on some trivial point, and the latter, losing his temper,
impertinently spat in the face of the veteran. Sir Walter,
instead of running him through the body, as many would have
done, or challenging him to mortal combat, coolly took out
his handkerchief, wiped his face, and said, "Young man, if I
could as easily wipe from my conscience the stain of killing
you, as I can this spittle from my face, you should not live
another minute." The young man immediately begged his
pardon.
Two of the most notorious duels of modern times had their origin in causes
no more worthy than the quarrel of a dog and the favour of a prostitute:
that between Macnamara and Montgomery arising from the former; and that
between Best and Lord Camelford from the latter. The dog of Montgomery
attacked a dog belonging to Macnamara, and each master interfering in
behalf of his own animal, high words ensued. The result was the giving and
accepting a challenge to mortal combat. The parties met on the following
day, when Montgomery was shot dead, and his antagonist severely wounded.
The affair created a great sensation at the time, and Heaviside, the
surgeon who attended at the fatal field to render his assistance if
necessary, was arrested as an accessory to the murder, and committed to
Newgate.
In the duel between Best and Lord Camelford, two pistols were used which
were considered to be the best in England. One of them was thought
slightly superior to the other, and it was agreed that the belligerents
should toss up a piece of money to decide the choice of weapons. Best
gained it, and at the first discharge, Lord Camelford fell mortally
wounded. But little sympathy was expressed for his fate; he was a
confirmed duellist, had been engaged in many meetings of the kind, and the
blood of more than one fellow-creature lay at his door. As he had sowed,
so did he reap; and the violent man met an appropriate death.
It now only remains to notice the means that have been taken to stay the
prevalence of this madness of false honour in the various countries of the
civilised world. The efforts of the governments of France and England have
already been mentioned, and their want of success is but too well known.
The same efforts have been attended with the same results elsewhere. In
despotic countries, where the will of the monarch has been strongly
expressed and vigorously supported, a diminution of the evil has for a
time resulted, but only to be increased again, when death relaxed the iron
grasp, and a successor appeared of less decided opinions on the subject.
This was the case in Prussia, under the great Frederick, of whose aversion
to duelling a popular anecdote is recorded. It is stated of him that he
permitted duelling in his army, but only upon the condition that the
combatants should fight in presence of a whole battalion of infantry,
drawn up on purpose to see fair play. The latter received strict orders,
when one of the belligerents fell, to shoot the other immediately. It is
added, that the known determination of the king effectually put a stop to
the practice.
The Emperor Joseph II. of Austria was as firm as Frederick, although the
measures he adopted were not so singular. The following letter explains
his views on the subject:
"TO GENERAL * * * * *
"MY GENERAL,
"You will immediately arrest the Count of K. and Captain W. The
count is young, passionate, and influenced by wrong notions of
birth and a false spirit of honour. Captain W. is an old soldier,
who will adjust every dispute with the sword and pistol, and who
has received the challenge of the young count with unbecoming
warmth.
"I will suffer no duelling in my army. I despise the principles of
those who attempt to justify the practice, and who would run each
other through the body in cold blood.
"When I have officers who bravely expose themselves to every
danger in facing the enemy--who at all times exhibit courage,
valour, and resolution in attack and defence, I esteem them
highly. The coolness with which they meet death on such occasions
is serviceable to their country, and at the same time redounds to
their own honour; but should there be men amongst them who are
ready to sacrifice every thing to their vengeance and hatred, I
despise them. I consider such a man as no better than a Roman
gladiator.
"Order a court-martial to try the two officers. Investigate the
subject of their dispute with that impartiality which I demand
from every judge; and he that is guilty, let him be a sacrifice to
his fate and the laws.
"Such a barbarous custom, which suits the age of the Tamerlanes
and Bajazets, and which has often had such melancholy effects on
single families, I will have suppressed and punished, even if it
should deprive me of one half of my officers. There are still men
who know how to unite the character of a hero with that of a good
subject; and he only can be so who respects the laws.
