MODERN SUPERSTITION

It is said continually--that the age of miracles is past. We deny that

it is so in any sense which implies this age to differ from all other

generations of man except one. It is neither past, nor ought we to wish

it past. Superstition is no vice in the constitution of man: it is not

true that, in any philosophic view, _primus in orbe deos fecit timor_

--meaning by _fecit_ even so much as _raised into light_. As Burke

remarked, the _timor_ at least must be presumed to preexist, and must

be accounted for, if not the gods. If the fear created the gods, what

created the fear? Far more true, and more just to the grandeur of man,

it would have been to say--_Primus in orbe deos fecit sensus

infiniti_. Even in the lowest Caffre, more goes to the sense of a

divine being than simply his wrath or his power. Superstition, indeed,

or the sympathy with the invisible, is the great test of man's nature,

as an earthly combining with a celestial. In superstition lies the

possibility of religion. And though superstition is often injurious,

degrading, demoralizing, it is so, not as a form of corruption or

degradation, but as a form of non-development. The crab is harsh, and

for itself worthless. But it is the germinal form of innumerable finer

fruits: not apples only the most exquisite, and pears; the peach and

the nectarine are said to have radiated from this austere stock when

cultured, developed, and transferred to all varieties of climate.

Superstition will finally pass into pure forms of religion as man

advances. It would be matter of lamentation to hear that superstition

had at all decayed until man had made corresponding steps in the

purification and development of his intellect as applicable to

religious faith. Let us hope that this is not so. And, by way of

judging, let us throw a hasty eye over the modes of popular

superstition. If these manifest their vitality, it will prove that the

popular intellect does not go along with the bookish or the worldly

(philosophic we cannot call it) in pronouncing the miraculous extinct.

The popular feeling is all in all.

This function of miraculous power, which is most widely diffused

through Pagan and Christian ages alike, but which has the least root in

the solemnities of the imagination, we may call the _Ovidian_. By

way of distinction, it may be so called; and with some justice, since

Ovid in his _Metamorphoses_ gave the first elaborate record of

such a tendency in human superstition. It is a movement of superstition

under the domination of human affections; a mode of spiritual awe which

seeks to reconcile itself with human tenderness or admiration; and

which represents supernatural power as expressing itself by a sympathy

with human distress or passion concurrently with human sympathies, and

as supporting that blended sympathy by a symbol incarnated with the

fixed agencies of nature. For instance, a pair of youthful lovers

perish by a double suicide originating in a fatal mistake, and a

mistake operating in each case through a noble self-oblivion. The tree

under which their meeting has been concerted, and which witnesses their

tragedy, is supposed ever afterwards to express the divine sympathy

with this catastrophe in the gloomy color of its fruit:--

'At tu, quæ ramis (arbor!) miserabile corpus

Nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum,

Signa tene cædis:--pullosque et luctibus aptos

Semper habe fructus--gemini monumenta cruoris:'

Such is the dying adjuration of the lady to the tree. And the fruit

becomes from that time a monument of a double sympathy--sympathy from

man, sympathy from a dark power standing behind the agencies of nature,

and speaking through them. Meantime the object of this sympathy is

understood to be not the individual catastrophe, but the universal case

of unfortunate love exemplified in this particular romance. The

inimitable grace with which Ovid has delivered these early traditions

of human tenderness, blending with human superstition, is notorious;

the artfulness of the pervading connection, by which every tale in the

long succession is made to arise spontaneously out of that which

precedes, is absolutely unrivalled; and this it was, with his luxuriant

gayety, which procured for him a preference, even with Milton, a poet

so opposite by intellectual constitution. It is but reasonable,

therefore, that this function of the miraculous should bear the name of

_Ovidian_. Pagan it was in its birth; and to paganism its titles

ultimately ascend. Yet we know that in the transitional state through

the centuries succeeding to Christ, during which paganism and

Christianity were slowly descending and ascending, as if from two

different strata of the atmosphere, the two powers interchanged

whatsoever they could. (See Conyer's Middleton; and see Blount of our

own days.) It marked the earthly nature of paganism, that it could

borrow little or nothing by organization: it was fitted to no

expansion. But the true faith, from its vast and comprehensive

adaptation to the nature of man, lent itself to many corruptions--some

deadly in their tendencies, some harmless. Amongst these last was the

Ovidian form of connecting the unseen powers moving in nature with

human sympathies of love or reverence. The legends of this kind are

universal and endless. No land, the most austere in its Protestantism,

but has adopted these superstitions: and everywhere by those even who

reject them they are entertained with some degree of affectionate

respect. That the ass, which in its very degradation still retains an

under-power of sublimity, [Footnote: '_An under-power of sublimity_.'--

Everybody knows that Homer compared the Telamonian Ajax, in a moment of

heroic endurance, to an ass. This, however, was only under a momentary

glance from a peculiar angle of the case. But the Mahometan, too

solemn, and also perhaps too stupid to catch the fanciful colors of

things, absolutely by choice, under the Bagdad Caliphate, decorated a

most favorite hero with the title of the _Ass_--which title is

repeated with veneration to this day. The wild ass is one of the few

animals which has the reputation of never flying from an enemy.] or of

sublime suggestion through its ancient connection with the wilderness,

with the Orient, with Jerusalem, should have been honored amongst all

animals, by the visible impression upon its back of Christian symbols

--seems reasonable even to the infantine understanding when made

acquainted with its meekness, its patience, its suffering life, and

its association with the founder of Christianity in one great

triumphal solemnity. The very man who brutally abuses it, and feels a

hardhearted contempt for its misery and its submission, has a semi-

conscious feeling that the same qualities were possibly those which

recommended it to a distinction, [Footnote: '_Which recommended it to

a distinction_.'--It might be objected that the Oriental ass was often

a superb animal; that it is spoken of prophetically as such; and that

historically the Syrian ass is made known to us as having been

used in the prosperous ages of Judea for the riding of princes. But

this is no objection. Those circumstances in the history of the ass

were requisite to establish its symbolic propriety in a great symbolic

pageant of triumph. Whilst, on the other hand, the individual animal,

there is good reason to think, was marked by all the qualities of the

general race as a suffering and unoffending tribe in the animal

creation. The asses on which princes rode were of a separate color, of

a peculiar breed, and improved, like the English racer, by continual

care.] when all things were valued upon a scale inverse to that of the

world. Certain it is, that in all Christian lands the legend about the

ass is current amongst the rural population. The haddock, again,

amongst marine animals, is supposed, throughout all maritime Europe, to

be a privileged fish; even in austere Scotland, every child can point

out the impression of St. Peter's thumb, by which from age to age it is

distinguished from fishes having otherwise an external resemblance. All

domesticated cattle, having the benefit of man's guardianship and care,

are believed throughout England and Germany to go down upon their knees

at one particular moment of Christmas eve, when the fields are covered

with darkness, when no eye looks down but that of God, and when the

exact anniversary hour revolves of the angelic song, once rolling over

the fields and flocks of Palestine. [Footnote: Mahometanism, which

everywhere pillages Christianity, cannot but have its own face at times

glorified by its stolen jewels. This solemn hour of jubilation,

gathering even the brutal natures into its fold, recalls accordingly

the Mahometan legend (which the reader may remember is one of those

incorporated into Southey's _Thalaba_) of a great hour revolving

once in every year, during which the gates of Paradise were thrown open

to their utmost extent, and gales of happiness issued forth upon the

total family of man.] The Glastonbury Thorn is a more local

superstition; but at one time the legend was as widely diffused as that

of Loretto, with the angelic translation of its sanctities: on

Christmas morning, it was devoutly believed by all Christendom, that

this holy thorn put forth its annual blossoms. And with respect to the

aspen tree, which Mrs. Hemans very naturally mistook for a Welsh

legend, having first heard it in Denbighshire, the popular faith is

universal--that it shivers mystically in sympathy with the horror of

that mother tree in Palestine which was compelled to furnish materials

for the cross. Neither would it in this case be any objection, if a

passage were produced from Solinus or Theophrastus, implying that the

aspen tree had always shivered--for the tree might presumably be

penetrated by remote presentiments, as well as by remote remembrances.

In so vast a case the obscure sympathy should stretch, Janus-like, each

way. And an objection of the same kind to the rainbow, considered as

the sign or seal by which God attested his covenant in bar of all

future deluges, may be parried in something of the same way. It was not

then first created--true: but it was then first selected by preference,

amongst a multitude of natural signs as yet unappropriated, and then

first charged with the new function of a message and a ratification to

man. Pretty much the same theory, that is, the same way of accounting

for the natural existence without disturbing the supernatural

functions, may be applied to the great constellation of the other

hemisphere, called the Southern Cross. It is viewed popularly in South

America, and the southern parts of our northern hemisphere, as the

great banner, or gonfalon, held aloft by Heaven before the Spanish

heralds of the true faith in 1492. To that superstitious and ignorant

race it costs not an effort to suppose, that by some synchronizing

miracle, the constellation had been then specially called into

existence at the very moment when the first Christian procession,

bearing a cross in their arms, solemnly stepped on shore from the

vessels of Christendom. We Protestants know better: we understand the

impossibility of supposing such a narrow and local reference in orbs,

so transcendently vast as those composing the constellation--orbs

removed from each other by such unvoyageable worlds of space, and

having, in fact, no real reference to each other more than to any other

heavenly bodies whatsoever. The unity of synthesis, by which they are

composed into one figure of a cross, we know to be a mere accidental

result from an arbitrary synthesis of human fancy. Take such and such

stars, compose them into letters, and they will spell such a word. But

still it was our own choice--a synthesis of our own fancy, originally

to combine them in this way. They might be divided from each other, and

otherwise combined. All this is true: and yet, as the combination does

spontaneously offer itself [Footnote: '_Does spontaneously offer

itself._'--Heber (Bishop of Calcutta) complains that this constellation

is not composed of stars answering his expectation in point of

magnitude. But he admits that the dark barren space around it

gives to this inferior magnitude a very advantageous relief.] to every

eye, as the glorious cross does really glitter for ever through the

silent hours of a vast hemisphere, even they who are not superstitious,

may willingly yield to the belief--that, as the rainbow was laid in the

very elements and necessities of nature, yet still bearing a pre-

dedication to a service which would not be called for until many ages

had passed, so also the mysterious cipher of man's imperishable hopes

may have been entwined and enwreathed with the starry heavens from

their earliest creation, as a prefiguration--as a silent heraldry of

hope through one period, and as a heraldry of gratitude through the

other.

