingdom; being the first article of food interdicted during the prevalence of the cholera.

The origin of the melon, however, appears very uncertain. Far from being indigenous in Italy, it was asserted by the Roman naturalists to have been brought from Africa by Metellus; while others believe it to have been derived from their earlier Asiatic conquests. Scipio is said by some to have first introduced it into Rome. From whatever source derived, the gardeners of Greece and Rome made the culture of the melon a subject of especial study. Pliny spoke of the delicacy and flavour of the fruit as well as of its indigestibility. It may be observed, however, that in the more ancient bas-reliefs and frescoes of fruit found in Herculaneum, the melon does not appear.

The modern arts of horticulture have added innumerable varieties of the melon to the round and oblong species known to the Romans; and Godoy, the Prince of Peace, devoted himself in Spain to the improvement of this favourite fruit. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the fine kind called the Cantalupe, reached us from that country; the name being derived from the village of Cantalupi near Rome, famous for the cultivation of its melons. In Spain and France, the melon is eaten with roast meat, at dinner; in England and Russia, it is eaten with sugar at dessert. By many people the crudeness is qualified with pepper and ginger; but the Bavarian mother of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, provoked much criticism in Paris by powdering her slice of melon with Spanish snuff, according to the custom in some parts of Germany.

A strange object of luxury in the same country consists in snails. A large white species of snail, much cultivated at Ulm, is sent to various parts of Germany. One of the popular errors concerning these snails, is the opinion that when decapitated the body will produce a new head. Spallanzani and Voltaire tried the experiment on innumerable snails, and attest that a head was really reproduced. It is well known that the body of a fly will exist some time after being deprived of its head; and that, on crushing the shell of a snail, the creature is able to repair, by degrees, its shattered dwelling. But in spite of the authority of Spallanzani and Voltaire, we have no faith in the power of reproduction of a second head. Valmont de Bomare, after decapitating fifteen hundred, decided that the opinion was erroneous; and, unwilling to suppose that two such great authorities had imposed on public credulity, concludes that in their reluctance to the task, they merely cut off the nose and ears of the sensitive snails without effecting a positive decapitation. A fact untrue of the snail, however, has been proved as regards several varieties of polypi, which are able to reproduce themselves from fragments of a dismembered polypus. There is one species of polypus susceptible of being completely turned inside out, like a glove, without injury to the vital power!

Turenne, who wrote a Treatise on the nature of snails, may be called the Attila of the species, since he admits having decapitated thousands and thousands. He even affects compunction on the subject, after the example of the Greek physician, Herophilus, who dissected seven hundred bodies in illustration of his anatomical lectures in the theatre of Alexandria. Turenne asserts that, if Valmont de Bomare and Adanson found no renovation of head in the snails they decapitated, it was because they failed to supply their victims with the food which snails are organized to imbibe through the pores of their bodies by crawling over vegetable matter, even when deprived of their heads. He declares that a period of two years is indispensable for the reproduction of a head.

The discoveries of modern navigators have unquestionably added to our menageries a vast variety of animals unknown to the ancients, or known only by hearsay, and esteemed apocryphal. But, on the other hand, various animals with which the ancients pretended to be familiar have wholly disappeared; such as sphinxes and griffins, the phœnix, the salamander, the unicorn, besides many-headed serpents and dragons, which we now abandon to the emblazonment of heraldry.

The most famous dragons of antiquity were those which drew through the air the car of Medea. The philosophic Possidonius—who made war so valiantly against the gout, which he maintains to be no evil—speaks of a dragon which covered an acre of ground; and could swallow a knight on horseback with as much ease as the whale did Jonas. This was, however, an insignificant reptile compared with the one discovered in India by St. Maximus, Archbishop of Tyre, which covered five acres of ground.

Both in sacred and profane history, dragons have honourable mention. Cadmus is related to have destroyed a dragon; the garden of the Hesperides was guarded by a dragon; St. George triumphed over a dragon; and the Dragon of Wantley has become proverbial in English song. St. Augustin, Bishop of Hippona, speaks with authority of the existence of dragons; describing them as winged serpents which conceal themselves in caverns during the day-time, though they occasionally venture forth and rise into the air. From this it was inferred, by early naturalists, that the dragon of the ancients was one of the larger serpent tribes, having a cartilaginous substance similar to the wings of the bat, or flying-fish, attached to its body.

Suetonius declares that the Emperor Tiberius possessed a pet dragon, which was completely tame and used to eat out of his hand; probably an iguano, the sort of lizard which forms a luxurious object of food in the West Indies; and which, though perfectly harmless, has a frightful appearance. Crinitus records that, in the time of the Emperor Maurice, there was an inundation of the Tiber, which left behind it, on the land, an enormous dragon. The same writer mentions that the Emperor Augustus kept a prodigious dragon in his palace, which he used to lead about with a string. A constellation serves to attest the existence of the dragon of Lernia.

The tame dragon of the imperial palace was probably a tame boa-constrictor similar to the one formerly kept in the library of the late Sir Joseph Banks.

Various are the records in ancient authors of prodigious serpents. Pliny declares that, in Africa, the army of Regulus was kept in check by an enormous serpent; a statement confirmed by Aulus Gellius and other historians, and admitted by Rollin and Bossuet in their Histoire universelle, and Histoire ancienne. Follard refutes it in his Commentary on Polybius; conceiving the fact of a serpent of one hundred and twenty feet keeping at bay a large army and its engines of war to be an insult to the prowess of the Roman warriors. The following is the opinion the celebrated Lacépède on this subject.

“Travellers who have penetrated into the interior of Africa,” says he, “give an account of prodigious serpents, who advance among the bushes and towering reeds of some vast jungle, like a huge beam suddenly endowed with motion. Herds of gazelles and other timid animals take flight on their approach; nor can iron penetrate the skin of the monster, which is, indeed, appalling when extended to its utmost length, and ravenous after food. The only chance of its extermination is by setting fire to the nearest bushes of the jungle; and thus raising, as it were, a rampart of fire between you and the gigantic reptile.

“Such, probably, was the serpent which arrested the progress of the Roman army on the coast of Africa. To compute its length at one hundred and twenty feet, after Pliny, would probably be an exaggeration; but the Roman naturalist adds that its skin remained some time suspended, as a trophy, in a temple in Rome. Unless we deny all authenticity to history, therefore, we are bound to believe in the existence of a prodigious serpent, which when irritated by hunger, was known to attack the Roman soldiers; and against which, in the sequel, they had successful recourse to their engines of war.”

In the same manner, a distorted account may hereafter reach posterity of the death of Chuny, the famous elephant, which so long inhabited a menagerie in London; until becoming rabid from the effect of high feeding and long confinement, a party of military was called in to despatch the infuriated animal by a discharge of musketry, which was with some difficulty effected.

To attest the authenticity of the serpent of the time of Regulus, Pliny expressly adds that the tradition is the more credible, because, in former times, the serpents called boas, frequently found in Italy, were of such prodigious size that, during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, so large a one was found on the Vatican hill, that after its destruction, a child was exhibited entire in its stomach. For many centuries, no boas have been found in Italy; though naturalists accord in asserting them to have existed there in the olden time; just as the kingdom of England, now wholly free from the larger beasts of prey, was formerly overrun with wolves.

St. Isidore of Seville discredits the existence of the Lernian hydra; inferring from its name that hydra only implied some torrent or lake which Hercules effectually confined within banks; thus giving rise to the tradition of his having crushed it with his club. The traditionary monster, called a gargouille, said to have lived near Rouen, and to have swallowed a prodigious number of victims, is now admitted to have been simply a whirlpool in the Seine, destroyed by an alteration in the banks effected by St. Romain, when Bishop of that See. The anniversary of this event, regarded as the deliverance of the city from a monster, was celebrated at Rouen till the period of the first Revolution; a prisoner being annually delivered by the city on the Festival of St. Romain in honour of the miracle. The gargouille or whirlpool, of Rouen, was but a modern edition of the hydra.

CHAPTER VII.

THE JEWS.

