We have given above as many instances as our space will permit, of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism; and now to return to Mr Townshend's book.

In taking a general view of the lines of argument adopted by the author to support the possibility or probability of mesmerism, we perceive they are of two sorts, essentially different, and in some measure inconsistent with each other.

1st, It is very properly argued, that our whole knowledge of the normal course of nature is derived from experience; that a law is a mere generalization from that experience, and is not any thing intrinsically or necessarily true. Thus, if the sun were to rise in the west to-morrow, instead of in the east, it would at first sight appear to be a deviation from natural laws; in other words, a miracle. If, however, the latter circumstance were wanting, after the first sensation of the marvellous had subsided, the philosopher would enquire, whether, instead of being a deviation from a law, it were not a subordinate instance of some higher law, of which the period of history had been too short to give any co-ordinate instances; and were it found, by a long course of experience, that in every 4000 years a similar retrocession of the earth took place, a new law would be established. Applying this to mesmerism, it is said our notions of sleep and waking, of sight and hearing, and of the possible limits and modes of sensation, are derived from experience alone; we cannot estimate or understand the modus agendi of a new sensation, because we have never experienced it. If, then, it be proved, by the acts of A, B, or C, that they attain cognizance of objects by other means than those which any known organ of sensation will permit, you must admit the fact, and by degrees its rationale will become supported by the same means as all other truths are supported, viz. by habitual experience. Its law is, indeed, nothing but its constant recurrence under similar circumstances. To take Mr Townshend's own mode of enunciating this—

"Are we entitled to conclude, in any case, that, because we have not hitherto been able to assign a law to certain operations, they are therefore absolutely without law? Are we to assert, that the orderly dispositions of the universe are deformed by a monstrous exception; or is it not wiser to believe that our own knowledge is in fault, whenever Nature appears inconsistent with herself? Surely we have enough order around us to suggest, that all which to us seems chance, is 'direction which we cannot see;' that all apparent anomalies are but like those discords which, in the most masterly music, prepare the transitions from one noble passage to another, and are actually essential to the general harmony. In many instances this is not mere conjecture. How much of fancied imperfection and disorder has fled before our investigation! The motions of comets at first appear to offer an exception to the exact arrangements of the universe.—'They traverse all parts of the heavens. Their paths have every possible inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; and, unlike the planets, the motion of more than half of those which have appeared has been retrograde—that is, from east to west.' Yet have we been able to detect the elements of regularity in the midst of all this seeming confusion, and to predict with certainty the day, the hour, and the minute of a comet's return to our region of the sky.

"Experience also shows, that apparently insulated and lawless phenomena may not only be reduced to a law, but to a well-known law; that many a familiar agent puts on strange disguises; and that events, with which, in their mazy channels, we seem to be unacquainted, may be perfectly recognised by us at their source. Thus galvanism and magnetic force are proved, by recent discoveries, to be only forms of electricity; showing that a fact may be altered, not in itself, but in the circumstances that surround it, and that complexity of development is perfectly consistent with unity of design. Instances like these, while they encourage us to enquiry, should teach us to believe that all which is needed to vindicate the regularity of nature is a more extended observation on our parts."—(Pp. 14-15.)

This is the highest and safest ground for the advocate of mesmerism to tread; to support himself on this he has only to demonstrate his facts beyond the possibility of a doubt, and the truth of the phenomena, however inconsistent with previous experience, must in the end be admitted. But to support him on this high ground his proof must be demonstrative; he must be able to say—I ask not for faith, nor even a balanced mind; but doubt to the utmost, examine with the most rigorous scepticism; I stand upon the facts alone; I offer no explanation, or at least I make their truth dependent upon no explanation. They are or they are not. I will prove their existence, and I will defy you to disprove them.

It will not, we conceive, be denied, that one essential attribute of the social mind, a jealousy of credence in apparent anomalies, is a just and necessary guard upon human knowledge. If mere assertion were believed, every succeeding day would upset the knowledge of the preceding day; and however high the character of the assertor of new and abnormal facts may be, he must not expect them to be received upon the strength of his assertion. The best men may be deceived, and the best men may be led astray by enthusiasm. When the slightest discovery in physical science is published, it is immediately assailed by doubts from every quarter; and its promulgator, if he be accustomed to research and trained to scientific investigation, never complains of these doubts, because he knows the vast number of perplexing deceptions in which he has himself been entangled, and the caution with which he himself would receive a similar announcement.