"_August, 1771._ JOSEPH."[69]
[69] Vide the Letters of Joseph II. to distinguished Princes and
Statesmen, published for the first time in England in _The
Pamphleteer_ for 1821. They were originally published in
Germany a few years previously, and throw a great light upon
the character of that monarch and the events of his reign.
In the United States of America the code varies considerably. In one or
two of the still wild and simple states of the far West, where no duel has
yet been fought, there is no specific law upon the subject beyond that in
the Decalogue, which says, "Thou shalt do no murder;" but duelling every
where follows the steps of modern civilisation; and by the time the
backwoodsman is transformed into the citizen, he has imbibed the false
notions of honour which are prevalent in Europe and around him, and is
ready, like his progenitors, to settle his differences with the pistol. In
the majority of the States the punishment for challenging, fighting, or
acting as second, is solitary imprisonment and hard labour for any period
less than a year, and disqualification for serving any public office for
twenty years. In Vermont the punishment is total disqualification for
office, deprivation of the rights of citizenship, and a fine; in fatal
cases, the same punishment as that of murderers. In Rhode Island, the
combatant, though death does not ensue, is liable to be carted to the
gallows, with a rope about his neck, and to sit in this trim for an hour
exposed to the peltings of the mob. He may be further imprisoned for a
year, at the option of the magistrate. In Connecticut the punishment is
total disqualification for office or employ, and a fine varying from one
hundred to a thousand dollars. The laws of Illinois require certain
officers of the state to make oath, previous to their instalment, that
they have never been, nor ever will be, concerned in a duel.[70]
[70] _Encyclopedia Americana_, art. Duelling.
Amongst the edicts against duelling, promulgated at various times in
Europe, may be mentioned that of Augustus King of Poland, in 1712, which
decreed the punishment of death against principals and seconds, and minor
punishments against the bearers of a challenge. An edict was also
published at Munich, in 1773, according to which both principals and
seconds, even in duels where no one was either killed or wounded, should
be hanged, and their bodies buried at the foot of the gallows.
The king of Naples issued an ordinance against duelling in 1838, in which
the punishment of death is decreed against all concerned in a fatal duel.
The bodies of those killed, and of those who may be executed in
consequence, are to be buried in unconsecrated ground, and without any
religious ceremony; nor is any monument to be erected on the spot. The
punishment for duels in which either, or both, are wounded, and for those
in which no damage whatever is done, varies according to the case, and
consists of fine, imprisonment, loss of rank and honours, and incapacity
for filling any public situation. Bearers of challenges may also be
punished with fine and imprisonment.
It might be imagined that enactments so severe all over the civilised
world would finally eradicate a custom, the prevalence of which every wise
and good man must deplore. But the frowns of the law never yet have
taught, and never will teach, men to desist from this practice, as long as
it is felt that the lawgiver sympathises with it in his heart. The stern
judge upon the bench may say to the unfortunate wight who has been called
a liar by some unmannerly opponent, "If you challenge him, you meditate
murder, and are guilty of murder!" but the same judge, divested of his
robes of state, and mixing in the world with other men, would say, "If you
do not challenge him, if you do not run the risk of making yourself a
murderer, you will be looked upon as a mean-spirited wretch, unfit to
associate with your fellows, and deserving nothing but their scorn and
their contempt!" It is society, and not the duellist, who is to blame.
Female influence too, which is so powerful in leading men either to good
or to evil, takes in this case the evil part. Mere animal bravery has,
unfortunately, such charms in the female eye, that a successful duellist
is but too often regarded as a sort of hero; and the man who refuses to
fight, though of truer courage, is thought a poltroon, who may be trampled
on. Mr. Graves, a member of the American legislature, who, early in 1838,
killed a Mr. Cilley in a duel, truly and eloquently said, on the floor of
the House of Representatives, when lamenting the unfortunate issue of that
encounter, that society was more to blame than he was. "Public opinion,"
said the repentant orator, "is practically the paramount law of the land.
Every other law, both human and divine, ceases to be observed; yea,
withers and perishes in contact with it. It was this paramount law of this
nation and of this House that forced me, under the penalty of dishonour,
to subject myself to the code, which impelled me unwillingly into this
tragical affair. Upon the heads of this nation, and at the doors of this
House, rests the blood with which my unfortunate hands have been stained!"
