No _head_ is a vacuum. Some, like a paltry cottage, are ill
accommodated, dark, and circumscribed; others are capacious as
Westminster-Hall. Though none are immense, yet they are capable of
immense furniture. The more room is taken up by knowledge, the less
remains for credulity. The more a man is acquainted with things, the
more willing to _give up the ghost_. Every town and village, within my
knowledge, has been pestered with spirits; which appear in horrid forms
to the imagination in the winter night--but the spirits which haunt
Birmingham, are those of industry and luxury.
If we examine the whole parish, we cannot produce one _old_ witch; but
we have plenty of young, who exercise a powerful influence over us.
Should the ladies accuse the harsh epithet, they will please to
consider, I allow them, what of all things they most wish for, _power_,
therefore the balance is in my favor.
If we pass through the planitary worlds, we shall be able to muster up
two conjurers, who endeavoured to _shine with the stars_. The first,
John Walton, who was so busy in calling the nativity of others, he
forgot his own.
Conscious of an application to himself, for the discovery of stolen
goods, he employed his people to steal them. And though, for many years
confined to his bed by infirmity, he could conjure away the property of
others, and, for a reward, reconjure it again.
The prevalence of this evil, induced the legislature, in 1725, to make
the _reception_ of stolen goods capital. The first sacrifice to this law
was the noted Jonathan Wild.
The officers of justice, in 1732, pulled Walton out of his bed, in an
obscure cottage, one furlong from the town, now Brickhill-Lane, carried
him to prison, and from thence to the gallows--they had better have
carried him to the workhouse, and his followers to the anvil.
To him succeeded Francis Kimberley, the only reasoning animal, who
resided at No. 60, in Dale-End, from his early youth to extreme
age.--An hermit in a crowd! The windows of his house were strangers to
light! The shutters forgot to open; the chimney to smoak. His cellar,
though amply furnished, never knew moisture.
He spent threescore years in filling six rooms with such trumpery as is
just too good to be thrown away, and too bad to be kept. His life was as
inoffensive as long. Instead of _stealing_ the goods which other people
use, he _purchased_ what he could not use himself. He was not anxious
what kind of property entered his house; if there was _bulk_ he was
satisfied.
His dark house, and his dark figure corresponded with each other. The
apartments, choaked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though
of the skeleton order. Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science,
for I never knew a corpulent conjurer.
His diet, regular, plain, and slender, shewed at how little expence life
may be sustained.
His library consisted of several thousand volumes, not one of which, I
believe, he ever read: having written, in characters unknown to all but
himself, his name, price, and date, in the title-page, he laid them by
for ever. The highest pitch of his erudition was the annual almanack.
He never wished to approach a woman, or be approached by one. Should the
rest of men, for half a century, pay no more attention to the fair, some
angelic hand might stick up a note, like the artic circle over one of
our continents, _this world to be let_.
If he did not cultivate the human species, the spiders, more numerous
than his books, enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of quiet. The silence of
the place was not broken: the broom, the book, the dust, or the web, was
not disturbed. Mercury and his shirt, changed their revolutions
together; and Saturn changed _his_, with his coat.
He died, in 1756, as conjurers usually die, unlamented.