We have already alluded incidentally to the Jews. But the children of Israel have been too long and too perseveringly an object of persecution to all Christian nations, not to demand a more extended consideration.

Mankind, in the present age, though scarcely less disposed than of old to exercise the tyrannical influence of the strong over the weak, appear to have substituted political for religious animosities; and the war of sects has been converted into the feuds of parties. The days of the fagot and the pile are happily at an end; and instead of martyrs, sacrificed in the name of religion, the victim is forced to exclaim on the scaffold: “Oh, liberty! in thy name, how many crimes are committed!” The number of human victims sacrificed to religious intolerance in the various countries of the world, would, however, afford grounds for a fearful computation.

The very existence of the Jews may be regarded as among the miracles of the Christian religion. A wandering nation, without King, without country, without secular laws, maintained together only by the strength of a common worship, could never have resisted the persecutions and proscriptions of centuries, but for the intervention of the chastening hand of God. Even in the countries where their existence is the happiest, stigmatized by public detestation, and in highly Catholic nations treated as lepers, as parias, as infected sheep—condemned to the hardest, and most ignominious tasks—beaten, spat upon, despoiled, plundered, tortured, massacred—a prey to the cupidity of the great, and the brutality of the little—such is the history of the Jews from the days of Titus to the present time. Nevertheless, they not only subsist, but flourish, in spite of the universal prejudice against the name; maintaining unchanged, their laws, customs, usages, and even physiognomy. The abhorrence with which they are regarded by other nations, has necessitated intermarriages from generation to generation, which serve to maintain the pure identity of the race.

The Romans not only detested the Jews for the same motive which produced their hatred of the Christians, namely—the impossibility of converting them to the worship of the false Gods of Paganism, but confounded Jews and Christians together in a common persecution. Yet this equality before the tribunals and executioners of the Emperors and Pro-Consuls of Rome, never availed to diminish the mutual hatred subsisting between them. No amalgamation was possible between them, even amid the flames of a funeral pile. Nero, on one occasion, attempted to illuminate Rome by means of Jews steeped in resinous matter, and thus committed to the flames.

No sooner had the Christians obtained supreme power, than they began, in their turn, to inflict upon the remnant of Israel all the persecutions they had themselves sustained at the hands of the Romans. The Jews were compelled to wear a cap surmounted by horns, to show that they were pre-destined to eternal punishment; and in a Council held at the Lateran, at the commencement of the thirteenth century, they were forced to adopt for robes, stuff of a yellow colour, bearing the representation of a wheel or rack. During Passion Week, and at Easter, it was lawful to attack them with any degree of ferocity. In many cities, it was the custom to inflict corporeal punishment on a Jew publicly, every Good Friday, before the great door of the Cathedral; in some, a positive crucifixion took place!

Eight times have the Jews been driven out of France. Dagobert enjoined them to embrace Christianity, on pain of banishment; Robert the Pious issued the same edict; Philip Augustus, after crucifying several at Bray sur Seine, caused all their synagogues to be burned, seized their possessions, released their creditors, appropriated to himself a fifth of their substance, and the remainder to landholders of adjoining estates. Philippe le Bel dismissed them the kingdom, leaving them only the funds indispensable for the journey. Nevertheless they returned, to be again exiled by Charles VI. Under Louis XIII, was issued a new edict of banishment. It was only under Louis XVI, one of the most humane of Kings, that the Jews were restored to rights of citizenship in France. Nor was their condition better, at the same epochs, in Great Britain and other adjacent countries.

A singular chance directed the attention of Napoleon to the condition of the Jews. A representation of Racine’s “Esther” was given one night at the Opera for a benefit; and the following morning, Talma happening to breakfast with the Emperor, the conversation turned on the performance of the night before. As they were discussing the character of Mardochée, Champagny, afterwards Duc de Cadore, made his appearance, who was at that time Minister of the Interior. Napoleon instantly began interrogating him concerning the position and resources of the Jews in France; and desired that a report might be drawn up on the subject, and speedily submitted to him.

Champagny lost no time in obeying; and the results of this accidental circumstance was the removal of the civil disabilities of the Jews.

The prejudice, however, attached for so many years to the remnant of Israel, is far from extirpated; and though in more than one country of Europe, the honours of chivalry have been bestowed upon wealthy Jews, influential in the financial operations of the kingdom, and consequently in its politics, the popular feeling against them is unchanged. It is even carried to a most unreasonable degree; and the Jews are reproached with the very pursuits and professions forced upon their adoption by Christian persecution. Commercial speculations were of course the sole resource of a people without country, and without protection; and though we are indebted to them for the useful financial substitute of bills of exchange, we use the name of Jew almost synonymously with that of extortioner, without regard to their commercial importance and utility.

The emancipation accorded them in France, was given chiefly for considerations developed ten years before by Monsieur de Clermont Tonnerre, and other celebrated orators before the National Assembly.

“The Code of Moses,” argued they, “is conceived in a twofold spirit—a religious, and a legislative. The political laws which it contains, have ceased to be important—being only applicable to a nation nationally combined and organized; whereas the Jews are a scattered and wandering tribe, rather than a nation. The religious laws are a case of conscience; serving to enlighten the spirit, and guide the social morality of the children of Israel. From the period of the destruction of the Temple, the Jews have politically ceased to exist; and these religious laws may be said to operate in France, upon Frenchmen of the Jewish persuasion; in Poland, upon Poles of the Jewish persuasion; in Germany, upon Germans of the Jewish persuasion, and so forth.”

Upon this showing, civil rights were conceded to them in France, on condition of their contributing their quota to the maintenance of the laws and Government of the country in which they were naturalized.

Till this epoch, a prejudice had prevailed in France that it was an article of faith and duty among the Jews, to deceive and defraud a Christian whenever it lay in their power; and that they were bound, from the moment of their birth, by the Jewish law, to a strong animosity towards us Christian people. Horrible rumours have been revived, at different times, in different countries, of secret sacrifices of the Jews, in which the blood of a Christian was a necessary component.

These questions were openly met and discussed in a manly and temperate manner, in the great Sanhedrim, composed of the highest and most enlightened Jewish authorities; when a peremptory denial was established to all these injurious charges. Prejudices nearly as absurd, and quite as groundless formerly existed in England against the Catholics; the removal of their civil disabilities being equally the result of the progress of public enlightenment.

As regards the question of usury so often imputed to the Jews, experience has proved of late years, that the most notorious extortioners of this description are of the Christian faith; and it is a question of ethics to inquire whether there be greater turpitude in openly demanding an interest of thirty per cent for a loan of money, or in obtaining the same profit by sale or barter of commodities. A considerable number of tradesmen who pride themselves upon their strict integrity, require a much higher ratio of profit than the per centage of the money-lending Jews; nor is it necessary to remind the reader that some of the most eminent bankers in Europe, renowned equally for their probity and liberality, are of the Jewish persuasion.

CHAPTER VIII.

VERBAL DELICACY.

There are certain words which appear to offend public delicacy more than the very objects they designate; till it might almost be inferred that all the sensitiveness of human nature had concentrated itself in the ear. The study of ancient and modern languages will attest the truth of this assertion; for many things are to be learned in a vocabulary besides the idiom it pretends to teach.

The stern Romans, for instance, who affected so stoical a disregard of death, would not allow the word to be pronounced in their presence; though the lives of their children was by the law placed at their mercy. Their sense of delicacy would have been offended had it been mentioned before them that such a one was “dead.” It was necessary to say, “he hath lived.” In the noble defence of Milo, by Cicero, he dared not qualify by the appropriate word the act of assassination committed by the slaves of his client; but declared by periphrasis that under these circumstances, “the slaves of Milo did what it became them to do.”

To the title of King, the Romans had vowed an eternal hatred, created by the traditionary opprobrium of the Tarquins, and their contempt of the innumerable Kings subjected to their arms, and dragged behind their triumphal cars. But when Cæsar proclaimed himself Emperor, and assumed a more sovereign power than the history of nations had as yet recorded, the Roman people applauded the kingly office presented to them under any other than the name abhorred. The same circumstance occurred in France at the commencement of the present century. The French, after devoting themselves to the extermination of Kings, hailed with delight the coronation of an Emperor; though to proclaim himself “King” would have ensured the premature downfall of Napoleon.