As long as society is in this mood; as long as it thinks that the man who
refuses to resent an insult, deserved that insult, and should be scouted
accordingly; so long, it is to be feared, will duelling exist, however
severe the laws may be. Men must have redress for injuries inflicted; and
when those injuries are of such a nature that no tribunal will take
cognisance of them, the injured will take the law into their own hands,
and right themselves in the opinion of their fellows, at the hazard of
their lives. Much as the sage may affect to despise the opinion of the
world, there are few who would not rather expose their lives a hundred
times than be condemned to live on, in society, but not of it--a by-word
of reproach to all who know their history, and a mark for scorn to point
his finger at.
The only practicable means for diminishing the force of a custom which is
the disgrace of civilisation, seems to be the establishment of a court of
honour, which should take cognisance of all those delicate and almost
intangible offences which yet wound so deeply. The court established by
Louis XIV. might be taken as a model. No man now fights a duel when a fit
apology has been offered; and it should be the duty of this court to weigh
dispassionately the complaint of every man injured in his honour, either
by word or deed, and to force the offender to make a public apology. If he
refused the apology, he would be the breaker of a second law; an offender
against a high court, as well as against the man he had injured, and might
be punished with fine and imprisonment, the latter to last until he saw
the error of his conduct, and made the concession which the court
demanded.
If, after the establishment of this tribunal, men should be found of a
nature so bloodthirsty as not to be satisfied with its peaceful decisions,
and should resort to the old and barbarous mode of an appeal to the
pistol, some means might be found of dealing with them. To hang them as
murderers would be of no avail; for to such men death would have few
terrors. Shame alone would bring them to reason. Transportation, the
tread-wheel, or a public whipping, would perhaps be sufficient.
RELICS.
A fouth o' auld knick-knackets,
Rusty airn caps and jinglin' jackets,
Wad hand the Lothians three, in tackets,
A towmond guid;
An' parritch pats, and auld saut backets,
Afore the flood.
BURNS.
[Illustration: T]
The love for relics is one which will never be eradicated as long as
feeling and affection are denizens of the heart. It is a love which is
most easily excited in the best and kindliest natures, and which few are
callous enough to scoff at. Who would not treasure the lock of hair that
once adorned the brow of the faithful wife now cold in death, or that hung
down the neck of a beloved infant now sleeping under the sward? Not one!
They are home-relics, whose sacred worth is intelligible to all: spoils
rescued from the devouring grave, which to the affectionate are beyond all
price. How dear to a forlorn survivor the book over whose pages he has
pored with one departed! How much greater its value, if that hand, now
cold, had written a thought, an opinion, or a name, upon the leaf! Besides
these sweet domestic relics, there are others which no one can condemn:
relics sanctified by that admiration of greatness and goodness which is
akin to love; such as the copy of Montaigne's _Florio_, with the name of
Shakspeare upon the leaf, written by the poet of all time himself; the
chair preserved at Antwerp, in which Rubens sat when he painted the
immortal Descent from the Cross; or the telescope, preserved in the Museum
of Florence, which aided Galileo in his sublime discoveries. Who would not
look with veneration upon the undoubted arrow of William Tell--the swords
of Wallace or of Hampden--or the Bible whose leaves were turned by some
stern old father of the faith?
Thus the principle of reliquism is hallowed and enshrined by love. But
from this germ of purity how numerous the progeny of errors and
superstitions! Men, in their admiration of the great, and of all that
appertained to them, have forgotten that goodness is a component part of
true greatness, and have made fools of themselves for the jawbone of a
saint, the toe-nail of an apostle, the handkerchief a king blew his nose
in, or the rope that hanged a criminal. Desiring to rescue some slight
token from the graves of their predecessors, they have confounded the
famous and the infamous, the renowned and the notorious. Great saints,
great sinners; great philosophers, great quacks; great conquerors, great
murderers; great ministers, great thieves; each and all have had their
admirers, ready to ransack earth, from the equator to either pole, to find
a relic of them.