It is vain to cite instances of truths unappreciated by the age in which they were advanced. We deprecate as much as any the persecution with which occasionally men who have seen far in advance of their age have been attacked; but the saying, "Malheureux celui qui est en avance de son siecle," is not always true: if the new truth be difficult of demonstration it will be proportionately tardy of reception, but if easy of proof it is very rapidly received. As an example of this we may instance the discovery of Volta. In the history of physical science, never was a more sudden leap taken than by this illustrious man—that a juxtaposition of matter in its least organic form should produce such surprising effects upon the human organism, was to the world, as it existed in the year 1800, a most marvellous phenomenon; and had the link in the finest chain of proof been wanting, men would have been justified in any degree of scepticism or incredulity. But it was easy of demonstration; any one with a dozen discs of iron and zinc, and the same number of penny-pieces, could satisfy himself; and the consequence was, the discovery was instantly admitted. Let mesmerists put the same power of self-satisfaction into the hands of the world, and doubt will be at once removed; if, as they say, their science is not of equal exactitude, they must bide their time and not complain.

Magnetism and electricity, moreover, often cited by Mr Townshend, and undoubtedly the most surprising additions to human knowledge within the historical period, though abnormal, are not contradictory to experience—they were an entirely new series of facts added to our previous store—they did not destroy or lessen the force of any previously received truths. Not so mesmerism, and therefore the more stringent should be, and is, the proof required.

Come we now to the second class of arguments adopted in favour of mesmerism, and by the same persons (Mr Townshend, for instance) as support the first. Mr Townshend says, (p. 29,) "to the mesmeriser the facts of mesmerism are no miracles;" and yet he avers that mesmerism can make the blind see and the deaf hear. (Pp. xxxii., and 178.) We cannot very clearly see his notion of a miracle. Passing over this, however, and taking him to assert what the first branch of his argument requires to be asserted, that there is no miracle, or that there is nothing but the contradiction of a necessary truth, such as that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, which may not fall within some natural law of which we have not all the data—we cannot see why, in the second half of his book, he so sedulously endeavours to prove that mesmerism is consistent with experience, and may be supported upon similar grounds, and accounted for by similar theories, to those by which the agency of the imponderable forces is established and accounted for. After using every argument in his power to show the fallibility of experience, and the reasons why we should not disbelieve mesmerism because contradictory to it, which contradiction he admits in terms, the author writes a chapter, the title of which is, "Conformity of Mesmerism with General Experience."—(P. 155.) As instances of these reverse modes of viewing the subject, we quote the following passages—the one taken from the commencement of the book, where the first line of argument is adopted; the other from the latter portion, where the second is.

"Thus, then, till the initial step towards a comprehension of mesmerism be taken anew, there is no hope that it will ever be understood or appreciated. Why unavailingly seek to reduce it to a formula of which it is unsusceptible? If we ascribe it to a power already ascertained, why not treat it, at least, as an entirely new function of that power? Why limit it to what we know, when, possibly, it may be destined to extend the boundaries of our knowledge? Why are we to be trammelled with foregone conclusions? Yet upon these very restrictions the opponents of mesmerism insist; thus taking away from men the means of investigating the agency in question, by forcing them to set about it in the wrong way."—(P. 12.)

Having, then, thus expressed himself in the early part of the work, towards the close we find the following sentence. "Taking this simple view of sensation, (that objects should be brought into a certain relation with us by something intermediate,) we find nothing in mesmerism contradictory of nature. Under its influence, the human frame continues to be still a system of nerves acted upon by elastic media, for the purpose of conveying to us the primal impulse of the Almighty Mind, which made, sustains, and moves the universe—having, as I trust, shown the conformity of mesmerism in all essential points with the principles of nature, and the inferences of reason," &c. &c.

If we are to admit mesmerism as a series of facts apparently inconsistent with experience, it is most hasty and unphilosophical to attempt to generalize it by crude hypotheses. To rest its probable truth upon these hypotheses, is to take a totally different ground, and one much lower and more assailable. We have no desire to be hypercritical—to expose minor scientific inaccuracies in the work before us; but we do not hesitate to assert, that, independently of its inconsistency with the previous course of reasoning, the hypothesis or hypotheses of Mr Townshend are most unsatisfactory.

Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, are by some regarded as specific fluids; by others, as undulations of one or more specific fluid; and by a third class, as undulations or polarizations of ordinary matter. Thus, by the first, light would be viewed as a material emanation from the luminous body; by the second, as an undulation of an imponderable ether, existing between the luminous body and the recipient; and by the third, as an undulation of the air, glass, or other matter, placed between the luminous body and the object. The last would regard the ether in the planetary spaces, not as a specific imponderable fluid, but as a highly attenuated expansion of air, gas, or other matter, having all the functions of ordinary matter. Whewell has, indeed, published a demonstration that all matter is ponderable, and that imponderable matter is not a conceivable idea. Be this as it may, the diversity of opinion on this point shows the difficulty the mind finds in departing from the truths of phenomena to the uncertainties of hypothesis; but if hypothesis be justifiable, which it is only on the ground of absolute necessity to link together, and render conventionally intelligible, certain undoubted, undeniable facts, which have been associated together under the terms electricity, magnetism, &c.—how difficult and dangerous it must be when the facts which it seeks to associate are denied by the mass of thinking men, when they are confessed to be mysterious and irregular by their most strenuous advocates, each of whom differs, in many respects, as to these facts!

These difficulties have by no means been conquered by Mr Townshend. At p. 11, he objects to this mode of theorizing, in the following strong terms:—

"A certain school of German writers especially have theorized on our subject, after the false method of explaining one class of phenomena in nature by its fancied resemblance to another. Wishing, perhaps, to avoid the error of the spiritualists, who solve the problem in debate by the power of the soul alone, they have ransacked the material world for analogies to mesmerism, till the mind itself has been endued with its affinities and its poles. Such attempts as these have done the greatest disservice to the cause we advocate. They submit it to a wrong test. It is as if the laws of light should be applied to a question in acoustics. It is as if we should expect to find in a foreign kingdom the laws and customs of our own."—(P. 11.)

And yet, in the subsequent parts of his book, he asserts mesmerism to be capable of "reflection like light"—to have "the attraction of magnetism"—to be "transferred like heat;" to escape from a point like electricity, and to have the sympathetic undulations of sound!—(Pp. 335, 6, 7, and 8.)

Such general resemblances as the following are given:—-

"We know that electricity is capable of all that modification in its action which our case demands. Sometimes its effects are sudden and energetic; sometimes of indefinite and uninterrupted continuance. It is 'capable of moving with various degrees of facility through the pores or even the substance of matter;' and is not impeded in its action by the intervention of any substance whatever, provided it be not in itself in an electric state. This capacity of varied action and of pervading influence, has already been shown to characterize the mesmeric medium."—(P. 335.)

Why, what is here stated of electricity, may be said of heat, of light, of any force, and its moving through the pores may be denied as easily as asserted; by many it is thought to be a molecular polarization, and not a transmission.

Zinc and silver are said (p. 237) to "produce a taste resulting from the galvanic concussion, and not from any actual flavour." This is incorrect; zinc and silver produce a taste when in voltaic communication, because they decompose the saliva, and eliminate acid and alkaline constituents.

Further on it is said, (p. 237,) "A spark drawn by means of a pointed metal from the nose of a person charged with electricity, will give him the sensation of smelling a phosphoric odour." This is also an erroneous assumption; the electric spark, in passing through the atmosphere, combines its constituents, and forms nitrous acid. This has a pungent smell; probably there are some other physical changes wrought upon the constituents of the atmosphere by the electric spark, which are now objects of anxious enquiry to natural philosophers; yet none of them have any doubt that the electric smell is the result of a physical or chemical action of the spark, by which either the air is decomposed, or fine portions of metal carried off, or both. So again—

"The electric medium is a far more swift and subtle messenger of vision than is the luminous ether. 'A wheel revolving with celerity sufficient to render its spokes invisible, when illuminated by a flash of lightning, is seen for an instant with all its spokes distinct, as if it were in a state of absolute repose, because, however rapid the motion may be, the light has already come and ceased before the wheel has had time to turn through a sensible space.' Again, some ingenious experiments, by Professor Wheatstone, demonstrate to a certainty, that the speed of the electric fluid much surpasses the velocity of light. It is, therefore, a different medium; yet can it serve for all the purposes of vision, and even in a superior manner. After hearing these things, shall we start at the notion of mesmeric sensation being conveyed through another medium than that in ordinary action? Even should the sleep-waker perceive the most distant objects, (as some are said to have done,) can we, from the moment a means of communication is hinted to us, be so much amazed? If his perception be more vivid, there seems to be an efficient cause in his abjuring the grosser media for such as are more swift and subtle."—(P. 272.)

The electric medium is not a messenger of vision. To call the light produced by the electric spark electricity, would be the same as to call magnetism electricity, heat electricity, motion electricity—for all these are produced by it, and it by them. All modes of force are capable of producing the other phenomenal effects of force. It is an obvious fallacy to call the medium which transmits electric light, an electric medium; this, if carried out, would overthrow natural as well as conventional divisions, would subvert "the pales and forts of reason."