Of late years, the ears of the world have become more than ever chaste and refined; and certain words freely used by Shakspeare, in presence of the Court of the Virgin Queen, and by Molière, in presence of that of the most dignified of European monarchs, are now utterly proscribed, and expunged from the modern stage. The fluctuations of opinion on these points, are highly diverting. Dean Swift relates that, in his early days, the word “whiskers” could not be mentioned in a lady’s presence; a fact we should be inclined to class among the ingenious fictions of the Dean of St. Patrick; but that at the present day, that rational nation, the Americans, have not courage to pronounce the word leg, even in talking of the limb of a table or of a partridge. The false delicacy of the English takes refuge in a foreign language. All such articles of dress or furniture as are held of a nature unmentionable to ears polite, are named in French; as if the word chemise were a less explicit designation of an indispensable under garment than the matter of fact word shift! All this is contemptible hyprocrisy, and a silly compromise with common sense. Such an abbreviation as crim. con. conveys fully as indelicate an allusion as the same words written and pronounced in full.

The author of the School for Scandal objected to so great a variety of words as coarse and indelicate from female lips, that there sometimes existed a difficulty in narrating to him the ordinary events of life.

On the other hand, it is surprising how much may be effected by a change of name with those whose ears are more impressionable than their understanding. The French had signified pretty loudly at the revolution their national opposition to a conscription, and to the droits réunis. Against these exercises of administrative tyranny, they were prepared to break into rebellion. Instead, however, of arguing with their pertinacity, the Government wisely applauded it; substituting for a conscription, the recruiting system, and for the droits réunis the contributions indirectes. We should be glad if any one would point out to us what was changed in these two important departments of public service, besides the name? This paltering, in a double sense, reminds us of the story of a Frenchman, who was examining a library with persons more enlightened than himself. “Ah! there are the works of my friend, Cicero,” cried he. “Cicéron, c’est le même que Marc-Tulle.”

CHAPTER IX.

AEROLITES AND MIRACULOUS SHOWERS.

The fall of aërolites, often termed by the vulgar a shower of stones, is either more frequent than in days of yore, or attracts more general attention.

The record of similar phenomena has, however, been handed down to us by the ancients; for we are told of a shower of stones which, in the days of Tullus Hostilius, fell upon the city immediately after the ruin of Alba.

“While the Senate was occupied in its deliberations,” says Livy, “a shower of stones fell from Heaven upon the Alban Mount. The Prince, astonished at the report of such a phenomenon, sent to ascertain the truth, and found that a shower of pebbles had really fallen, similar to hailstones.”

Before the time of the Romans, the Greeks had witnessed similar phenomena. In the Thracian Chersonesus there fell a huge greyish stone, which excited the greatest consternation.

A stone existed in Rome known as the stone of the Mother of the Gods, which had originally fallen from the sky, like that of the Thracian Chersonesus. It fell at Pessinuntum, in Phrygia, where the priests held it in great veneration. The oracle at Rome having given out that the fortunes of the Republic were secure if it could possess itself of this inestimable treasure, the Senate sent an embassy into Phrygia by Scipio Nasica, who enlarged upon the ties existing between the Phrygians and Romans through Æneas; and skilfully setting forth the power of Rome and the protection she was able to concede to the Pessinuntians, the priests gave up the sacred stone. It was immediately carried in procession to Rome, exposed to public view, and an annual festival instituted in its honour.

A similar stone, which stood near the Temple of Delphos, was equally venerated, and endowed with a still more marvellous origin; being supposed to issue from the belly of Saturn, the God of the stone eaters. Tradition recorded that Saturn, having swallowed it, and found it difficult of digestion, threw it up again, when it fell in Greece. Upon this point, Pausanias and Nonnus concur with the tradition.

In the sixteenth century, a descent of stones took place on Mount Lebanon, accompanied by a luminous globe. Various other instances might be cited from the ancients; but these may suffice to establish proof of identity between the modern and ancient phenomena. In most instances, they have been supposed to be of divine origin and of ominous nature. Damascius mentions that a physician of his day, named Eusebius, carried one about his person, which conduced greatly to the relief of his patients.

In the sixteenth century, it is stated that there fell near the Adda, in Italy, nearly twelve hundred stones, one of which weighed one hundred, and another sixty pounds. True is it that Cardan makes the assertion, which is therefore doubtful. But Gassendi, who is deserving of credit, states that on the 27th of November, 1627, with a clear atmosphere, at ten A.M., he saw a luminous stone, about four feet in diameter, descend from Heaven upon Mount Vaisian. It was enveloped in a luminous circle of various colours, and passed at a hundred paces from two men, who estimated its elevation at thirty-six feet. It gave out a hissing noise like a rocket, accompanied with a smell of sulphur, and fell two hundred feet from the spectators, plunging itself three feet into the soil. It was of a metallic hue, and weighed fifty-four pounds; and is still to be seen at Aix, in Provence. The largest ever known, fell at Ensisheim, in Alsace, in 1492; its weight being near three hundred pounds. In the Abbé Richard’s Natural History of the Air, there is a description of a fall of stones which took place in 1768, in Maine; from which we extract the following passage:

“During a hurricane that took place near the Château of Lucé, in the Province of Maine, a clap of thunder was heard, followed by a noise similar to the roar of a wild beast; which was audible for many leagues round. Some persons in the parish of Périgné thought they perceived a dense body fall with great velocity into a meadow near the high road to Mans; and on hurrying to the spot, found the stone imbedded in the ground. At first, it was hot; but soon cooling, they were enabled to examine it at leisure. It weighed seven pounds and a half, and was in form triangular; or rather it had three protuberances, of which the one plunged in the earth was grey, and the two others black. A fragment being submitted to the examination of the Royal Academy of Sciences, for analysis, they pronounced it neither to originate in thunder, nor to have fallen from the skies, nor to be composed of mineral particles fused by the action of the electric fluid; but a species of pyrites, giving out a smell of sulphur during its solution. One hundred grains of this substance yielded, upon analysis, eight grains and a half of sulphur, thirty-six of iron, and fifty-five and a half of vitrifiable earth.” The evidence of science, however, seldom reaches the ear of the vulgar; and it would be difficult to persuade the populace that aërolites do not fall from the sky.

Aristotle, in mentioning the stone that fell in Thrace, rejects the idea of its coming from the heavens; and Pliny confesses that most naturalists are of the same opinion. This was a step towards the extinction of a popular error. Fréret denies the existence of atmospheric stones, and declares them to be volcanic emissions driven by the force of the winds. He supposes Mount Albano to have been formerly a volcano; and that the stones that fell must have issued from a re-opening of the crater. Falconet, the sculptor, wrote a volume to prove that Pliny was in error concerning atmospheric stones. While the learned world was thus at variance, the multitude was justified in asserting them to fall from the moon, since men of science were unable to prove the contrary.

On the 26th of April, 1803, there fell a vast number of atmospheric stones at Aigle, in the department of Orne. The peasants of the place, thinking it was the end of the world, fell on their knees invoking divine mercy; and even their betters shared their alarm. This phenomenon happened most opportunely, as the world of science, both in Paris and London, was just then discussing similar occurrences which had taken place in India and Provence; and after most diligent inquiry, the Institute resolved to despatch one of its members to the spot. Monsieur Biot, an enthusiast in the cause of science, arrived on the spot on the 16th of July, and collected the following facts.

“About one o’clock, P.M., the sky being calm, with only a few greyish clouds above the horizon, which did not diminish the fineness of the weather, a luminous globe was seen, from Caen, from Pont Audemer, from the vicinity of Alençon, Falaise, and Verneuil, rushing with great velocity through the atmosphere; and immediately afterwards, a violent explosion was heard at Aigle and thirty leagues round; lasting six minutes, and resembling a discharge of artillery followed by that of musketry, and terminating as with a roll of drums.