All these cases which we have been rehearsing, taking them in the

fullest literality, agree in this general point of union--they are all

silent incarnations of miraculous power--miracles, supposing them to

have been such originally, locked up and embodied in the regular course

of nature, just as we see lineaments of faces and of forms in

petrifactions, in variegated marbles, in spars, or in rocky strata,

which our fancy interprets as once having been real human existences;

but which are now confounded with the substance of a mineral product.

Even those who are most superstitious, therefore, look upon cases of

this order as occupying a midway station between the physical and the

hyperphysical, between the regular course of nature and the

providential interruption of that course. The stream of the miraculous

is here confluent with the stream of the natural. By such legends the

credulous man finds his superstition but little nursed; the incredulous

finds his philosophy but little revolted. Both alike will be willing to

admit, for instance, that the apparent act of reverential thanksgiving,

in certain birds, when drinking, is caused and supported by a

physiological arrangement; and yet, perhaps, both alike would bend so

far to the legendary faith as to allow a child to believe, and would

perceive a pure childlike beauty in believing, that the bird was thus

rendering a homage of deep thankfulness to the universal Father, who

watches for the safety of sparrows, and sends his rain upon the just

and upon the unjust. In short, the faith in this order of the physico-

miraculous is open alike to the sceptical and the non-sceptical: it is

touched superficially with the coloring of superstition, with its

tenderness, its humility, its thankfulness, its awe; but, on the other

hand, it is not therefore tainted with the coarseness, with the

silliness, with the credulity of superstition. Such a faith reposes

upon the universal signs diffused through nature, and blends with the

mysterious of natural grandeurs wherever found--with the mysterious of

the starry heavens, with the mysterious of music, and with that

infinite form of the mysterious for man's dimmest misgivings--

'Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.'

But, from this earliest note in the ascending scale of superstitious

faith, let us pass to a more alarming key. This first, which we have

styled (in equity as well as for distinction) the _Ovidian_, is

too ærial, too allegoric, almost to be susceptible of much terror. It

is the mere _fancy_, in a mood half-playful, half-tender, which

submits to the belief. It is the feeling, the sentiment, which creates

the faith; not the faith which creates the feeling. And thus far we see

that modern feeling and Christian feeling has been to the full as

operative as any that is peculiar to paganism; judging by the Romish

_Legenda_, very much more so. The Ovidian illustrations, under a

false superstition, are entitled to give the designation, as being the

first, the earliest, but not at all as the richest. Besides that,

Ovid's illustrations emanated often from himself individually, not from

the popular mind of his country; ours of the same classification

uniformly repose on large popular traditions from the whole of

Christian antiquity. These again are agencies of the supernatural which

can never have a private or personal application; they belong to all

mankind and to all generations. But the next in order are more solemn;

they become terrific by becoming personal. These comprehend all that

vast body of the marvellous which is expressed by the word _Ominous_.

On this head, as dividing itself into the ancient and modern, we will

speak next.

Everybody is aware of the deep emphasis which the Pagans laid upon

words and upon names, under this aspect of the ominous. The name of

several places was formally changed by the Roman government, solely

with a view to that contagion of evil which was thought to lurk in the

syllables, if taken significantly. Thus, the town of Maleventum, (Ill-

come, as one might render it,) had its name changed by the Romans to

Beneventum, (or Welcome.) _Epidamnum_ again, the Grecian Calais,

corresponding to the Roman Dover of Brundusium, was a name that would

have startled the stoutest-hearted Roman 'from his propriety.' Had he

suffered this name to escape him inadvertently, his spirits would have

forsaken him--he would have pined away under a certainty of misfortune,

like a poor Negro of Koromantyn who is the victim of Obi.[Footnote:

'_The victim of Obi._'--It seems worthy of notice, that this

magical fascination is generally called Obi, and the magicians Obeah

men, throughout Guinea, Negroland, &c.; whilst the Hebrew or Syriac

word for the rites of necromancy, was _Ob_ or _Obh_, at least

when ventriloquism was concerned.] As a Greek word, which it was, the

name imported no ill; but for a Roman to say _Ibo Epidamnum_, was

in effect saying, though in a hybrid dialect, half-Greek half-Roman, 'I

will go to ruin.' The name was therefore changed to Dyrrachium; a

substitution which quieted more anxieties in Roman hearts than the

erection of a light-house or the deepening of the harbor mouth. A case

equally strong, to take one out of many hundreds that have come down to

us, is reported by Livy. There was an officer in a Roman legion, at

some period of the Republic, who bore the name either of Atrius Umber

or Umbrius Ater: and this man being ordered on some expedition, the

soldiers refused to follow him. They did right. We remember that Mr.

Coleridge used facetiously to call the well-known sister of Dr. Aikin,

Mrs. Barbauld, 'that pleonasm of nakedness'--the idea of nakedness

being reduplicated and reverberated in the _bare_ and the _bald_.

This Atrius Umber might be called 'that pleonasm of darkness;' and one

might say to him, in the words of Othello, 'What needs this iteration?'

To serve under the Gloomy was enough to darken the spirit of hope; but

to serve under the Black Gloomy was really rushing upon destruction.

Yet it will be alleged that Captain Death was a most favorite and

heroic leader in the English navy; and that in our own times, Admiral

Coffin, though an American by birth, has not been unpopular in the same

service. This is true: and all that can be said is, that these names

were two-edged swords, which might be made to tell against the enemy as

well as against friends. And possibly the Roman centurion might have

turned his name to the same account, had he possessed the great

Dictator's presence of mind; for he, when landing in Africa, having

happened to stumble--an omen of the worst character, in Roman

estimation--took out its sting by following up his own

oversight, as if it had been intentional, falling to the ground,

kissing it, and ejaculating that in this way he appropriated the soil.

Omens of every class were certainly regarded, in ancient Rome, with a

reverence that can hardly be surpassed. But yet, with respect to these

omens derived from names, it is certain that our modern times have more

memorable examples on record. Out of a large number which occur to us,

we will cite two:--The present King of the French bore in his boyish

days a title which he would not have borne, but for an omen of bad

augury attached to his proper title. He was called the Duc de Chartres

before the Revolution, whereas his proper title was Duc de Valois. And

the origin of the change was this:--The Regent's father had been the

sole brother of Louis Quatorze. He married for his first wife our

English princess Henrietta, the sister of Charles II., (and through her

daughter, by the way, it is that the house of Savoy, _i.e._ of

Sardinia, has pretensions to the English throne.) This unhappy lady, it

is too well established, was poisoned. Voltaire, amongst many others,

has affected to doubt the fact; for which in his time there might be

some excuse. But since then better evidences have placed the matter

beyond all question. We now know both the fact, and the how, and the

why. The Duke, who probably was no party to the murder of his young

wife, though otherwise on bad terms with her, married for his second

wife a coarse German princess, homely in every sense, and a singular

contrast to the elegant creature whom he had lost. She was a daughter

of the Bavarian Elector; ill-tempered by her own confession, self-

willed, and a plain speaker to excess; but otherwise a woman of honest

German principles. Unhappy she was through a long life; unhappy through

the monotony as well as the malicious intrigues of the French court;

and so much so, that she did her best (though without effect) to

prevent her Bavarian niece from becoming dauphiness. She acquits her

husband, however, in the memoirs which she left behind, of any

intentional share in her unhappiness; she describes him constantly as a

well-disposed prince. But whether it were, that often walking in the

dusk through the numerous apartments of that vast mansion which her

husband had so much enlarged, naturally she turned her thoughts to the

injured lady who had presided there before herself; or whether it arose

from the inevitable gloom which broods continually over mighty palaces,

so much is known for certain, that one evening, in the twilight, she

met, at a remote quarter of the reception-rooms, something that she

conceived to be a spectre. What she fancied to have passed on that

occasion, was never known except to her nearest friends; and if she

made any explanations in her memoirs, the editor has thought fit to

suppress them. She mentions only, that in consequence of some ominous

circumstances relating to the title of _Valois_, which was the

proper second title of the Orleans family, her son, the Regent, had

assumed in his boyhood that of Duc de Chartres. His elder brother was

dead, so that the superior title was open to him; but, in consequence

of those mysterious omens, whatever they might be, which occasioned

much whispering at the time, the great title of Valois was laid aside

for ever as of bad augury; nor has it ever been resumed through a

century and a half that have followed that mysterious warning; nor will

it be resumed unless the numerous children of the present Orleans

branch should find themselves distressed for ancient titles; which is

not likely, since they enjoy the honors of the elder house, and are now

the _children of France_ in a technical sense.