Mr Townshend, accustomed to metaphysical abstractions, shows, in these and many other instances, a want of acquaintance with physical science, and entirely fails when he bases his reasoning upon it. Many of the arguments of Mr Townshend are of such a transcendental nature, that we fear, should we attempt to follow them, our readers would lose their clairvoyance in the mist of metaphysical speculation. The following will give a fair specimen of the conclusion to which such reasoning tends:—

"Indeed, if we lay to heart the deceptiveness and mutability of all the external species of matter, at the same time considering that we have no reason to deem it capable of change in its ultimate and imperceptible particles; if, also, we reflect, that whatever is not palpable in itself is yet indicated by its effects, forces us on pure reason by withdrawing at once the aid and the illusion of our external senses, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that the Invisible is the only true, exclaiming, with the old Latinist, 'Invisibilia non decipiunt.'"—(P. 355.)

And yet the facts of mesmerism are to be judged of by the very senses which mesmerism proves to be so fallacious. It is because we see that E—— A—— reads when the book is presented to the back of his hand, that we are to believe that he does not perceive with the usual organs. Upon the rule which the author adopts, that "the invisible is the only true," we cannot rely upon our deceptive organs and should disbelieve mesmerism because we see it.

To analyse, in detail, the hypotheses of Mr Townshend would be quite impossible in our limited space. We might, indeed, adopt method sometimes used in controversial writing, and string together a parallel column of minor contradictions. This would however, not only be totally devoid of interest to the reader, but is not the object we have in view. We seek not for critical errors or inconsistencies, but merely to examine if there be any broad lines of truth or probability in his theory. It is summed up as follows:—

"The real nature of vision is as shut to the vulgar as the mesmeric mode of sight is to the learned.

"By the eye we appreciate light and colour only: the rest is an operation of the judgment.

"Viewed metaphysically, seeing is but a particular kind of knowledge: viewed physically, seeing consists in certain nervous motions, responsive to the motions of a medium. That medium, in our ordinary condition, is light, the action of which seems cut off and intercepted in the case of mesmeric vision.

"When, therefore, we hear that a mesmerised person has correctly seen an object through obstacles which to us appear opaque, we, conceiving no means of communication between the person and the object, exclaim that the laws of nature have been violated. But, in all cases where information is conveyed through interrupted spaces, show but the means of communication, and astonishment ceases.

"When we know that there is a medium permeating, in one or other of its forms, all substances whatever, and that this medium is eminently capable of exciting sensations of sight; and when we take this in conjunction with a heightened sensibility in the percipient person, rendering him aware of impulses whereof we are not cognisant, we are no longer inclined to deny a fact or suppose a miracle.

"Finally, all sensation has but one principle. All that is required for its production is, that objects should be brought into a certain relation with us by something intermediate; and this is effected by the impulsions of certain media upon nerves, the last changes in which are the immediate forerunners of completed sensation."—(P. 279.)

In short, we think we do not unfairly express the author's theory in the following query. As the application of the highest human powers (those of Newton, for instance) have resolved the transmission of light to the sensorium into the vibrations of an all-pervading ether, what is more probable than that a similar ethereal medium may convey sensations of objects through other channels? This may be, but another important ingredient is wanting, viz. organization, or definite molecular arrangement. Prick the eye, and, by the resulting morbid derangement, change the molecular arrangement of its particles, and vision is destroyed; pulverise the glass through which you look, and it is no longer transparent. The ether (if there be an ether) in the pores of these substances, can only convey correct impressions when these particles have a definite arrangement; but the mesmeric ether is dependent upon no such necessity. Density and tenacity, opacity and transparency, homogeneous or heterogeneous bodies, are all equally penetrable. And what is more strange, the mesmeric ether conveys correct, and not distorted impressions. The same perception of form which is conveyed through air, is convoyed through the cover of a book, through the bones of the skull, or the muscles of the stomach. And, still more extraordinary, this impression is identical as to the mental idea it conveys with that conveyed in the normal manner through the eye. The mesmeric ether has, therefore, not only the power of conveying impressions, but of preserving their continuity through any impediment. The formal impressions of a chair or table, which are conveyed by ordinary vision in right lines to the retina, if these lines be distorted by any intervening want of uniformity in the matter, are proportionally distorted. Let striae of glass of different density intervene in an optical lens, and the objects are distorted; increase the number of striae, the object is more imperfect; and carry the molecular derangement further, opacity is the result. Transparency and opacity, then, viewed apart from all hypotheses, resolve themselves into organization or molecular arrangement. Yet, by the mesmeric medium, a chair or table is conveyed to the recipient in its distinct form, or, what amounts to the same thing for the argument of conformity, they give to the mind distinct ideas of these objects. If, then, there be a mesmeric medium, which, being a purely hypothetic creation, cannot be disproved, its requisites must be so totally at variance with the requisites of ordinary ethereal media, that none of the rules which can be applied to this can be applied to that. The arguments of Mr Townshend depend on analogy, where there is no analogy.