“A small cloud of rectangular form seemed to have been the origin of all this terrible noise; the broader side of which was towards the west. It appeared to be motionless throughout the phenomenon; vapours being emitted after each discharge. The cloud was very high in the air. The inhabitants of two villages, situated a league asunder, perceived it as if exactly suspended above their heads. A hissing noise, similar to a stone hurled from a sling, was heard wherever it hovered; and at the same time, numerous solid bodies fell, which being collected, proved to be meteoric stones.

“When tested, they were found to contain sulphur, iron in the metallic state, magnesia and nickel; which, in the mineral kingdom have no analogy.”

Monsieur Biot also stated that the direction of the meteor was precisely that of the magnetic meridian; an important remark, as a guide for future observations. The great point gained in this inquiry, is that the highest order of science, agreeing with the earliest professors, adopts what by progressive science was denied.

The fact of showers of stones being established, all that remains to be proved is their origin. Some still assert that they fall from the moon; others attribute them to volcanos. Neither fact can be proved; and the descent of aërolites at present remains a mystery.

One phenomenon often succeeds another; and shortly after the fall of stones at Aigle, a shower of peas took place in Spain, and the kingdom of Leon. This last phenomenon occurred in the month of May of the same year; and, in Spain, fifteen quintals of an unknown seed were collected after a violent storm; being round in form, white in colour, less than peas in size, and resembling no known seed. They seemed, however, to belong to the leguminous family of plants. Cavanilla, the botanist, analized them without being able to determine their class. These productions, at least, could neither be supposed to come from the moon, nor to have a volcanic origin. Some of the seeds were sown in the Botanic Garden of Madrid, but without result. This is, however, by no means a solitary instance of a miraculous shower.

Pliny, Livy, Solinus, and Julius Obsequius have recorded showers of blood, milk, wool, money, and pieces of flesh! Those authors make frequent mention of such occurrences; dupes, no doubt, to the traditions of the ancients. Lamothe Levayer, however, surpasses them all, and mentions the fall of a man from the sky. Unless from a balloon, or the scaffolding of some lofty building, we must be permitted to doubt; though he may, perhaps, allude to some individual carried up by the force of a whirlwind; for in the autumn of 1812, on the road to Genoa, a mule was raised up by the wind, sustained during thirty seconds in the air, then disappeared in a ravine, where it probably perished.

If we deny the existence of showers of blood, we must admit that there have been phenomena such as to justify impostors in propagating such delusions. During the Siege of Genoa, in 1774, there fell a red rain upon the suburb of San Pietro d’Arena, which caused much consternation among the inhabitants; the wind having carried up a quantity of red earth, which proved the cause of general alarm. A similar phenomenon took place, near Hermanstadt, in Transylvania.

“On the 17th of May, 1810,” says a German journal, “there was a rain of blood which lasted a quarter of an hour, accompanied by a violent storm, and gusts of wind towards the south-west. Being collected on the spot by a physician, and submitted to the chemical tests of sulphurated nitrous, muriatic acid, acetate of lead, lime water, mercury, and saponaceous spirit, it exhibited neither precipitation, nor loss of colour. Tested with a solution of alum and fixed alkali, the precipitate induced a belief that the colouring matter of this strange rain pertained to the vegetable kingdom.

To elucidate the mystery of the rain at Hermanstadt, it sufficed to inquire in what point was the wind. For on examining the localities in the southwesterly direction, the hills proved to be clothed with fir, in bloom, and the rain of blood was instantly explained. For in the North of Europe rains of a reddish yellow, impregnated with the bloom of the fir, constantly occur.

In 1608, the walls of Aix in Provence were covered with red spots, which the people conceived to be blood. But Peiresc, a man of profound science, undeceived them by proving them to be the spots left by a species of butterfly on emerging from its crysalis; the number having been immense that year at Aix.

Till balloons and other aërial carriages are used as engines of warfare, we despair of having to record an authentic shower of blood, or any other than common place hail, rain, and snow. There is an instance of a shower of money, or rather of false coinage, mentioned by Dion Cassius; who states that a certain rain turned copper white, assigning to it the hue of silver, which lasted for three days. This is far from miraculous; as it requires only a portion of volatilized mercury to mingle with the rain, as in the instance of the fir bloom, to produce such an effect.

Showers of milk are explained by cretaceous matter carried into the air by whirlwinds. The shreds of human flesh we read of are the red fragments vomited by volcanoes; while showers of wool consist of the down of certain trees, such as willows and osiers. Showers of cinders are of course the result of volcanic eruption. The wind conveys them a prodigious distance; for when Herculaneum and Pompeii were imbedded in lava, the ashes fell at Rome, and even in Africa.

About a century ago, the deck of a vessel sailing from Marseilles to Martinique was covered with ashes some inches deep, which were known to proceed from an earthquake in the Island of St. Vincent. No other cause could be assigned, though the vessel was one hundred leagues from the island. The velocity of a cannon-ball or shell has been calculated; but that of the wind, like the origin of the meteoric stones, remains a problem.

CHAPTER X.

NOSTRUMS AND SPECIFICS.

The title of “Talisman” might be fairly prefixed to this chapter; but we will content ourselves with the word nostrum. Considering the number of these specifics, and the blind confidence of the world in their efficacy, the credulous must be surprised at the ailments which still afflict humanity. Previous to the introduction of quinine, the ague was supposed to be cured by dipping in three holy waters, in three different churches, on the same Sunday; a difficult remedy for people residing where there is only one church! A variety of charms for the ague are still in popular use.

Unsuccessful gamesters used formerly to make a knot in their linen; of late years they have contented themselves with changing their chair as a remedy against ill-luck. As a security against cowardice, it was once only necessary to wear a pin plucked from the winding sheet of a corpse. To insure a prosperous accouchement to your wife, you had but to tie her girdle to a bell and ring it three times. To get rid of warts, you were to fold up in a rag as many peas as you had warts, and throw them upon the high road; when the unlucky person who picked them up became your substitute. In the present day, to cure a tooth-ache, you go to your dentist. In the olden time you would have solicited alms in honour of St. Lawrence, and been relieved without cost or pain.

The greater number of these charms or remedies were not resorted to by the multitude alone, but recommended by Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. In the treaty on superstitions by the learned Curé, Thiers, these remedies are recorded; being about as effective as the talismans of the ancients, including the famed Palladium of Troy.

Rome had faith in celestial bucklers, and the stone of the Mother of the Gods. Virgil was skilled in the composition of talismans; a brazen fly attributed to him attained more celebrity in his time than the immortal “Georgics.” This fly being suspended from one of the gates of Naples, the charm proved so effective, that not a fly entered that city for a space of eight years. A trumpet held by a statue, also invented by Virgil, possessed the power of laying the dust in his garden!

Gregory of Tours mentions that the city of Paris was secured from rats, snakes, and fires, during a long period by means of a rat, a snake, and dormouse of brass, which were destroyed by the Vandals. Pliny suggests that Milo of Crotona was indebted for his prodigious strength to a talisman, as we know that of Samson to have lain in his hair. The Egyptian warriors wore figures of scarabs, in order to fortify their courage; and Dr. Hufeland informs us that a German army having been defeated by the French in the olden time, talismans were found upon the bodies of the dead and wounded.

Among the first talismans was that mentioned by Suidas as worn by the Kings of Egypt to endow them with the love of justice. Pericles was proud of wearing a talisman presented to him by the Grecian ladies. Macrobus relates that the victors in the public games used to procure themselves little boxes, in which mathematicians had inclosed preservatives against envy; while Thiers informs us that an illustrious astrologer invented a talisman for intercepting the approach of flies to a house; when to his horror, no sooner was it suspended, than a fly, more daring than the rest, deposed a contemptuous mark of disregard upon the charm. The absurdity of these inventions, it is needless to assert; but let us consider the subject of the ancient talismans simply as subjects only of curiosity.