Here we have a great European case of state omens in the eldest of

Christian houses. The next which we shall cite is equally a state case,

and carries its public verification along with itself. In the spring of

1799, when Napoleon was lying before Acre, he became anxious for news

from Upper Egypt, whither he had despatched Dessaix in pursuit of a

distinguished Mameluke leader. This was in the middle of May. Not many

days after, a courier arrived with favorable despatches--favorable in

the main, but reporting one tragical occurrence on a small scale that,

to Napoleon, for a superstitious reason, outweighed the public

prosperity. A _djerme_, or Nile boat of the largest class, having

on board a large party of troops and of wounded men, together with most

of a regimental band, had run ashore at the village of Benouth. No case

could be more hopeless. The neighboring Arabs were of the Yambo tribe--

of all Arabs the most ferocious. These Arabs and the Fellahs (whom, by

the way, many of our countrymen are so ready to represent as friendly

to the French and hostile to ourselves,) had taken the opportunity of

attacking the vessel. The engagement was obstinate; but at length the

inevitable catastrophe could be delayed no longer. The commander, an

Italian named Morandi, was a brave man; any fate appeared better than

that which awaited him from an enemy so malignant. He set fire to the

powder magazine; the vessel blew up; Morandi perished in the Nile; and

all of less nerve, who had previously reached the shore in safety, were

put to death to the very last man, with cruelties the most detestable,

by their inhuman enemies. For all this Napoleon cared little; but one

solitary fact there was in the report which struck him with

consternation. This ill-fated _djerme_--what was it called? It was

called _L'Italie_; and in the name of the vessel Napoleon read an

augury of the fate which had befallen the Italian territory. Considered

as a dependency of France, he felt certain that Italy was lost; and

Napoleon was inconsolable. But what possible connection, it was asked,

can exist between this vessel on the Nile and a remote peninsula of

Southern Europe? 'No matter,' replied Napoleon; 'my presentiments never

deceive me. You will see that all is ruined. I am satisfied that my

Italy, my conquest, is lost to France!' So, indeed, it was. All

European news had long been intercepted by the English cruisers; but

immediately after the battle with the Vizier in July 1799, an English

admiral first informed the French army of Egypt that Massena and others

had lost all that Bonaparte had won in 1796. But it is a strange

illustration of human blindness, that this very subject of Napoleon's

lamentation--this very campaign of 1799--it was, with its blunders and

its long equipage of disasters, that paved the way for his own

elevation to the Consulship, just seven calendar months from the

receipt of that Egyptian despatch; since most certainly, in the

struggle of Brumaire 1799, doubtful and critical through every stage,

it was the pointed contrast between _his_ Italian campaigns and

those of his successors which gave effect to Napoleon's pretensions

with the political combatants, and which procured them a ratification

amongst the people. The loss of Italy was essential to the full effect

of Napoleon's previous conquest. That and the imbecile characters of

Napoleon's chief military opponents were the true keys to the great

revolution of Brumaire. The stone which he rejected became the keystone

of the arch. So that, after all, he valued the omen falsely; though the

very next news from Europe, courteously communicated by his English

enemies, showed that he had interpreted its meaning rightly.

These omens, derived from names, are therefore common to the ancient

and the modern world. But perhaps, in strict logic, they ought to have

been classed as one subdivision or variety under a much larger head,

viz. words generally, no matter whether proper names or appellatives,

as operative powers and agencies, having, that is to say, a charmed

power against some party concerned from the moment that they leave the

lips.

Homer describes prayers as having a separate life, rising buoyantly

upon wings, and making their way upwards to the throne of Jove. Such,

but in a sense gloomy and terrific, is the force ascribed under a

widespread superstition, ancient and modern, to words uttered on

critical occasions; or to words uttered at any time, which point to

critical occasions. Hence the doctrine of _euphaemismos_, the

necessity of abstaining from strong words or direct words in expressing

fatal contingencies. It was shocking, at all times of paganism, to say

of a third person--'If he should die;' or to suppose the case that he

might be murdered. The very word _death_ was consecrated and

forbidden. _Si quiddam humanum passus fuerit_ was the extreme form

to which men advanced in such cases. And this scrupulous feeling,

originally founded on the supposed efficacy of words, prevails to this

day. It is a feeling undoubtedly supported by good taste, which

strongly impresses upon us all the discordant tone of all impassioned

subjects, (death, religion, &c.,) with the common key of ordinary

conversation. But good taste is not in itself sufficient to account for

a scrupulousness so general and so austere. In the lowest classes there

is a shuddering recoil still felt from uttering coarsely and roundly

the anticipation of a person's death. Suppose a child, heir to some

estate, the subject of conversation--the hypothesis of his death is put

cautiously, under such forms as, 'If anything but good should happen;'

'if any change should occur;' 'if any of us should chance to miscarry;'

and so forth. Always a modified expression is sought--always an

indirect one. And this timidity arises under the old superstition still

lingering amongst men, like that ancient awe, alluded to by Wordsworth,

for the sea and its deep secrets--feelings that have not, no, nor ever

will, utterly decay. No excess of nautical skill will ever perfectly

disenchant the great abyss from its terrors--no progressive knowledge

will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless

power given to words of a certain import, or uttered in certain

situations, by a parent, to persecuting or insulting children; by the

victim of horrible oppression, when laboring in final agonies; and by

others, whether cursing or blessing, who stand central to great

passions, to great interests, or to great perplexities.

And here, by way of parenthesis, we may stop to explain the force of

that expression, so common in Scripture, '_Thou hast said it._' It

is an answer often adopted by our Saviour; and the meaning we hold to

be this: Many forms in eastern idioms, as well as in the Greek

occasionally, though meant _interrogatively_, are of a nature to

convey a direct categorical _affirmation_, unless as their meaning

is modified by the cadence and intonation. _Art thou_, detached

from this vocal and accentual modification, is equivalent to _thou

art_. Nay, even apart from this accident, the popular belief

authorized the notion, that simply to have uttered any great thesis,

though unconsciously--simply to have united verbally any two great

ideas, though for a purpose the most different or even opposite, had

the mysterious power of realizing them in act. An exclamation, though

in the purest spirit of sport, to a boy, '_You shall be our

imperator_,' was many times supposed to be the forerunner and fatal

mandate for the boy's elevation. Such words executed themselves. To

connect, though but for denial or for mockery, the ideas of Jesus and

the Messiah, furnished an augury that eventually they would be found to

coincide, and to have their coincidence admitted. It was an

_argumentum ad hominem_, and drawn from a popular faith.

But a modern reader will object the want of an accompanying design or

serious meaning on the part of him who utters the words--he never meant

his words to be taken seriously--nay, his purpose was the very

opposite. True: and precisely that is the reason why his words are

likely to operate effectually, and why they should be feared. Here lies

the critical point which most of all distinguishes this faith. Words

took effect, not merely in default of a serious use, but exactly in

consequence of that default. It was the chance word, the stray word,

the word uttered in jest, or in trifling, or in scorn, or

unconsciously, which took effect; whilst ten thousand words, uttered

with purpose and deliberation, were sure to prove inert. One case will

illustrate this:--Alexander of Macedon, in the outset of his great

expedition, consulted the oracle at Delphi. For the sake of his army,

had he been even without personal faith, he desired to have his

enterprise consecrated. No persuasions, however, would move the

priestess to enter upon her painful and agitating duties for the sake

of obtaining the regular answer of the god. Wearied with this,

Alexander seized the great lady by the arm, and using as much violence

as was becoming to the two characters--of a great prince acting and a

great priestess suffering--he pushed her gently backwards to the tripod

on which, in her professional character, she was to seat herself. Upon

this, in the hurry and excitement of the moment, the priestess

exclaimed, _O pai, anixaitos ei--O son, thou art irresistible_;

never adverting for an instant to his martial purposes, but simply to

his personal importunities. The person whom she thought of as incapable

of resistance, was herself, and all she meant _consciously_ was--O

son, I can refuse nothing to one so earnest. But mark what followed:

Alexander desisted at once--he asked for no further oracle--he refused

it, and exclaimed joyously:--'Now then, noble priestess, farewell; I

have the oracle--I have your answer, and better than any which you

could deliver from the tripod. I am invincible--so you have declared,

you cannot revoke it. True, you thought not of Persia--you thought only

of my importunity. But that very fact is what ratifies your answer. In

its blindness I recognise its truth. An oracle from a god might be

distorted by political ministers of the god, as in time past too often

has been suspected. The oracle has been said to _Medize_, and in

my own father's time to _Philippize_. But an oracle delivered

unconsciously, indirectly, blindly, that is the oracle which cannot

deceive.' Such was the all-famous oracle which Alexander accepted--such

was the oracle on which he and his army reposing went forth 'conquering

and to conquer.'

Exactly on this principle do the Turks act, in putting so high a value

on the words of idiots. Enlightened Christians have often wondered at

their allowing any weight to people bereft of understanding. But that

is the very reason for allowing them weight: that very defect it is

which makes them capable of being organs for conveying words from

higher intelligences. A fine human intelligence cannot be a passive

instrument--it cannot be a mere tube for conveying the words of

inspiration: such an intelligence will intermingle ideas of its own, or

otherwise modify what is given, and pollute what is sacred.

It is also on this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of

Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy

which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving

to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular

functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or

the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference.

Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their

authority decayed, but because it increased. In later times Virgil has

been the favorite. Considering the very limited range of ideas to which

Virgil was tied by his theme--a colonizing expedition in a barbarous

age, no worse book could have been selected: [Footnote: '_No worse

book could have been selected._'--The probable reason for making so

unhappy a choice seems to have been that Virgil, in the middle ages,

had the character of a necromancer, a diviner, &c. This we all know

from Dante. Now, the original reason for this strange translation of

character and functions we hold to have arisen from the circumstance of

his maternal grandfather having borne the name of _Magus_. People

in those ages held that a powerful enchanter, exorciser, &c., must have

a magician amongst his _cognati_; the power must run in the blood,

which on the maternal side could be undeniably ascertained. Under this

preconception, they took Magus not for a proper name, but for a

professional designation. Amongst many illustrations of the magical

character sustained by Virgil in the middle ages, we may mention that a

writer, about the year 1200, or the era of our Robin Hood, published by

Montfaucon, and cited by Gibbon in his last volume, says of Virgil,--

that '_Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapopolim_.'] so

little indeed does the AEneid exhibit of human life in its

multiformity, that much tampering with the text is required

to bring real cases of human interest and real situations within the

scope of any Virgilian sentence, though aided by the utmost latitude of

accommodation. A king, a soldier, a sailor, &c., might look for

correspondences to their own circumstances; but not many others.

Accordingly, everybody remembers the remarkable answer which Charles I.

received at Oxford from this Virgilian oracle, about the opening of the

Parliamentary war. But from this limitation in the range of ideas it

was that others, and very pious people too, have not thought it profane

to resume the old reliance on the Scriptures. No case, indeed, can try

so severely, or put upon record so conspicuously, this indestructible

propensity for seeking light out of darkness--this thirst for looking

into the future by the aid of dice, real or figurative, as the fact of

men eminent for piety having yielded to the temptation. We give one

instance--the instance of a person who, in _practical_ theology,

has been, perhaps, more popular than any other in any church. Dr.