The reliquism of modern times dates its origin from the centuries
immediately preceding the Crusades. The first pilgrims to the Holy Land
brought back to Europe thousands of apocryphal relics, in the purchase of
which they had expended all their store. The greatest favourite was the
wood of the true cross, which, like the oil of the widow, never
diminished. It is generally asserted, in the traditions of the Romish
Church, that the Empress Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, first
discovered the veritable "_true cross_" in her pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The Emperor Theodosius made a present of the greater part of it to St.
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, by whom it was studded with precious stones, and
deposited in the principal church of that city. It was carried away by the
Huns, by whom it was burnt, after they had extracted the valuable jewels
it contained. Fragments, purporting to have been cut from it, were, in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, to be found in almost every church in
Europe, and would, if collected together in one place, have been almost
sufficient to have built a cathedral. Happy was the sinner who could get a
sight of one of them; happier he who possessed one! To obtain them the
greatest dangers were cheerfully braved. They were thought to preserve
from all evils, and to cure the most inveterate diseases. Annual
pilgrimages were made to the shrines that contained them, and considerable
revenues collected from the devotees.
Next in renown were those precious relics, the tears of the Saviour. By
whom and in what manner they were preserved, the pilgrims did not inquire.
Their genuineness was vouched by the Christians of the Holy Land, and that
was sufficient. Tears of the Virgin Mary, and tears of St. Peter, were
also to be had, carefully enclosed in little caskets, which the pious
might wear in their bosoms. After the tears the next most precious relics
were drops of the blood of Jesus and the martyrs, and the milk of the
Virgin Mary. Hair and toe-nails were also in great repute, and were sold
at extravagant prices. Thousands of pilgrims annually visited Palestine in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to purchase pretended relics for the
home market. The majority of them had no other means of subsistence than
the profits thus obtained. Many a nail, cut from the filthy foot of some
unscrupulous ecclesiastic, was sold at a diamond's price, within six
months after its severance from its parent toe, upon the supposition that
it had once belonged to a saint or an apostle. Peter's toes were
uncommonly prolific, for there were nails enough in Europe, at the time of
the Council of Clermont, to have filled a sack, all of which were devoutly
believed to have grown on the sacred feet of that great apostle. Some of
them are still shewn in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle. The pious come
from a distance of a hundred German miles to feast their eyes upon them.
At Port Royal, in Paris, is kept with great care a thorn, which the
priests of that seminary assert to be one of the identical thorns that
bound the holy head of the Son of God. How it came there, and by whom it
was preserved, has never been explained. This is the famous thorn,
celebrated in the long dissensions of the Jansenists and the Molenists,
and which worked the miraculous cure upon Mademoiselle Perrier: by merely
kissing it she was cured of a disease of the eyes of long standing.[71]
[71] Voltaire, _Siècle de Louis XIV_.
What traveller is unacquainted with the Santa Scala, or Holy Stairs, at
Rome? They were brought from Jerusalem along with the true cross, by the
Empress Helen, and were taken from the house which, according to popular
tradition, was inhabited by Pontius Pilate. They are said to be the steps
which Jesus ascended and descended when brought into the presence of the
Roman governor. They are held in the greatest veneration at Rome: it is
sacrilegious to walk upon them. The knees of the faithful must alone touch
them in ascending or descending, and that only after the pilgrims have
reverentially kissed them.
Europe still swarms with these religious relics. There is hardly a Roman
Catholic church in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, or Belgium, without one
or more of them. Even the poorly endowed churches of the villages boast
the possession of miraculous thigh-bones of the innumerable saints of the
Romish calendar. Aix-la-Chapelle is proud of the veritable _châsse_, or
thigh-bone of Charlemagne, which cures lameness. Halle has a thigh-bone of
the Virgin Mary; Spain has seven or eight, all said to be undoubted
relics. Brussels at one time preserved, and perhaps does now, the teeth of
St. Gudule. The faithful, who suffered from the toothache, had only to
pray, look at them, and be cured. Some of these holy bones have been
buried in different parts of the Continent. After a certain lapse of time,
water is said to ooze from them, which soon forms a spring, and cures all
the diseases of the faithful.