Talismans were cast in metal melted under the influence of a constellation communicating some specific virtue. Amulets, talismans of a secondary order, but equally efficacious, were formed of plants, figures designed on ivory, metals, or precious stones. Such designs were called “gamahez”—whence the word “cameo;”—and were preservatives against fever, rheumatism, gout, tooth-ache, paralysis, apoplexy, cold, and other diseases. The Platonists were great champions of amulets and talismans. Gaffard wrote a treatise in assertion of their efficacy, and to defend them against the imputation of magic. Not many years ago, the ladies of Paris used to wear iron rings, manufactured by the celebrated locksmith, Georget, which, like the galvanic rings now in fashion, were considered a guarantee against the headache. A few uneradicated roots of popular prejudice will always remain to produce a new crop.

How were simple mortals to suppose themselves in error when following such examples as Cato, Varro, and Julius Cæsar? The two first conceived that no evil could overtake them so long as they made use of certain mysterious words; and Cæsar, after falling out of his chariot, would not resume his place till he had recited certain words to which he attributed the virtue of warding off falls.

Father Thiers relates that, in his time, the Benedictines of Germany and France pretended to possess medals which protected them and their cattle from accidents, sorcery, and witchcraft. According to his version, about the year 1647, there was a vigorous crusade against sorcery, and many magicians were executed. At Straubing, several declared, when legally examined, that their maledictions were of no effect upon either the cattle or inhabitants of the Castle of Nattemberg, in which were deposited certain medals of St. Benedict, of which they gave the precise description. A certain number of initials were inscribed upon them, which being filled up with Latin words, signified “Divine cross, guide my steps, banish Satan, cease to tempt me, I know thy poisons, and will eschew them.” No sooner did the monks hear of this discovery than they began casting medals of a peculiar kind, which soon abounded in Germany.

The French Benedictines became equally zealous; and having struck a similar medal, published that it contained a charm against witchcraft and disease, and was a guarantee against all ailings of man or beast; the former requiring only to carry them in their pockets, the latter suspended bell-fashion from their necks.

Father Thiers so far from accrediting the efficacy of these medals, declares that the French Benedictines ought to be too enlightened to encourage such absurdities. But whether in good or bad faith, certain it is that they made a speculation of trading with the medals. Thiers also treats as impostors the curers of burns, and preventers of fire, who pretend to disregard the danger of fire arms. According to a popular tradition, a burn was cured by saying: “Fire lose thy heat, as Judas did his colour when he betrayed the Lord.” A chimney on fire was extinguished by making three crosses upon the chimney-piece. Any fire was quickly subdued by throwing an egg into the flames, which had been laid on the Thursday, or Friday of Holy Week, during the celebration of divine service. No fire arms availed against a person repeating thrice, “Malatus dives fulgiter regissa,” or wearing a band with a mystical inscription, every letter being separated by a cross. The learned father declares such practices to be absurd, and relates the following anecdote.

“An old woman of Louvain, who had an affection of the eyes was assured she had only to pronounce a few mysterious words to be cured. She instantly addressed a young scholar of the University, offering to present him with a new coat if he would write the words she dictated to him. The youth consented, and seemed to write as she dictated. But on delivering to her the sealed document, he enjoined her not to open it till she was cured, on which she presented him the new coat and withdrew. Shortly afterwards, her eyes being recovered, she confided her secret to a neighbour suffering from the same affliction; who taking the mysterious paper into her care, received the same benefit. Enchanted by their good fortune, they determined to know the secret, and broke the seal of the document; which was found to contain the following phrase, which the youth had maliciously inserted. ‘May the devil tear out thine eyes, old witch, and fill up the sockets with burning embers.’”

In the beginning of the last century, there were individuals who professed to have a powder which extinguished fire. This was contained in a barrel, and thrown into the flames. The barrel was in fact double, the external one being full of water, the internal charged with gunpowder sufficient to cause an explosion; and the water so dispersed, of course, extinguished the fire, if inconsiderable. Had the authors of this invention not kept it secret, we might have respected them; for though it produced no great result, an idea though only half conceived may be the forerunner of more important discoveries. Attempts have been made of late years to guarantee thatched roofs against fire, by impregnating them with a preparation of which we know not the composition. The success, though not complete, should not be discouraged; for repeated experiments may be finally successful. Flowers of sulphur are often employed for the extinction of fires in chimnies, possessing properties which render the action of fire less intense.

However absurd the miraculous virtues attributed to talismans and amulets, in some cases, the security they inspire may be of use to those who have faith in their power. Imagination counts for something in the moral organisation of man; and through the constant action and reaction of the one on the other, the body may be at times advantageously soothed by the serenity conferred on the mind through the influence of the fancy.

CHAPTER XI.

PHYSIOGNOMISTS.

The world and its inhabitants are still exposed to a variety of grievous afflictions and visitations in spite of the infallible nostrums for preventing them, in general use; which appears surprising when we consider the number of able scientific men constantly devoted to the study of our physical nature, and the plausible novel theories which they every now and then unfold to the world. Let those who devote themselves to the study of physiological science persevere in their researches; which if not valuable to others are at least amusing to themselves. According to the Abbé Cottin’s line,

“The pleasure is to learn and not to know.”

Between the successive systems of Lavater and Gall, we give the decided preference to the latter; the studies and experiments upon which are founded on principles equally applicable to all human beings, whatever their condition, sex, age, or habits; whether belonging to an uncultivated or civilised state; while all other systems for promoting the knowledge of human character, gravitate in a sphere more or less exceptional; so that the application could never become general. An eminent magistrate used to pretend that he could capitally convict a man by a sight of his handwriting; and many people affect to pronounce upon the shades and variations of human character on a similar indication.

Considering the number of persons ignorant of the calligraphic art, we almost prefer the system of the barber of Picard, who needed only to shave a man to judge of his disposition!

All the inferential systems that now command our attention were subjects of contemplation to the ancients. Human physiognomy, above all, must have ever presented a subject of powerful interest. It is a daily object of reflection to all men, though unperceived by ourselves. A countenance pleases or displeases us at first sight; yet we know not whether it be beauty that charms, or the want of it that repels us. A face which charms one man, disgusts another. Such a person is said to have a happy countenance, such another, an unhappy one, on which the former may be felicitated, the latter pitied; but it is most unfair to deduce from such evidence the existence of good qualities in the one, or vices and defects in the other. Such, however, is the elementary study of Physiognomy, and such the delusion which our antipathies often create.

Dimension and proportion first attracted the attention of the philosophers. Aristotle compares a man whose head possesses extraordinary volume to an owl; while Albertus Magnus looks upon him as an idiot; and the physician, Porta, significantly informs us that Vitellius had an immense head. If, on the contrary, a man possess a cerebrum of the usual circumference, but exceeding by a little the volume of ordinary heads, the same authors regard him as a man of superior intelligence, endowed with a noble soul, a brilliant and fertile imagination; and, as an example, adduce the head of Plato which exceeded in proportion the remainder of his body. Alexander the Great had a small head, compared even with his person, which as is well known was diminutive.

The quality and colour of the hair was likewise a subject of speculative theory for the ancients. Lank hair was considered indicative of pusillanimity and cowardice; yet the head of Napoleon was guiltless of a curl! Frizzly hair was thought an indication of coarseness and clumsiness. The hair most in esteem, was that terminating in ringlets. Dares, the historian, states that Achilles and Ajax Telamon had curling locks; such also was the hair of Cymon, the Athenian. As to the Emperor Augustus, nature had favoured him with such redundant looks, that no hair-dresser in Rome could produce the like. Auburn or light brown hair was thought the most distinguished, as portending intelligence, industry, a peaceful disposition, as well as great susceptibility to the tender passion. Castor and Pollux had brown hair; so also had Menelaus. Black hair does not appear to have been esteemed by the Romans; but red was an object of aversion. Ages before the time of Judas, red hair was thought a mark of reprobation, both in the case of Typhon, who deprived his brother of the sceptre of Egypt, and Nebuchednezzar who acquired it in expiation of his atrocities. Even the donkey tribe suffered from this ill-omened visitation, according to the proverb of “wicked as a red ass.” Asses of that colour were held in such detestation among the Copths, that every year they sacrificed one by hurling it from a high wall.