Doddridge, in his earlier days, was in a dilemma both of conscience and

of taste as to the election he should make between two situations, one

in possession, both at his command. He was settled at Harborough, in

Leicestershire, and was 'pleasing himself with the view of a

continuance' in that situation. True, he had received an invitation to

Northampton; but the reasons against complying seemed so strong, that

nothing was wanting but the civility of going over to Northampton, and

making an apologetic farewell. On the last Sunday in November of the

year 1729, the doctor went and preached a sermon in conformity with

those purposes. 'But,' says he, 'on the morning of that day an incident

happened, which affected me greatly.' On the night previous, it seems,

he had been urged very importunately by his Northampton friends to

undertake the vacant office. Much personal kindness had concurred with

this public importunity: the good doctor was affected; he had prayed

fervently, alleging in his prayer, as the reason which chiefly weighed

with him to reject the offer, that it was far beyond his forces, and

chiefly because he was too young [Footnote: '_Because he was too

young_'--Dr. Doddridge was born in the summer of 1702; consequently

he was at this era of his life about twenty-seven years old, and

consequently not so obviously entitled to the excuse of youth. But he

pleaded his youth, not with a view to the exertions required, but to

the _auctoritas_ and responsibilities of the situation.] and had

no assistant. He goes on thus:--'As soon as ever this address' (meaning

the prayer) 'was ended, I passed through a room of the house in which I

lodged, where a child was reading to his mother, and the only words I

heard distinctly were these, _And as thy days, so shall thy strength

be_.' This singular coincidence between his own difficulty and a

scriptural line caught at random in passing hastily through a room,

(but observe, a line insulated from the context, and placed in high

relief to his ear,) shook his resolution. Accident co-operated; a

promise to be fulfilled at Northampton, in a certain contingency, fell

due at the instant; the doctor was detained, this detention gave time

for further representations; new motives arose, old difficulties were

removed, and finally the doctor saw, in all this succession of steps,

the first of which, however, lay in the _Sortes Biblicæ_, clear

indications of a providential guidance. With that conviction he took up

his abode at Northampton, and remained there for the next thirty-one

years, until he left it for his grave at Lisbon; in fact, he passed at

Northampton the whole of his public life. It must, therefore, be

allowed to stand upon the records of sortilegy, that in the main

direction of his life--not, indeed, as to its spirit, but as to its

form and local connections--a Protestant divine of much merit, and

chiefly in what regards practice, and of the class most opposed to

superstition, took his determining impulse from a variety of the

_Sortes Virgilianæ_.

This variety was known in early times to the Jews--as early, indeed, as

the era of the Grecian Pericles, if we are to believe the Talmud. It is

known familiarly to this day amongst Polish Jews, and is called

_Bathcol_, or the _daughter of a voice_; the meaning of which

appellation is this:--The _Urim and Thummim_, or oracle in the

breast-plate of the high priest, spoke directly from God. It was,

therefore, the original or mother-voice. But about the time of

Pericles, that is, exactly one hundred years before the time of

Alexander the Great, the light of prophecy was quenched in Malachi or

Haggai; and the oracular jewels in the breast-plate became

simultaneously dim. Henceforwards the mother-voice was heard no longer:

but to this succeeded an imperfect or daughter-voice, (_Bathcol_,)

which lay in the first words happening to arrest the attention at a

moment of perplexity. An illustration, which has been often quoted from

the Talmud, is to the following effect:--Rabbi Tochanan, and Rabbi

Simeon Ben Lachish, were anxious about a friend, Rabbi Samuel, six

hundred miles distant on the Euphrates. Whilst talking earnestly

together on this subject in Palestine, they passed a school; they

paused to listen: it was a child reading the first book of Samuel; and

the words which they caught were these--_And Samuel died_. These

words they received as a _Bath-col_: and the next horseman from

the Euphrates brought word accordingly that Rabbi Samuel had been

gathered to his fathers at some station on the Euphrates.

Here is the very same case, the same _Bath-col_ substantially,

which we have cited from Orton's _Life of Doddridge_. And Du Cange

himself notices, in his Glossary, the relation which this bore to the

Pagan _Sortes_. 'It was,' says he, 'a fantastical way of divination,

invented by the Jews, not unlike the _Sortes Virgilianæ_ of the

heathens. For, as with them the first words they happened to dip into

in the works of that poet were a kind of oracle whereby they predicted

future events,--so, with the Jews, when they appealed to _Bath-col_,

the first words they heard from any one's mouth were looked upon as a

voice from Heaven directing them in the matter they inquired about.'

If the reader imagines that this ancient form of the practical

miraculous is at all gone out of use, even the example of Dr. Doddridge

may satisfy him to the contrary. Such an example was sure to authorize

a large imitation. But, even apart from that, the superstition is

common. The records of conversion amongst felons and other ignorant

persons might be cited by hundreds upon hundreds to prove that no

practice is more common than that of trying the spiritual fate, and

abiding by the import of any passage in the Scriptures which may first

present itself to the eye. Cowper, the poet, has recorded a case of

this sort in his own experience. It is one to which all the unhappy are

prone. But a mode of questioning the oracles of darkness, far more

childish, and, under some shape or other, equally common amongst those

who are prompted by mere vacancy of mind, without that determination to

sacred fountains which is impressed by misery, may be found in the

following extravagant silliness of Rousseau, which we give in his own

words--a case for which he admits that he himself would have _shut

up_ any other man (meaning in a lunatic hospital) whom he had seen

practising the same absurdities:--

'Au milieu de mes études et d'une vie innocente autant qu'on la puisse

mener, et malgré tout ce qu'on m'avoit pu dire, la peur de l'Enfer

m'agitoit encore. Souvent je me demandois--En quel état suis-je? Si je

mourrois à l'instant même, _serois-je damné_? Selon mes Jansénistes,

[he had been reading the books of the Port Royal,] la chose est

indubitable: mais, selon ma conscience, il me paroissoit que

non. Toujours craintif et flottant dans cette cruelle incertitude,

j'avois recours (pour en sortir) aux expédients les plus risibles, et

pour lesquels je ferois volontiers enfermer un homme si je lui en

voyois faire autant. ... Un jour, rêvant à ce triste sujet, je

m'exerçois machinalement à lancer les pierres contre les troncs des

arbres; et cela avec mon addresse ordinaire, c'est-à-dire sans presque

jamais en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise, je m'avisai

de faire une espèce de pronostic pour calmer mon inquiétude. Je me dis

--je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis-à-vis de

moi: si je le touche, signe de salut: si je le manque, signe de

damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d'une main

tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de coeur, mais si

heureusement qu'elle va frapper au beau-milieu de l'arbre: ce qui

véritablement n'étoit pas difficile: car j'avois eu soin de le choisir

fort gros et fort près. _Depuis lors je n'ai plus doubté de mon

salut._ Je ne sais, en me rappelant ce trait, si je dois rire ou

gémir sur moimême.'--_Les Confessions, Partie I. Livre VI._

Now, really, if Rousseau thought fit to try such tremendous appeals by

taking 'a shy' at any random object, he should have governed his

sortilegy (for such it may be called) with something more like equity.

Fair play is a jewel: and in such a case, a man is supposed to play

against an adverse party hid in darkness. To shy at a cow within six

feet distance gives no chance at all to his dark antagonist. A pigeon

rising from a trap at a suitable distance might be thought a

_sincere_ staking of the interest at issue: but, as to the massy

stem of a tree 'fort gros et fort près'--the sarcasm of a Roman emperor

applies, that to miss under such conditions implied an original genius

for stupidity, and to hit was no trial of the case. After all, the

sentimentalist had youth to plead in apology for this extravagance. He

was hypochondriacal; he was in solitude; and he was possessed by gloomy

imaginations from the works of a society in the highest public credit.

But most readers will be aware of similar appeals to the mysteries of

Providence, made in public by illustrious sectarians, speaking from the

solemn station of a pulpit. We forbear to quote cases of this nature,

though really existing in print, because we feel that the blasphemy of

such anecdotes is more revolting and more painful to pious minds than

the absurdity is amusing. Meantime it must not be forgotten, that the

principle concerned, though it may happen to disgust men when

associated with ludicrous circumstances, is, after all, the very same

which has latently governed very many modes of ordeal, or judicial

inquiry; and which has been adopted, blindly, as a moral rule, or

canon, equally by the blindest of the Pagans, the most fanatical of the

Jews, and the most enlightened of the Christians. It proceeds upon the

assumption that man by his actions puts a question to Heaven; and that

Heaven answers by the event. Lucan, in a well known passage, takes it

for granted that the cause of Cæsar had the approbation of the gods.

And why? Simply from the event. It was notoriously the triumphant

cause. It was victorious, (_victrix_ causa Deis placuit; sed

_victa_ Catoni.) It was the '_victrix_ causa;' and, _as_ such,

simply because it was 'victrix,' it had a right in his eyes to

postulate the divine favor as mere matter of necessary interference:

whilst, on the other hand, the _victa causa_, though it seemed to

Lucan sanctioned by human virtue in the person of Cato, stood

unappealably condemned. This mode of reasoning may strike the reader as

merely Pagan. Not at all. In England, at the close of the Parliamentary

war, it was generally argued--that Providence had decided the question

against the Royalists by the mere fact of the issue. Milton himself,

with all his high-toned morality, uses this argument as irrefragable:

which is odd, were it only on this account--that the issue ought

necessarily to have been held for a time as merely hypothetic, and

liable to be set aside by possible counter-issues through one

generation at the least. But the capital argument against such doctrine

is to be found in the New Testament. Strange that Milton should

overlook, and strange that moralists in general have overlooked, the

sudden arrest given to this dangerous but most prevalent mode of

reasoning by the Founder of our faith. He first, he last, taught to his

astonished disciples the new truth--at that time the astounding truth--

that no relation exists between the immediate practical events of

things on the one side, and divine sentences on the other. There was no

presumption, he teaches them, against a man's favor with God, or that

of his parents, because he happened to be afflicted to extremity with

bodily disease. There was no shadow of an argument for believing a

party of men criminal objects of heavenly wrath because upon them, by

fatal preference, a tower had fallen, and because _their_ bodies

were exclusively mangled. How little can it be said that Christianity

has yet developed the fulness of its power, when kings and senates so

recently acted under a total oblivion of this great though novel

Christian doctrine, and would do so still, were it not that religious

arguments have been banished by the progress of manners from the field

of political discussion.