It is curious to remark the avidity manifested in all ages, and in all
countries, to obtain possession of some relic of any persons who have been
much spoken of, even for their crimes. When William Longbeard, leader of
the populace of London in the reign of Richard I., was hanged at
Smithfield, the utmost eagerness was shewn to obtain a hair from his head,
or a shred from his garments. Women came from Essex, Kent, Suffolk,
Sussex, and all the surrounding counties, to collect the mould at the foot
of his gallows. A hair of his beard was believed to preserve from evil
spirits, and a piece of his clothes from aches and pains.
In more modern days, a similar avidity was shewn to obtain a relic of the
luckless Masaniello, the fisherman of Naples. After he had been raised by
mob favour to a height of power more despotic than monarch ever wielded,
he was shot by the same populace in the streets, as if he had been a mad
dog. His headless trunk was dragged through the mire for several hours,
and cast at night-fall into the city ditch. On the morrow the tide of
popular feeling turned once more in his favour. His corpse was sought,
arrayed in royal robes, and buried magnificently by torch-light in the
cathedral, ten thousand armed men, and as many mourners, attending at the
ceremony. The fisherman's dress which he had worn was rent into shreds by
the crowd, to be preserved as relics; the door of his hut was pulled off
its hinges by a mob of women, and eagerly cut up into small pieces, to be
made into images, caskets, and other mementos. The scanty furniture of his
poor abode became of more value than the adornments of a palace; the
ground he had walked upon was considered sacred, and, being collected in
small phials, was sold at its weight in gold, and worn in the bosom as an
amulet.
Almost as extraordinary was the frenzy manifested by the populace of Paris
on the execution of the atrocious Marchioness de Brinvilliers. There were
grounds for the popular wonder in the case of Masaniello, who was
unstained with personal crimes. But the career of Madame de Brinvilliers
was of a nature to excite no other feelings than disgust and abhorrence.
She was convicted of poisoning several persons, and sentenced to be burned
in the Place de Grève, and to have her ashes scattered to the winds. On
the day of her execution, the populace, struck by her gracefulness and
beauty, inveighed against the severity of her sentence. Their pity soon
increased to admiration, and, ere evening, she was considered a saint. Her
ashes were industriously collected; even the charred wood, which had aided
to consume her, was eagerly purchased by the populace. Her ashes were
thought to preserve from witchcraft.
In England many persons have a singular love for the relics of thieves and
murderers, or other great criminals. The ropes with which they have been
hanged are very often bought by collectors at a guinea per foot. Great
sums were paid for the rope which hanged Dr. Dodd, and for those more
recently which did justice upon Mr. Fauntleroy for forgery, and on
Thurtell for the murder of Mr. Weare. The murder of Maria Marten, by
Corder, in the year 1828, excited the greatest interest all over the
country. People came from Wales and Scotland, and even from Ireland, to
visit the barn where the body of the murdered woman was buried. Every one
of them was anxious to carry away some memorial of his visit. Pieces of
the barn-door, tiles from the roof, and, above all, the clothes of the
poor victim, were eagerly sought after. A lock of her hair was sold for
two guineas, and the purchaser thought himself fortunate in getting it so
cheaply.
So great was the concourse of people to visit the house in Camberwell
Lane, where Greenacre murdered Hannah Brown, in 1837, that it was found
necessary to station a strong detachment of police on the spot. The crowd
was so eager to obtain a relic of the house of this atrocious criminal,
that the police were obliged to employ force to prevent the tables and
chairs, and even the doors, from being carried away.
In earlier times, a singular superstition was attached to the hand of a
criminal who had suffered execution. It was thought that by merely rubbing
the dead hand on the body, the patient afflicted with the king's evil
would be instantly cured. The executioner at Newgate formerly derived no
inconsiderable revenue from this foolish practice. The possession of the
hand was thought to be of still greater efficacy in the cure of diseases
and the prevention of misfortunes. In the time of Charles II., as much as
ten guineas was thought a small price for one of these disgusting relics.