Next in importance to the hair, were the ears; the size and shape of which harmless cartilages, supplied important conjectures. According to Aristotle, large ears are indicative of imbecility; while small ones announce madness. Ears which are flat, point out the rustic and brutal man. Those of the fairest promise, are firm and of middling size. Happy the man who boasts of square ears; a sure indication of sublimity of soul and purity of life. Such, according to Suetonius, were the ears of the Emperor Augustus.

Having considered the conformation of the head, the colour and quality of the hair, and the shape of the ears, let us treat of the complexion; of which the most unfavourable is the yellow, livid, or leaden, like those of Caligula, Attila, and the most notorious tyrants of the olden time. The eyes should neither be too large nor too little; the first announcing laziness, like those of the ox. Such were the eyes of Domitian, the vainest, most inert, and cowardly of men. Upon this point, Aristotle is at complete variance with Homer; who is so enraptured with large eyes, that, in order to define the beauty of those of Juno, he names her Boopis or “ox-eyed.” Neither large nor small eyes afford proof of intellect; and no person who is not afflicted with squinting has any right to complain.

It is usual to consider large eyes the finest, a prejudice so universal, that it is commonly said, “She is ugly, certainly; but then she has such fine eyes!”—or, “She is a pretty woman; but her eyes are too small.” Whereas neither form nor dimension constitutes the beauty or influence of eyes; but rather their expression. The colour of eyes is a mere matter of taste; though Aristotle asserts that persons gifted with almond shaped blue eyes, are frank and intelligent; with brown, clever and good; with green, courageous and enterprising. As to black eyes, Aristotle pronounces them to be the sure prognostics of timidity and pusillanimity. Red eyes are indicative of bad temper. The gossips of France have quite as good a theory as that of Aristotle; viz: that “Les yeux bleus vont aux cieux; les yeux gris, en Paradis; les yeux noirs, en purgatoire, les yeux verts, en enfer!”

Bushy eyebrows are indicative of a brutal obstinate and impious character; long eyebrows, of arrogance, and insolence; spare eyebrows, of effeminacy and cowardice. But if they are thick, flexible, and parallel, you may rely on a sound judgment and superior wisdom. Such are ever the brows of Jupiter; attesting the theory of Aristotle.

The question of noses occupies a prominent place in theories of the human physiognomy. The flat nose is indicative of a propensity to pleasure and luxury; the pointed, of ill-temper and frivolity; a deviation from the straight line, of a disposition to malice and repartee. Since the days of Aristotle, this opinion has been permanent; a crooked nose, being the attribute of a satirical mind. The owner of a diminutive nose, is usually cunning and dissimulating; of a large nose, imprudent and discourteous.

Let us here observe, that if there be one feature in the human face more characteristic than another, it is the nose. Examine the head of a skeleton which exhibits trace of human features, save the nasal bone; which though prominent, is an integral part of the cerebral globe. Now if the brain be the seat of intelligence, may not the nose be influenced by its propinquity to the brain? Humbly submitting this question to the consideration of science, we proceed to consider the theories of other speculators.

Amongst Europeans, the Italians rank first for beauty of nose; the Dutch, for the excessive ugliness of that feature. The English nose is apt to be thick and cartilaginous; that of the Jews, somewhat crooked. In France, almost every man of genius has had a well-formed nose. Short and flat noses, so censured by Aristotle, still rank low in the science of physiognomy. Socrates, however, was a singular instance of a hideous nose. Boerhaave and Gibbon possessed one of the same disagreeable form.

The mouth attracted the notice of the ancients as much as the nose. A moderate mouth was, in their estimation, a symbol of courage, capacity, and nobleness of heart. The indication indeed was infallible when accompanied with a square and well-formed chin, an expansive forehead, and firm and rosy cheeks. The Greeks did not confine their observations to the head and face in forming a judgment of the moral and intellectual faculties; but regarded every component part of the human frame. Since, however, we are more discreetly clothed than the Greeks, we decline following their researches. The eyelids, nails, moles, and even teeth, were taken into consideration: more especially the latter, as indicative of the workings of the mind. If authentic, the science of physiognomy would be universally studied, for how useful would it be to detect the good or evil qualities of man or woman by a glance at their faces! As it stands at present, however, many false inferences would be made. For instance, we are told that well shaped blue eyes, portend intelligence and frankness; qualities incompatible with a sound nose. But if found together, as is often the case, what is to be decided between two positive contradictions, the nose rendering impossible the virtues promised by the eyes? The indications of the mouth and eyebrows may be equally at variance; and physiognomy presents a tissue of similar contradictions.

Having established the fallacy of the physiognomical system, we must nevertheless render homage to the sagacity of Lavater, to his ingenious and fascinating system, and conscientious enthusiasm for an art which he has enriched with much valuable observations, and endeavoured to elevate into a science. Lavater was sincerely devoted to his art, which predominated over every other idea, and exalted his imagination to such a degree, that he became rather the poet than the disciple of physiognomy. Gifted with a highly impressionable nature, the countenances of certain persons used to haunt his memory; and in early life, he made such striking inferences from certain physiognomies, that he was induced to persist in his studies.

“My first attempts,” said he, “were pitiful. Required to furnish a discourse to the Society of Sciences at Zurich, I decided upon the theme of physiognomy, and composed it with heedlessness and precipitation.

“I was censured, praised, and laughed at; and could not refrain from smiling, well aware how much of this was undeserved. At this moment, my physiognomical convictions are so strong that I decide upon certain faces with as absolute a certainty as of my existence.”

The sincerity of Lavater is undeniable. But even had we his convictions, we should hesitate to decide in favour of the infallibility or applicability of his system; which is more the result of a peculiar personal sagacity, constantly on the watch, than the efficacy of the art. A man may be born a physiognomist. But to become one by mere force of study, is next to impossible.

Zopirus was doubtless a great physiognomist. One day, on entering the school of Socrates, he pronounced, at a glance, a man who was present to be extremely vicious; and his conjecture was correct. But such sweeping applications of the art of physiognomy would sanction calumny, by allowing the accidents of nature to be made a test of character; when the influence of religion, reason, or education might have successfully subdued them. Were such a verdict held good, a fatal impediment would be placed against all moral improvement. Refinement of intellect is often connected with a coarse exterior; and the most prepossessing physiognomy with the grossest violations of decency. “A pretty woman deficient in sense,” says Madame de Staël, “is a flower without fragrance;” and how many scentless flowers of this kind are to be met with in society!—The face of the esteemed La Fontaine was that of an idiot. Jean Jacques Rousseau was remarkable for a stupid serenity of countenance, wholly at variance with the impetuous and volcanic nature of his mind. The face of Fénélon was devoid of all expression. I have heard of two brothers, one possessing a charming countenance, and yet a rascal; the other, a villainous face, yet a perfectly honest man. Moreover, our features are constantly varying; and if our moral and intellectual faculties are to be inferred from these changes, how are we to establish or follow up any fixed principle, amid such a labyrinth of confusion? A system based upon the general development of the brain is far more rational; because the lobes of the brain are born with us, and if time develop them, it is in manifest proportions.

We admit, therefore, the talents of certain individuals for pronouncing upon the characters of men, according to their physiognomy; and that they may, by constant practice, enhance this personal aptitude. Individuals educated for a diplomatic career, ought not to neglect this study, proficiency in which is essential to their success. To divine, yet never be divined; to read the physiognomy of others, while your own is devoid of expression, formed one of the grand secrets of Monsieur de Talleyrand. Most people who converse with a multiplicity of persons become physiognomists; and if mistaken in their judgments, are less often so than those who have intercourse with few. But the civilized man is so different from the being pure from the hands of his Creator, that any system comprising confusedly the state of nature and of civilization must necessarily be fallacious.

Study Lavater, therefore, and practice his art as a recreation among friends; but make no serious conclusions drawn from physiognomical rules, which abound in contradictions.