But, quitting this province of the ominous, where it is made the object

of a direct personal inquest, whether by private or by national trials,

or the sortilegy of events, let us throw our eyes over the broader

field of omens, as they offer themselves spontaneously to those who do

not seek, or would even willingly evade them. There are few of these,

perhaps none, which are not universal in their authority, though every

land in turn fancies them (like its proverbs) of local prescription and

origin. The death-watch extends from England to Cashmere, and across

India diagonally to the remotest nook of Bengal, over a three thousand

miles' distance from the entrance of the Indian Punjaub. A hare

crossing a man's path on starting in the morning, has been held in all

countries alike to prognosticate evil in the course of that day. Thus,

in the _Confessions of a Thug_, (which is partially built on a

real judicial document, and everywhere conforms to the usages of

Hindostan,) the hero of the horrid narrative [Footnote: '_The hero of

the horrid narrative_.'--Horrid it certainly is; and one incident in

every case gives a demoniacal air of coolness to the hellish

atrocities, viz the regular forwarding of the _bheels_, or grave-

diggers. But else the tale tends too much to monotony; and for a reason

which ought to have checked the author in carrying on the work to three

volumes, namely, that although there is much dramatic variety in the

circumstances of the several cases, there is none in the catastrophes.

The brave man and the coward, the erect spirit fighting to the last,

and the poor creature that despairs from the first,--all are confounded

in one undistinguishing end by sudden strangulation. This was the

original defect of the plan. The sudden surprise, and the scientific

noosing as with a Chilian _lasso_, constituted in fact a main

feature of Thuggee. But still, the gradual theatrical arrangement of

each Thug severally by the side of a victim, must often have roused

violent suspicion, and that in time to intercept the suddenness of the

murder. Now, for the sake of the dramatic effect, this interception

ought more often to have been introduced, else the murders are but so

many blind surprises as if in sleep.] charges some disaster of his own

upon having neglected such an omen of the morning. The same belief

operated in Pagan Italy. The same omen announced to Lord Lindsay's Arab

attendants in the desert the approach of some disaster, which partially

happened in the morning. And a Highlander of the 42d Regiment, in his

printed memoirs, notices the same harbinger of evil as having crossed

his own path on a day of personal disaster in Spain.

Birds are even more familiarly associated with such ominous warnings.

This chapter in the great volume of superstition was indeed cultivated

with unusual solicitude amongst the Pagans--_ornithomancy_ grew

into an elaborate science. But if every rule and distinction upon the

number and the position of birds, whether to the right or the left, had

been collected from our own village matrons amongst ourselves, it would

appear that no more of this Pagan science had gone to wreck than must

naturally follow the difference between a believing and a disbelieving

government. Magpies are still of awful authority in village life,

according to their number, &c.; for a striking illustration of which we

may refer the reader to Sir Walter Scott's _Demonology_, reported

not at second-hand, but from Sir Walter's personal communication with

some seafaring fellow-traveller in a stage-coach.

Among the ancient stories of the same class is one which we shall

repeat--having reference to that Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the

Great, before whom St. Paul made his famous apology at Cæsarea. This

Agrippa, overwhelmed by debts, had fled from Palestine to Rome in the

latter years of Tiberius. His mother's interest with the widow of

Germanicus procured him a special recommendation to her son Caligula.

Viewing this child and heir of the popular Germanicus as the rising

sun, Agrippa had been too free in his language. True, the uncle of

Germanicus was the reigning prince; but he was old, and breaking up.

True, the son of Germanicus was not yet on the throne; but he soon

would be; and Agrippa was rash enough to call the Emperor a

_superannuated old fellow_, and even to wish for his death.

Sejanus was now dead and gone; but there was no want of spies: and a

certain Macro reported his words to Tiberius. Agrippa was in

consequence arrested; the Emperor himself condescending to point out

the noble Jew to the officer on duty. The case was a gloomy one, if

Tiberius should happen to survive much longer: and the story of the

omen proceeds thus:--'Now Agrippa stood in his bonds before the

Imperial palace, and in his affliction leaned against a certain tree,

upon the boughs of which it happened that a bird had alighted which the

Romans call _bubo_, or the owl. All this was steadfastly observed

by a German prisoner, who asked a soldier what might be the name and

offence of that man habited in purple. Being told that the man's name

was Agrippa, and that he was a Jew of high rank, who had given a

personal offence to the Emperor, the German asked permission to go near

and address him; which being granted, he spoke thus:--"This disaster, I

doubt not, young man, is trying to your heart; and perhaps you will not

believe me when I announce to you beforehand the providential

deliverance which is impending. However, this much I will say--and for

my sincerity let me appeal to my native gods, as well as to the gods of

this Rome, who have brought us both into trouble--that no selfish

objects prompt me to this revelation--for a revelation it is--and to

the following effect:--It is fated that you shall not long remain in

chains. Your deliverance will be speedy; you shall be raised to the

very highest rank and power; you shall be the object of as much envy as

now you are of pity; you shall retain your prosperity till death; and

you shall transmit that prosperity to your children. But"--and there

the German paused. Agrippa was agitated; the bystanders were attentive;

and after a time, the German, pointing solemnly to the bird, proceeded

thus:--"But this remember heedfully--that, when next you see the bird

which now perches above your head, you will have only five days longer

to live! This event will be surely accomplished by that same mysterious

god who has thought fit to send the bird as a warning sign; and you,

when you come to your glory, do not forget me that foreshadowed it in

your humiliation."' The story adds, that Agrippa affected to laugh when

the German concluded; after which it goes on to say, that in a few

weeks, being delivered by the death of Tiberius; being released from

prison by the very prince on whose account he had incurred the risk;

being raised to a tetrarchy, and afterwards to the kingdom of all

Judea; coming into all the prosperity which had been promised to him by

the German; and not losing any part of his interest at Rome through the

assassination of his patron Caligula--he began to look back

respectfully to the words of the German, and forwards with anxiety to

the second coming of the bird. Seven years of sunshine had now slipped

away as silently as a dream. A great festival, shows and vows, was on

the point of being celebrated in honor of Claudius Cæsar, at Strato's

Tower, otherwise called Cæsarea, the Roman metropolis of Palestine.

Duty and policy alike required that the king of the land should go down

and unite in this mode of religious homage to the emperor. He did so;

and on the second morning of the festival, by way of doing more

conspicuous honor to the great solemnity, he assumed a very sumptuous

attire of silver armor, burnished so highly as to throw back a dazzling

glare from the sun's morning beams upon the upturned eyes of the vast

multitude around him. Immediately from the sycophantish part of the

crowd, of whom a vast majority were Pagans, ascended a cry of

glorification as to some manifestation of Deity. Agrippa, gratified by

this success of his new apparel, and by this flattery, not unusual in

the case of kings, had not the firmness (though a Jew, and conscious of

the wickedness, greater in himself than in the heathen crowd,) to

reject the blasphemous homage. Voices of adoration continued to ascend;

when suddenly, looking upward to the vast awnings prepared for

screening the audience from the noonday heats, the king perceived the

same ominous bird which he had seen at Rome in the day of his

affliction, seated quietly, and looking down upon himself. In that same

moment an icy pang shot through his intestines. He was removed into the

palace; and at the end of five days, completely worn out by pain,

Agrippa expired in the 54th year of his age, and the seventh of his

sovereign power.

Whether the bird, here described as an owl, was really such, may be

doubted, considering the narrow nomenclature of the Romans for all

zoological purposes, and the total indifference of the Roman mind to

all distinctions in natural history which are not upon the very largest

scale. We should much suspect that the bird was a magpie. Meantime,

speaking of ornithoscopy in relation to Jews, we remember another story

in that subdivision of the subject which it may be worth while

repeating; not merely on its own account, as wearing a fine oriental

air, but also for the correction which it suggests to a very common

error.

In some period of Syrian warfare, a large military detachment was

entering at some point of Syria from the desert of the Euphrates. At

the head of the whole array rode two men of some distinction: one was

an augur of high reputation, the other was a Jew called Mosollam, a man

of admirable beauty, a matchless horseman, an unerring archer, and

accomplished in all martial arts. As they were now first coming within

enclosed grounds, after a long march in the wilderness, the augur was

most anxious to inaugurate the expedition by some considerable omen.

Watching anxiously, therefore, he soon saw a bird of splendid plumage

perching on a low wall. 'Halt!' he said to the advanced guard: and all

drew up in a line. At that moment of silence and expectation, Mosollam,

slightly turning himself in his saddle, drew his bow-string to his ear;

his Jewish hatred of Pagan auguries burned within him; his inevitable

shaft went right to its mark, and the beautiful bird fell dead. The

augur turned round in fury. But the Jew laughed at him. 'This bird, you

say, should have furnished us with omens of our future fortunes. But

had he known anything of his own, he would never have perched where he

did, or have come within the range of Mosollam's archery. How should

that bird know our destiny, who did not know that it was his own to be

shot by Mosollam the Jew?'

Now, this is a most common but a most erroneous way of arguing. In a

case of this kind, the bird was not supposed to have any conscious

acquaintance with futurity, either for his own benefit or that of

others. But even where such a consciousness may be supposed, as in the

case of oneiromancy, or prophecy by means of dreams, it must be

supposed limited, and the more limited in a personal sense as they are

illimitable in a sublime one. Who imagines that, because a Daniel or

Ezekiel foresaw the grand revolutions of the earth, therefore they must

or could have foreseen the little details of their own ordinary life?

And even descending from that perfect inspiration to the more doubtful

power of augury amongst the Pagans, (concerning which the most eminent

of theologians have held very opposite theories,) one thing is certain,

that, so long as we entertain such pretensions, or discuss them at all,

we must take them with the principle of those who professed such arts,

not with principles of our own arbitrary invention.

One example will make this clear:--There are in England [Footnote:

'_There are in England_'--Especially in Somersetshire, and for

twenty miles round Wrington, the birthplace of Locke. Nobody sinks for

wells without their advice. We ourselves knew an amiable and

accomplished Scottish family, who, at an estate called Belmadrothie, in

memory of a similar property in Ross shire, built a house in

Somersetshire, and resolved to find water without help from the jowser.

But after sinking to a greater depth than ever had been known before,

and spending nearly £200, they were finally obliged to consult the

jowser, who found water at once.] a class of men who practise the Pagan

rhabdomancy in a limited sense. They carry a rod or rhabdos

(_rhabdos_) of willow: this they hold horizontally; and by the

bending of the rod towards the ground they discover the favorable

places for sinking wells; a matter of considerable importance in a

province so ill-watered as the northern district of Somersetshire, &c.

These people are locally called _jowsers_; and it is probable,

that from the suspicion with which their art has been usually regarded

amongst people of education, as a mere legerdemain trick of

Dousterswivel's, is derived the slang word to _chouse_ for _swindle_.

Meantime, the experimental evidences of a real practical skill in these

men, and the enlarged compass of speculation in these days, have led

many enlightened people to a Stoic _epochey_, or suspension of

judgment, on the reality of this somewhat mysterious art. Now, in the

East, there are men who make the same pretensions in a more showy

branch of the art. It is not water, but treasures which they profess to

find by some hidden kind of rhabdomancy. The very existence of

treasures with us is reasonably considered a thing of improbable

occurrence. But in the unsettled East, and with the low valuation of

human life wherever Mahometanism prevails, insecurity and other causes

must have caused millions of such deposits in every century to have

perished as to any knowledge of survivors. The sword has been moving

backwards and forwards, for instance, like a weaver's shuttle, since

the time of Mahmoud the Ghaznevide, [Footnote: Mahmood of Ghizni,

which, under the European name of Ghaznee, was so recently taken in one

hour by our Indian army under Lord Keane Mahmood was the first

Mahometan invader of Hindostan.] in Anno Domini 1000, in the vast

regions between the Tigris, the Oxus, and the Indus. Regularly as it

approached, gold and jewels must have sunk by whole harvests into the

ground. A certain per centage has been doubtless recovered: a larger

per centage has disappeared for ever. Hence naturally the jealousy of

barbarous Orientals that we Europeans, in groping amongst pyramids,

sphynxes, and tombs, are looking for buried treasures. The wretches are

not so wide astray in what they believe as in what they disbelieve. The

treasures do really exist which they fancy; but then also the other

treasures in the glorious antiquities have that existence for our sense

of beauty which to their brutality is inconceivable. In these

circumstances, why should it surprise us that men will pursue the

science of discovery as a regular trade? Many discoveries of treasure

are doubtless made continually, which, for obvious reasons, are

communicated to nobody. Some proportion there must be between the

sowing of such grain as diamonds or emeralds, and the subsequent

reaping, whether by accident or by art. For, with regard to the last,

it is no more impossible, _prima fronte_, that a substance may exist

having an occult sympathy with subterraneous water or subterraneous

gold, than that the magnet should have a sympathy (as yet occult) with

the northern pole of our planet.

The first flash of careless thought applied to such a case will

suggest, that men holding powers of this nature need not offer their

services for hire to others. And this, in fact, is the objection

universally urged by us Europeans as decisive against their

pretensions. Their knavery, it is fancied, stands self-recorded; since,

assuredly, they would not be willing to divide their subterranean

treasures, if they knew of any. But the men are not in such self-

contradiction as may seem. Lady Hester Stanhope, from the better

knowledge she had acquired of Oriental opinions, set Dr. Madden right

on this point. The Oriental belief is that a fatality attends the

appropriator of a treasure in any case where he happens also to be the

discoverer. Such a person, it is held, will die soon, and suddenly--so

that he is compelled to seek his remuneration from the wages or fees of

his employers, not from the treasure itself.

Many more secret laws are held sacred amongst the professors of that

art than that which was explained by Lady Hester Stanhope. These we

shall not enter upon at present: but generally we may remark, that the

same practices of subterranean deposits, during our troubled periods in

Europe, led to the same superstitions. And it may be added, that the

same error has arisen in both cases as to some of these superstitions.

How often must it have struck people of liberal feelings, as a

scandalous proof of the preposterous value set upon riches by poor men,

that ghosts should popularly be supposed to rise and wander for the

sake of revealing the situations of buried treasures. For ourselves, we

have been accustomed to view this popular belief in the light of an

argument for pity rather than for contempt towards poor men, as

indicating the extreme pressure of that necessity which could so have

demoralized their natural sense of truth. But certainly, in whatever

feelings originating, such popular superstitions as to motives of

ghostly missions did seem to argue a deplorable misconception of the

relation subsisting between the spiritual world and the perishable

treasures of this perishable world. Yet, when we look into the Eastern

explanations of this case, we find that it is meant to express, not any

overvaluation of riches, but the direct contrary passion. A human

spirit is punished--such is the notion--punished in the spiritual world

for excessive attachment to gold, by degradation to the office of its

guardian; and from this office the tortured spirit can release itself

only by revealing the treasure and transferring the custody. It is a

penal martyrdom, not an elective passion for gold, which is thus

exemplified in the wanderings of a treasure-ghost.

But, in a field where of necessity we are so much limited, we willingly

pass from the consideration of these treasure or _khasne_ phantoms

(which alone sufficiently ensure a swarm of ghostly terrors for all

Oriental ruins of cities,) to the same marvellous apparitions, as they

haunt other solitudes even more awful than those of ruined cities. In

this world there are two mighty forms of perfect solitude--the ocean

and the desert: the wilderness of the barren sands, and the wilderness

of the barren waters. Both are the parents of inevitable superstitions

--of terrors, solemn, ineradicable, eternal. Sailors and the children

of the desert are alike overrun with spiritual hauntings, from

accidents of peril essentially connected with those modes of life, and

from the eternal spectacle of the infinite. Voices seem to blend with

the raving of the sea, which will for ever impress the feeling of

beings more than human: and every chamber of the great wilderness

which, with little interruption, stretches from the Euphrates to the

western shores of Africa, has its own peculiar terrors both as to

sights and sounds. In the wilderness of Zin, between Palestine and the

Red Sea, a section of the desert well known in these days to our own

countrymen, bells are heard daily pealing for matins, or for vespers,

from some phantom convent that no search of Christian or of Bedouin

Arab has ever been able to discover. These bells have sounded since the

Crusades. Other sounds, trumpets, the _Alala_ of armies, &c., are

heard in other regions of the Desert. Forms, also, are seen of more

people than have any right to be walking in human paths: sometimes

forms of avowed terror; sometimes, which is a case of far more danger,

appearances that mimic the shapes of men, and even of friends or

comrades. This is a case much dwelt on by the old travellers, and which

throws a gloom over the spirits of all Bedouins, and of every cafila or

caravan. We all know what a sensation of loneliness or 'eeriness' (to

use an expressive term of the ballad poetry) arises to any small party

assembling in a single room of a vast desolate mansion: how the timid

among them fancy continually that they hear some remote door opening,

or trace the sound of suppressed footsteps from some distant staircase.

Such is the feeling in the desert, even in the midst of the caravan.

The mighty solitude is seen: the dread silence is anticipated which

will succeed to this brief transit of men, camels, and horses. Awe

prevails even in the midst of society: but, if the traveller should

loiter behind from fatigue, or be so imprudent as to ramble aside--

should he from any cause once lose sight of his party, it is held that

his chance is small of recovering their traces. And why? Not chiefly

from the want of footmarks where the wind effaces all impressions in

half an hour, or of eyemarks where all is one blank ocean of sand, but

much more from the sounds or the visual appearances which are supposed

to beset and to seduce all insulated wanderers.

Everybody knows the superstitions of the ancients about the

_Nympholeptoi_, or those who had seen Pan. But far more awful and

gloomy are the existing superstitions, throughout Asia and Africa, as

to the perils of those who are phantom-haunted in the wilderness. The

old Venetian traveller Marco Polo states them well: he speaks, indeed,

of the Eastern or Tartar deserts; the steppes which stretch from

European Russia to the footsteps of the Chinese throne; but exactly the

same creed prevails amongst the Arabs, from Bagdad to Suez and Cairo--

from Rosetta to Tunis--Tunis to Timbuctoo or Mequinez. 'If, during the

daytime,' says he, 'any person should remain behind until the caravan

is no longer in sight, he hears himself unexpectedly called to by name,

and in a voice with which he is familiar. Not doubting that the voice

proceeds from some of his comrades, the unhappy man is beguiled from

the right direction; and soon finding himself utterly confounded as to

the path, he roams about in distraction until he perishes miserably.

If, on the other hand, this perilous separation of himself from the

caravan should happen at night, he is sure to hear the uproar of a

great cavalcade a mile or two to the right or left of the true track.

He is thus seduced on one side: and at break of day finds himself far

removed from man. Nay, even at noon-day, it is well known that grave

and respectable men to all appearance will come up to a particular

traveller, will bear the look of a friend, and will gradually lure him

by earnest conversation to a distance from the caravan; after which the

sounds of men and camels will be heard continually at all points but

the true one; whilst an insensible turning by the tenth of an inch at

each separate step from the true direction will very soon suffice to

set the traveller's face to the opposite point of the compass from that

which his safety requires, and which his fancy represents to him as his

real direction. Marvellous, indeed, and almost passing belief, are the

stories reported of these desert phantoms, which are said at times to

fill the air with choral music from all kinds of instruments, from

drums, and the clash of arms: so that oftentimes a whole caravan are

obliged to close up their open ranks, and to proceed in a compact line

of march.'

Lord Lindsay, in his very interesting travels in Egypt, Edom, &c.,

agrees with Warton in supposing (and probably enough) that from this

account of the desert traditions in Marco Polo was derived Milton's

fine passage in Comus:--

'Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,

And aery tongues that syllable men's names

On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.'