Let us now proceed to point out the similitudes of feature betwixt certain men and certain animals. Though we were created after the image of God, many theorists establish physiognomical analogies between man and the animal race. These speculators pretend that every human being had his correspondent beast in this world; just as every good Christian has his patron among the elect of Paradise. Charles Lebrun, the favourite painter of Louis XIV, was a zealous adherent to this theory. Before his time, Porta had devoted his attention to this ancient supposition; and congratulated himself upon having detected a likeness between the face of a setter and that of the divine Plato; an idea which prompted further speculation. That a painter continually watching nature under every aspect should be allured by such a theory, in which his practised eye has compared and approximated objects, and detected similitudes unintelligible to the vulgar, cannot be surprising. A mere hint, or trace suffices him for the composition of a face, just as Cuvier recomposed the Mastodon by merely seeing one of the bones.

After profound studies, Charles Lebrun concluded that every human face had features more or less correspondant with those of the various animal species. His opinion rested upon a diagram, uniting a quantity of designs with an explanatory text. The designs still exist, but the text is not forthcoming; though something is known of it by means of one of his pupils who survived him. Lebrun could distinguish by a glance at an animal’s head, whether it were carnivorous, or herbivorous, timid, or bold, peaceful, or ferocious. To the bump on the higher part of the nose, he assigned the locality of courage. To ascertain this endowment, either in man or animals, therefore, you had only to cast an eye on the nose. “All men of eminence,” said he, “have well proportioned noses, of which the aquiline has ever been esteemed the most distinguished; probably from its similitude to the beak of the king of the air—the eagle. The Persians esteemed the aquiline nose so highly, that supreme power was inaccessible without it. Cyrus, Artaxerxes, and every monarch who ever swayed the eastern world, boasted of this mark of distinction.

Like all new theories, the paradoxes of Lebrun commanded much attention, presenting a subject of inexhaustible controversy, as coming within the scope of every one’s observation. According to the system of Lebrun, the Great Condé enjoyed the distinction of possessing the most heroic nose in the kingdom, which, of course, brought the system into credit. Examine the designs of Lebrun. The analogy between certain men and animals there portrayed, is most striking. But the skill of a clever artist contrives and exaggerates resemblances, like the wit of the caricaturist, whose monstrosities, however absurd, often exhibit a remarkable degree of likeness.

As regards mere physical analogy, nothing can be cleverer than the works of Grandville, whose animals seem to emulate our absurdities, habits, and manners. But Lebrun and his disciples looked upon the thing seriously; instituting pernicious deductions from certain accidents of form, and tending to approximate enlightened man to the brute creation. The materialism thus inculcated, would lead to the most serious moral results.

CHAPTER XII.

LAST WORDS OF DYING PERSONS.

Are the last words of the dying to be considered prophetic? Is a supernatural intelligence vouchsafed to the last efforts of expiring nature? Examples are cited in substantiation of this belief; but the subject is one demanding the most serious consideration. Napoleon was of opinion that Hannibal was the greatest warrior of antiquity; founding his opinion upon the fact that the Roman historians, in describing his character, must have rather disparaged than aggrandised the great enemy of Rome. This luminous appreciation acquires to be constantly kept in view. Every historian is more or less biassed with regard to the personages he describes. He relates events after their accomplishment, and occasionally miraculous incidents to enhance the value of his recital.

The words spoken on death-beds may have been accidentally realized; as often occurs to the prophesies of the living. But this does not confer the gift of prophecy upon every death-bed.

Ferdinand IV., King of Castille, having been cited by one of his victims to appear in the presence of God; died on the thirtieth day. But the most remarkable summons of this nature was that made by Jacques Molay, Grand Master of the Templars, to Philip le Bel and Clement V., to appear in the presence of God forty days before the end of the year. At the time specified, Clement was carried to the tomb; but Philip did not follow him until a year later, 1314, the martyrdom of the Templars having taken place in 1312. It is true that Ferdinand IV. condemned to death the Brothers Carvajal, unjustly accused of the murder of a Spanish gentleman; and that their citation to the King in their dying moments was accomplished to a day. But the health of the monarch was, at the time of their condemnation, much impaired by the excesses of the table; so that his approaching end seemed certain. As we observed respecting talismans, some imaginations are worked upon by encouragement, while others are affected in the contrary sense; and it needed no miracle for the menace of the Carvajals to hasten the end of the King of Castille.

Sometimes a careless word or sentence acquires, by accident, a semblance of importance. At the death of Louis XV., all France recalled to mind the words the Bishop of Senez had pronounced before him: “In forty days, Nineveh shall be destroyed.” Louis XV. died on the fortieth day, and the Bishop was thought a prophet; a mere figure of eloquence having become metamorphosed into a prediction.

Much such a prophecy was uttered in the Church of Notre Dame, by a priest named Beauregard, some years previous to the Revolution. “Thy temples Lord,” said he, “shall be thrown down and pillaged, thy name blasphemed, thy rites proscribed. Great God! what do I hear! The holy canticles with which these vaults once echoed, are drowned by profane and lascivious songs; and the infamous divinities of paganism usurp the place of God, the Creator, sitting on the throne of the Holy of Holies, and receiving the sacred incense of our altars.”

These words became remarkable when realized at the Revolution. But when they were uttered, the Revolution was already impending. Beauregard, endowed with a zealous and vehement nature, touched upon the probable consequence of a philosophy which he contemplated with horror; thus becoming an unconscious refutation of the proverb, that “No man is a prophet in his own country.”

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ANTIPODES—MORNING AND EVENING DEW.

It is a gratifying thing when popular prejudices are overcome by the progress of public enlightenment. The existence of the antipodes was formerly disbelieved. Before the spherical form of our globe was ascertained, how was it possible to suppose that there existed human beings under our feet standing with their head downwards?

Till the Newtonian theory was developed, it seemed impossible but that persons so placed must fall into the realms of endless space. There is a general disposition in human nature to believe all that is impossible as well as to doubt every thing that really exists; and such was the incredulity of the world with regard to the antipodes.

The ancients, who admitted many absurdities, denied the existence of the antipodes. The Fathers of the Church followed in their steps; some indeed pronounced it heresy to hold such a belief. St. Augustin expressly says, “Take heed lest thou believe such a fable.” In his treatise on the Acts of the Apostles, there is an argument remarkable enough, considering that the rotundity of the earth was then unknown. “Faith teaches us, that all men are from Adam. But if there were other men under the earth, they could not be of Adam. How could they have found their way to the antipodes? Not by land, for the antipodes are cut off from our hemisphere by boundless seas. Not by sea; for the most experienced pilot would not dare launch his vessel in such boundless space. It is, therefore, evident that the doctrine of the antipodes is false and heretical.” Time and experience have taught us the folly of deciding upon topics exceeding our comprehension. Yet, perhaps, even now we deny a host of truths, which at some time may give us an insight into futurity. In great as well as trifling things, every day brings its tribute to the cause of truth. The antipodes are admitted to exist. The earth revolves round the sun, though once supposed to be stationary in its place in the heavens; while the dew, which our ancestors believed to descend from heaven, is known to be an emanation from the earth.”

Such an error was pardonable enough. The dews are often made use of in Holy Writ as a term of comparison; and the mercy of the Lord is implored to descend upon his people like the dews from heaven. After many experiments in elucidation of the origin of dew, a scientific observer obtained the following results.

Having placed some plants under glass bells, he examined them the following morning, and finding them to be covered with dew like those left in the air, he cut shreds of flannel; and placing them at graduated heights, found that those nearest the earth were first wet, and that the dew gradually rose towards the highest. Upon weighing the shreds, he found those below to be the most saturated. Lastly, upon examining plants grown in green-houses, he felt convinced that they also imbibed abundant dew. These experiments excited attention; and Muschembroek, the author, had many imitators. Among others, Dufay, who placed a double ladder thirty-two feet high, in the centre of a garden, suspending tablets of glass at different altitudes; so that each was equally exposed to the action of the atmosphere. He remained at the foot of the ladder to watch the progress of the phenomenon, and found that the tablets nearest the earth were the first moist, and that the humidity ascended gradually to the highest. Several other men of science repeated the same experiment with similar results.

The problem was thus solved, and proof obtained that dew ascended from the earth. To the joy, however, of some, a doubt presented itself. By renewed experiments it was found that this dew from the earth did not equally affect all bodies, and was partial in its bearing. For instance, it appeared to avoid gold, silver, metal, and polished marbles; while it adhered to glass, oily and resinous substances.