But the most remarkable of these desert superstitions, as suggested by

the mention of Lord Lindsay, is one which that young nobleman, in some

place which we cannot immediately find, has noticed, but which he only

was destined by a severe personal loss immediately to illustrate. Lord

L. quotes from Vincent le Blanc an anecdote of a man in his own

caravan, the companion of an Arab merchant, who disappeared in a

mysterious manner. Four Moors, with a retaining fee of 100 ducats, were

sent in quest of him, but came back _re infecta_. 'And 'tis

uncertain,' adds Le Blanc, 'whether he was swallowed up in the sands,

or met his death by any other misfortune; as it often happens, by the

relation of a merchant then in our company, who told us, that two years

before, traversing the same journey, a comrade of his, going a little

aside from the company, saw three men who called him by his name; and

one of them, to his thinking, favored very much his companion; and, as

he was about to follow them, his real companion calling him to come

back to his company, he found himself deceived by the others, and thus

was saved. And all travellers in these parts hold, that in the deserts

are many such phantasms seen, that strive to seduce the traveller.'

Thus far it is the traveller's own fault, warned as he is continually

by the extreme anxiety of the Arab leaders or guides, with respect to

all who stray to any distance, if he is duped or enticed by these

pseudo-men: though, in the case of Lapland dogs, who ought to have a

surer instinct of detection for counterfeits, we know from Sir Capel de

Broke and others, that they are continually wiled away by the wolves

who roam about the nightly encampments of travellers. But there is a

secondary disaster, according to the Arab superstition, awaiting those

whose eyes are once opened to the discernment of these phantoms. To see

them, or to hear them, even where the traveller is careful to refuse

their lures, entails the certainty of death in no long time. This is

another form of that universal faith which made it impossible for any

man to survive a bodily commerce, by whatever sense, with a spiritual

being. We find it in the Old Testament, where the expression, 'I have

seen God and shall die,' means simply a supernatural being; since no

Hebrew believed it possible for a nature purely human to sustain for a

moment the sight of the Infinite Being. We find the same faith amongst

ourselves, in case of _doppelgänger_ becoming apparent to the

sight of those whom they counterfeit; and in many other varieties. We

modern Europeans, of course, laugh at these superstitions; though, as

La Place remarks, (_Essai sur les Probabilités_,) any case,

however apparently incredible, if it is a recurrent case, is as much

entitled to a fair valuation as if it had been more probable

beforehand.[Footnote: _'Is as much entitled to a fair valuation,

under the lans of induction, as if it had been more probable

beforehand'_--One of the cases which La Place notices as entitled to

a grave consideration, but which would most assuredly be treated as a

trivial phenomenon, unworthy of attention, by commonplace spectators,

is--when a run of success, with no apparent cause, takes place on heads

or tails, (_pile ou croix_) Most people dismiss such a case as

pure accident. But La Place insists on its being duly valued as a fact,

however unaccountable as an effect. So again, if in a large majority of

experiences like those of Lord Lindsay's party in the desert, death

should follow, such a phenomenon is as well entitled to its separate

valuation as any other.] This being premised, we who connect

superstition with the personal result, are more impressed by the

disaster which happened to Lord Lindsay, than his lordship, who either

failed to notice the _nexus_ between the events, or possibly

declined to put the case too forward in his reader's eye, from the

solemnity of the circumstances, and the private interest to himself and

his own family, of the subsequent event. The case was this:--Mr.

William Wardlaw Ramsay, the companion (and we believe relative) of Lord

Lindsay, a man whose honorable character, and whose intellectual

accomplishments speak for themselves, in the posthumus memorabilia of

his travels published by Lord L., had seen an array of objects in the

desert, which facts immediately succeeding demonstrated to have been a

mere ocular _lusus_, or (according to Arab notions) phantoms.

During the absence from home of an Arab sheikh, who had been hired as

conductor of Lord Lindsay's party, a hostile tribe (bearing the name of

Tellaheens) had assaulted and pillaged his tents. Report of this had

reached the English travelling party; it was known that the Tellaheens

were still in motion, and a hostile rencounter was looked for for some

days. At length, in crossing the well known valley of the _Wady

Araba_, that most ancient channel of communication between the Red

Sea and Judea, &c., Mr. Ramsay saw, to his own entire conviction, a

party of horse moving amongst some sand-hills. Afterwards it became

certain, from accurate information, that this must have been a

delusion. It was established, that no horseman _could_ have been

in that neighborhood at that time. Lord Lindsay records the case as an

illustration of 'that spiritualized tone the imagination naturally

assumes, in scenes presenting so little sympathy with the ordinary

feelings of humanity;' and he reports the case in these pointed terms:

--'Mr. Ramsay, a man of remarkably strong sight, and by no means

disposed to superstitious credulity, distinctly saw a party of horse

moving among the sand-hills; and I do not believe he was ever able to

divest himself of that impression.' No--and, according to Arab

interpretation, very naturally so; for, according to their faith, he

really _had_ seen the horsemen; phantom horseman certainly, but

still objects of sight. The sequel remains to be told--by the Arabian

hypothesis, Mr. Ramsay had but a short time to live--he was under a

secret summons to the next world. And accordingly, in a few weeks after

this, whilst Lord Lindsay had gone to visit Palmyra, Mr. Ramsay died at

Damascus.

This was a case exactly corresponding to the Pagan _nympholepsis_

--he had seen the beings whom it is not lawful to see and live. Another

case of Eastern superstition, not less determined, and not less

remarkably fulfilled, occurred some years before to Dr. Madden, who

travelled pretty much in the same route as Lord Lindsay. The doctor, as

a phrenologist, had been struck with the very singular conformation of

a skull which he saw amongst many others on an altar in some Syrian

convent. He offered a considerable sum in gold for it; but it was by

repute the skull of a saint; and the monk with whom Dr. M. attempted to

negotiate, not only refused his offers, but protested that even for the

doctor's sake, apart from the interests of the convent, he could not

venture on such a transfer: for that, by the tradition attached to it,

the skull would endanger any vessel carrying it from the Syrian shore:

the vessel might escape; but it would never succeed in reaching any but

a Syrian harbor. After this, for the credit of our country, which

stands so high in the East, and should be so punctiliously tended by

all Englishmen, we are sorry to record that Dr. Madden (though

otherwise a man of scrupulous honor) yielded to the temptation of

substituting for the saint's skull another less remarkable from his own

collection. With this saintly relic he embarked on board a Grecian

ship; was alternately pursued and met by storms the most violent;

larboard and starboard, on every quarter, he was buffeted; the wind

blew from every point of the compass; the doctor honestly confesses

that he often wished this baleful skull back in safety on the quiet

altar from which he took it; and finally, after many days of anxiety,

he was too happy in finding himself again restored to some oriental

port, from which he secretly vowed never again to sail with a saint's

skull, or with any skull, however remarkable phrenologically, not

purchased in an open market.

Thus we have pursued, through many of its most memorable sections, the

spirit of the miraculous as it moulded and gathered itself in the

superstitions of Paganism; and we have shown that, in the modern

superstitions of Christianity, or of Mahometanism, (often enough

borrowed from Christian sources,) there is a pretty regular

correspondence. Speaking with a reference to the strictly popular

belief, it cannot be pretended for a moment, that miraculous agencies

are slumbering in modern ages. For one superstition of that nature

which the Pagans had, we can produce twenty. And if, from the collation

of numbers, we should pass to that of quality, it is a matter of

notoriety, that from the very philosophy of Paganism, and its slight

root in the terrors or profounder mysteries of spiritual nature, no

comparison could be sustained for a moment between the true religion

and any mode whatever of the false. Ghosts we have purposely omitted,

because that idea is so peculiarly Christian [Footnote: '_Because

that idea is so peculiarly Christian_'--One reason, additional to

the main one, why the idea of a ghost could not be conceived or

reproduced by Paganism, lies in the fourfold resolution of the human

nature at death, viz.--1. _corpus_; 2. _manes_; 3. _spiritus_;

4. _anima_. No reversionary consciousness, no restitution of the total

nature, sentient and active, was thus possible. Pliny has a story which

looks like a ghost story; but it is all moonshine--a mere

_simulacrum_.] as to reject all counterparts or affinities from other

modes of the supernatural. The Christian ghost is too awful a presence,

and with too large a substratum of the real, the impassioned, the

human, for our present purposes. We deal chiefly with the wilder and

more ærial forms of superstition; not so far off from fleshly nature as

the purely allegoric--not so near as the penal, the purgatorial, the

penitential. In this middle class, 'Gabriel's hounds'--the 'phantom

ship'--the gloomy legends of the charcoal burners in the German

forests--and the local or epichorial superstitions from every district

of Europe, come forward by thousands, attesting the high activity of

the miraculous and the hyperphysical instincts, even in this

generation, wheresoever the voice of the people makes itself heard.

But in Pagan times, it will be objected, the popular superstitions

blended themselves with the highest political functions, gave a

sanction to national counsels, and oftentimes gave their starting point

to the very primary movements of the state. Prophecies, omens,

miracles, all worked concurrently with senates or princes. Whereas in

our days, says Charles Lamb, the witch who takes her pleasure with the

moon, and summons Beelzebub to her sabbaths, nevertheless trembles

before the beadle, and hides herself from the overseer. Now, as to the

witch, even the horrid Canidia of Horace, or the more dreadful Erichtho

of Lucan, seems hardly to have been much respected in any era. But for

the other modes of the supernatural, they have entered into more

frequent combinations with state functions and state movements in our

modern ages than in the classical age of Paganism. Look at prophecies,

for example: the Romans had a few obscure oracles afloat, and they had

the Sibylline books under the state seal. These books, in fact, had

been kept so long, that, like port wine superannuated, they had lost

their flavor and body. [Footnote: '_Like port wine superannuated, the

Sibylline books had lost their flavor and their body_.'--There is an

allegoric description in verse, by Mr. Rogers, of an ice-house, in

which winter is described as a captive, &c., which is memorable on this

account, that a brother poet, on reading the passage, mistook it, (from

not understanding the allegorical expressions,) either sincerely or

maliciously, for a description of the house-dog. Now, this little

anecdote seems to embody the poor Sibyl's history,--from a stern icy

sovereign, with a petrific mace, she lapsed into an old toothless

mastiff. She continued to snore in her ancient kennel for above a

thousand years. The last person who attempted to stir her up with a

long pole, and to extract from her paralytic dreaming some growls or

snarls against Christianity, was Aurelian, in a moment of public panic.