Place a gold or plated vessel under a crystal vase in a garden during the night, and in the morning you will find the edges perfectly dry, while the crystal vase will be wet. The cause of this difference is not accounted for. Reaumur supposes, but does not affirm, that the golden vessel, containing more caloric than the crystal, repels the dew, while the latter attracts it.

In confirmation of this supposition, Reaumur proposed the following experiment. Place a china cup upon a stone within a hot-bed; and further on, and beyond the influence of the hot-bed, another cup of similar form, substance, and diameter; this will be charged with dew, the other will remain dry. In explanation of this difference, it may be imagined that the phenomenon of which they sought the solution, originated in electricity; an opinion, however, which has no influence over the main discovery that dews arise from the ground, instead of falling from the skies, as asserted by the mythology of the ancients, and the tropes of Scripture.

CHAPTER XIV.

PERPETUAL LAMPS AND ARCHIMEDES.

Stability is not the characteristic of man or his works. The discovery of perpetual motion has long been the object of our ambition; the sole approach to which appears to be our futile perseverance in the pursuit. Let us be content, therefore, with aspiring to duration, a sufficient triumph for perishable man; and be it noted that this quality, though impressed by human art upon inert matter, such as the Pyramids of Egypt, is incompatible with the mutability of our social institutions.

The word perpetual has been too often and too easily applied. The marvellous is too often substituted for the true, just as great vices are more widely apparent than great virtues. Who has not heard, for instance, of perpetual lamps, miraculous as the Wonderful Lamp of the Arabian Tales!

The Pagan priesthood originated these fabulous sepulchral lights; and those of our own faith who had the weakness to adopt their deception, endangered our confidence by recourse to unworthy trickeries. Pausanias mentions a lamp of massive gold, consecrated by Callimachus, and endowed with such properties as to endure a year without deterioration. Another is said to have existed in a temple in England. Pope Gelasius affirms, in the acts of St. Sylvester, that in the Baptistery of Rome, there was a lamp which had burned without intermission since the reign of Constantine, viz., half a century. That the dark ages should have admitted such marvels is not surprising. But one of the illuminati of the sixteenth century, Fortunio Liceti, composed a treaty concerning the existence of such lamps, asserting that, upon opening the tomb of the giant Pallas, a lamp was found which had been burning since the times of the pious Æneas. Another was stated to have been found in the tomb of Tullia, during the Pontificate of Paulinus, about fifteen centuries and a half after its construction. In the reign of Justinian, a portrait of our Saviour was discovered at Edessa with a lamp unrenovated from the period of the Christian era, that is, during a period of five centuries. Fortunio cites a vast number of similar examples; from which he infers that the Romans possessed the secret of making inextinguishable lamps. His conviction upon the subject is such, that he attempts to explain the possibility by a theory that the combustion of the smoke produced fresh oil for the nourishment of the lamp. This must surely have been the far-famed oil of the Phœnix.

It is scarcely worth while to controvert such absurdities; the fable of perpetual lamps having faded before the dawning light of reason. Is it, however, to be credited, that the genius of Descartes did not secure him against this vulgar error? The views of that great man on the subject deserve to be quoted as a proof of the aberrations to which superior minds are subject. “After considering the fire produced by gunpowder,” says Descartes, “which is the most transitory in existence, let us inquire whether there can exist a flame, enduring without the aid of fresh matter for its support, like those found in the tombs of the ancients shut up for centuries. I will not vouch for the truth of their existence; but think it possible that in a vault so close that the air could never be disturbed, the parts of the oil transformed into smoke, and from smoke into soot, might, by sub-formation, arch themselves over the flame so as to protect it from the air, and render it so weak as to lose the power of consuming either oil or wick, so long as there should remain a shred unburnt by which means the primary element existent in the flame and identified with the little self-formed vault, might revolve therein like a little star. It necessarily follows that the second element became expelled on all sides, while trying to penetrate the pores still remaining in the little dome; and the flame which remained feeble while the place was closed, brightened the moment it was opened, and the external air admitted. The surrounding smoke dispersed, the flame recovers its vigour for a moment, and then expires. Such lamps, in fact, become perpetual, only from having exhausted their oil.”

This statement is extracted from the Fourth Book of the Principles of Philosophy of Descartes. In spite of the respect due to his name, we see in it only a tissue of verbosity exhibiting science at a nonplus, and advocating a groundless theory. But such a chimera on the part of so eminent a man, ought to afford consolation to second-rate capacities, as a proof that no one is exempt from delusions.

From Descartes, let us turn to Archimedes, who conferred ten-fold power upon the arm of man by arming it with the lever; and with becoming deference avow our want of faith in the mirror by the burning reflections of which he managed to destroy the Roman galleys!

“Combustible bodies,” observes Descartes, “cannot be ignited by means of mirrors unless comprehended in the necessary focus. Geometry shows us that the distance of a focus of a concave mirror is equal to the half of its sphere; that is, if the mirror have been set from a sphere of a radius of one foot, the distance of the focus will be of six inches. A sphere having a radius of one foot, gives, therefore, but a focus of six inches, so that to establish a focus at two hundred feet, would require a sphere with a radius of four hundred feet, or eight hundred in diameter! Besides, how could Archimedes procure such a mirror, when the art of casting mirrors was unknown, and the manufacture of glass in its infancy? That it was a metallic mirror is difficult to conceive. Such were the solutions attempted of an insoluble problem. Doubtful anecdotes are so often and so boldly adopted by the authors of antiquity, that we may regard as unsubstantiated all facts upon which they are silent. Neither Livy, Diodorus, nor Polybius mention the mirror of Archimedes; so that the invention is probably modern, and most likely a fable of the sixteenth century, prolific in inventions and amplifications. The press, then in its infancy, delighted in the propagation of marvels and fallacies attributed by their imbecile authors to the ancients, so as to assign them some semblance of truth. Among such inventions was the mirror of Archimedes.

Gallienus, indeed, mentions the burning of the fleet by Archimedes; but is mute on the subject of the mirror, which he could scarcely have omitted, had the fact been genuine. Tzetzes and Zoronas are the first who mention it; the former in the following words:

“When the Roman galleys were within arrow-shot, Archimedes caused an hexagonal mirror to be made, and other smaller ones, each having twenty-four angles, which were placed at a proportionate distance, and could be worked by their hinges and certain metallic blades; their position being such that the rays of the sun reflected upon their surface, produced a fire which destroyed the Roman galleys, though at the distance of a bow-shot.”

The author does not condescend to give his authority; relying for the evidence of his authenticity upon his confederate, Zoronas, who relates that, at the Siege of Constantinople, under the reign of Anastasius, Probus burnt the enemy’s fleet by means of brazen mirrors. He states that the invention was not new, but belonged to Archimedes, who, as testified by Dion, used them at the Siege of Syracuse by Marcellus.

The mutual confederacy of a couple of mountebanks is as easily understood as it would be susceptible of annihilation; did not such men as Kirchen and Buffon become sureties, not for what Archimedes has done, but for what he was capable of effecting. Previous to Descartes, the former had asserted the possibility of igniting combustible matter at a great distance by means of small plane mirrors, which could be managed so that the rays might be directed upon any given object. This was simply a theory; but Buffon decided upon making the experiment, the result of which is well known. He caused to be constructed one hundred and sixty-eight little mirrors six inches by eight, and directing their rays towards a point, succeeded in igniting a body at a considerable distance. By this he discovered a new principle, viz: that the action of the solar rays reflected is in direct ratio of the diameter of the focus; proving, moreover, that by multiplying the mirrors, an indefinite line of combustion might be established.

Can we infer, however, from these experiments of Buffon, that Archimedes actually destroyed the Roman galleys? We think not; considering the silence of the Roman writers on the subject, and the progress of science in the time of Buffon, with reference to its discoveries in the time of the Siege of Syracuse by Marcellus. Whether this mirror existed or not, however, Archimedes must be admitted to be one of the greatest geniuses the World of Science ever produced.