But the thing was past all tampering. The poor creature could neither

be kicked nor coaxed into vitality.] On the other hand, look at France.

Henry the historian, speaking of the fifteenth century, describes it as

a national infirmity of the English to be prophecy-ridden. Perhaps

there never was any foundation for this as an exclusive remark; but

assuredly not in the next century. There had been with us British, from

the twelfth century, Thomas of Ercildoune in the north, and many

monkish local prophets for every part of the island; but latterly

England had no terrific prophet, unless, indeed Nixon of the Vale Royal

in Cheshire, who uttered his dark oracles sometimes with a merely

Cestrian, sometimes with a national reference. Whereas in France,

throughout the sixteenth century, every principal event was foretold

successively, with an accuracy that still shocks and confounds us.

Francis the First, who opens the century, (and by many is held to open

the book of _modern history_, as distinguished from the middle or

_feudal_ history,) had the battle of Pavia foreshown to him, not

by name, but in its results--by his own Spanish captivity--by the

exchange for his own children upon a frontier river of Spain--finally,

by his own disgraceful death, through an infamous disease conveyed to

him under a deadly circuit of revenge. This king's son, Henry the

Second, read some years _before_ the event a description of that

tournament, on the marriage of the Scottish Queen with his eldest son,

Francis II., which proved fatal to himself, through the awkwardness of

the Compte de Montgomery and his own obstinacy. After this, and we

believe a little after the brief reign of Francis II., arose

Nostradamus, the great prophet of the age. All the children of Henry

II. and of Catharine de Medici, one after the other, died in

circumstances of suffering and horror, and Nostradamus pursued the

whole with ominous allusions. Charles IX., though the authorizer of the

Bartholomew massacre, was the least guilty of his party, and the only

one who manifested a dreadful remorse. Henry III., the last of the

brothers, died, as the reader will remember, by assassination. And all

these tragic successions of events are still to be read more or less

dimly prefigured in verses of which we will not here discuss the dates.

Suffice it, that many authentic historians attest the good faith of the

prophets; and finally, with respect to the first of the Bourbon

dynasty, Henry IV., who succeeded upon the assassination of his

brother-in-law, we have the peremptory assurance of Sully and other

Protestants, countersigned by writers both historical and

controversial, that not only was he prepared, by many warnings, for his

own tragical death--not only was the day, the hour prefixed--not only

was an almanac sent to him, in which the bloody summer's day of 1610

was pointed out to his attention in bloody colors; but the mere record

of the king's last afternoon shows beyond a doubt the extent and the

punctual limitation of his anxieties. In fact, it is to this attitude

of listening expectation in the king, and breathless waiting for the

blow, that Schiller alludes in that fine speech of Wallenstein to his

sister, where he notices the funeral knells that sounded continually in

Henry's ears, and, above all, his prophetic instinct, that caught the

sound from a far distance of his murderer's motions, and could

distinguish, amidst all the tumult of a mighty capital, those stealthy

steps

----'Which even then were seeking him

Throughout the streets of Paris.'

We profess not to admire Henry the Fourth of France, whose secret

character we shall, on some other occasion, attempt to expose. But his

resignation to the appointments of Heaven, in dismissing his guards, as

feeling that against a danger so domestic and so mysterious, all

fleshly arms were vain, has always struck us as the most like

magnanimity of anything in his very theatrical life.

Passing to our own country, and to the times immediately in succession,

we fall upon some striking prophecies, not verbal but symbolic, if we

turn from the broad highway of public histories, to the by-paths of

private memories. Either Clarendon it is, in his Life (not his public

history), or else Laud, who mentions an anecdote connected with the

coronation of Charles I., (the son-in-law of the murdered Bourbon,)

which threw a gloom upon the spirits of the royal friends, already

saddened by the dreadful pestilence which inaugurated the reign of this

ill-fated prince, levying a tribute of one life in sixteen from the

population of the English metropolis. At the coronation of Charles, it

was discovered that all London would not furnish the quantity of purple

velvet required for the royal robes and the furniture of the throne.

What was to be done? Decorum required that the furniture should be all

_en suite_. Nearer than Genoa no considerable addition could be

expected. That would impose a delay of 150 days. Upon mature

consideration, and chiefly of the many private interests that would

suffer amongst the multitudes whom such a solemnity had called up from

the country, it was resolved to robe the King in _white_ velvet.

But this, as it afterwards occurred, was the color in which victims

were arrayed. And thus, it was alleged, did the King's council

establish an augury of evil. Three other ill omens, of some celebrity,

occurred to Charles I., viz., on occasion of creating his son Charles a

knight of the Bath, at Oxford some years after; and at the bar of that

tribunal which sat in judgment upon him.

The reign of his second son, James II., the next reign that could be

considered an unfortunate reign, was inaugurated by the same evil

omens. The day selected for the coronation (in 1685) was a day

memorable for England--it was St. George's day, the 23d of April, and

entitled, even on a separate account, to be held a sacred day as the

birthday of Shakspeare in 1564, and his deathday in 1616. The King

saved a sum of sixty thousand pounds by cutting off the ordinary

cavalcade from the Tower of London to Westminster. Even this was

imprudent. It is well known that, amongst the lowest class of the

English, there is an obstinate prejudice (though unsanctioned by law)

with respect to the obligation imposed by the ceremony of coronation.

So long as this ceremony is delayed, or mutilated, they fancy that

their obedience is a matter of mere prudence, liable to be enforced by

arms, but not consecrated either by law or by religion. The change made

by James was, therefore, highly imprudent; shorn of its antique

traditionary usages, the yoke of conscience was lightened at a moment

when it required a double ratification. Neither was it called for on

motives of economy, for James was unusually rich. This voluntary

arrangement was, therefore, a bad beginning; but the accidental omens

were worse. They are thus reported by Blennerhassett, (History of

England to the end of George I., Vol. iv., p. 1760, printed at

Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 1751.) 'The crown being too little for the King's

head, was often in a tottering condition, and like to fall off.' Even

this was observed attentively by spectators of the most opposite

feelings. But there was another simultaneous omen, which affected the

Protestant enthusiasts, and the superstitious, whether Catholic or

Protestant, still more alarmingly. 'The same day the king's arms,

pompously painted in the great altar window of a London church,

suddenly fell down without apparent cause, and broke to pieces, whilst

the rest of the window remained standing. Blennerhassett mutters the

dark terrors which possessed himself and others.' 'These,' says he,

'were reckoned ill omens to the king.'

In France, as the dreadful criminality of the French sovereigns through

the 17th century began to tell powerfully, and reproduce itself in the

miseries and tumults of the French populace through the 18th century,

it is interesting to note the omens which unfolded themselves at

intervals. A volume might be written upon them. The French Bourbons

renewed the picture of that fatal house which in Thebes offered to the

Grecian observers the spectacle of dire auguries, emerging from

darkness through three generations, _à plusieurs reprises_.

Everybody knows the fatal pollution of the marriage pomps on the

reception of Marie Antoinette in Paris; the numbers who perished are

still spoken of obscurely as to the amount, and with shuddering awe for

the unparalleled horrors standing in the background of the fatal reign

--horrors

'That hush'd in grim repose, await their evening prey.'

But in the life of Goethe is mentioned a still more portentous (though

more shadowy) omen in the pictorial decorations of the arras which

adorned the pavilion on the French frontier; the first objects which

met the Austrian Archduchess on being hailed as Dauphiness, was a

succession of the most tragic groups from the most awful section of the

Grecian theatre. The next alliance of the same kind between the same

great empires, in the persons of Napoleon and the Archduchess Marie

Louisa, was overshadowed by the same unhappy omens, and, as we all

remember, with the same unhappy results, within a brief period of five

years.

Or, if we should resort to the fixed and monumental rather than to

these auguries of great nations--such, for instance, as were embodied

in those _Palladia_, or protesting talismans, which capital

cities, whether Pagan or Christian, glorified through a period of

twenty-five hundred years, we shall find a long succession of these

enchanted pledges, from the earliest precedent of Troy (whose palladium

was undoubtedly a talisman) down to that equally memorable, and bearing

the same name, at Western Rome. We may pass, by a vast transition of

two and a half millennia, to that great talisman of Constantinople, the

triple serpent, (having perhaps an original reference to the Mosaic

serpent of the wilderness, which healed the infected by the simple act

of looking upon it, as the symbol of the Redeemer, held aloft upon the

Cross for the deliverance from moral contagion.) This great consecrated

talisman, venerated equally by Christian, by Pagan, and by Mahometan,

was struck on the head by Mahomet the Second, on that same day, May

29th of 1453, in which he mastered by storm this glorious city, the

bulwark of eastern Christendom, and the immediate rival of his own

European throne at Adrianople. But mark the superfetation of omens--

omen supervening upon omen, augury engrafted upon augury. The hour was

a sad one for Christianity; just 720 years before the western horn of

Islam had been rebutted in France by the Germans, chiefly under Charles

Martel. But now it seemed as though another horn, even more vigorous,

was preparing to assault Christendom and its hopes from the eastern

quarter. At this epoch, in the very hour of triumph, when the last of

the Cæsars had glorified his station, and sealed his testimony by

martyrdom, the fanatical Sultan, riding to his stirrups in blood, and

wielding that iron mace which had been his sole weapon, as well as

cognizance, through the battle, advanced to the column, round which the

triple serpent roared spirally upwards. He smote the brazen talisman;

he shattered one head; he left it mutilated as the record of his great

revolution; but crush it, destroy it, he did not--as a symbol

prefiguring the fortunes of Mahometanism, his people noticed, that in

the critical hour of fate, which stamped the Sultan's acts with

efficacy through ages, he had been prompted by his secret genius only

to 'scotch the snake,' not to crush it. Afterwards the fatal hour was

gone by; and this imperfect augury has since concurred traditionally

with the Mahometan prophecies about the Adrianople gate of

Constantinople, to depress the ultimate hopes of Islam in the midst of

all its insolence. The very haughtiest of the Mussulmans believe that

the gate is already in existence, through which the red Giaours (the

_Russi_) shall pass to the conquest of Stamboul; and that

everywhere, in Europe at least, the hat of Frangistan is destined to

surmount the turban--the crescent must go down before the cross.