Many of the objects of vision, all indeed by which reading is effected, are purposely constructed to suit the peculiar organization of the eye—they are artifices specially appropriated to given sensations; thus black letters are printed on white paper, because experience has told us that black reflects no light, while white reflects all the incident light. If we wish to read by another sense, we adapt our object to such a sense; thus, for those who read by the finger, raised letters are prepared, differing from the matrix in position but not in colour; if we read by the ear, we address it by sounds and not by forms or colours; and it would be far from impracticable to read by smell or taste, by associating given odours or given tastes with given ideas.

In all this, however, each sense requires a peculiar education and long training—it is only by constant association of the word table with the thing table, that we connect the two ideas; but mesmeric clairvoyance not only conveys things as things in all their proper forms and colours, (p. 164,) without the intervention of the usual senses, but it also dispenses with education or association, or instantly adapts to a new sense the education hitherto specially and only adapted to another.

Thus the mesmeric medium should, and does, according to Mr Townshend, (pp. 97, 99, 101,) convey to the person accustomed to read by the eye, ideas and perceptions which he has hitherto associated with the sight—to him accustomed to read by touch, ideas associated with touch—and so of the rest, and that not of sight or touch of the object itself, but of a mere arbitrary symbol of the object.

Table of five letters or forms—table of two sounds, bearing no resemblance to these letters or forms, or to the thing—table but a mere conventional substitute for the purpose of human convenience, yet by the all-potent mesmeric medium, for which they have not been previously framed, are definitely conveyed, and produce the require perception and the required association.

We trust we need go no further to show that mesmeric clairvoyance has, at all events, no conformity with general experience; and that, if it be true, the proofs of its truth cannot be based on its analogy with other sensations. To sum up our arguments, we say—1st, That without undervaluing testimony, mesmeric clairvoyance is not sufficiently proved by competent witnesses to be admitted as fact: 2d, The reasoning in support of it is insufficient, and, in most cases, fallacious.

Perhaps the best arguments employed by Mr Townshend in favour of the possibility of clairvoyance, are the authenticated cases of normal sleepwalking; these have been very little examined, but appear, in one respect, strikingly to differ from mesmeric coma. The eyes of the somnambulist are said to be open, and therefore there is every optical power of vision, and an increase of ordinary visual perception is all that is requisite. The acts performed by the sleepwalker are, moreover, generally those to which he is habitually accustomed; and, when this is not the case, he fails, as many disastrous accidents have too fatally testified.

At the close of Mr Townshend's book is a short appendix, containing some testimonials to the verity of mesmeric effects. Several of these are anonymous, and the value of their authority cannot therefore be judged of. Others are testimonies to mesmeric effects produced upon the patients, E—— A—— or Anna M——. None of these are from persons of very high authority; and they are, certainly, not such as would induce us to rest our faith upon them. We grant to them their full right to be convinced; but their testimony is not of sufficient force to produce conviction in others. The two last testimonials, however, are of a very different character. One of these is by Professor Agassiz, and the other by Signor Ranieri of Naples. Both these are testimonials, not to any effect produced upon an accustomed patient, but upon the testifiers themselves; and the former, coming from a man of high distinction, and accustomed to physical research, is undoubtedly of great weight. We therefore give it in full.

"Desirous to know what to think of mesmerism, I for a long time sought for an opportunity of making some experiments in regard to it upon myself, so as to avoid the doubts which might arise on the nature of the sensations which we have heard described by mesmerised persons. M. Desor, yesterday, in a visit which he made to Berne, invited Mr Townshend, who had previously mesmerised him, to accompany him to Neufchatel, and try to mesmerise me. These gentlemen arrived here with the evening courier, and informed me of their arrival. At eight o'clock I went to them. We continued at supper till half past nine o'clock, and about ten o'clock Mr Townshend commenced operating upon me. While we sat opposite to one another, he, in the first place, only took hold of my hands, and looked at me fixedly. I was firmly resolved to arrive at a knowledge of the truth, whatever it might be; and therefore, the moment I saw him endeavouring to exert an action upon me, I silently addressed the Author of all things, beseeching him to give me power to resist the influence, and to be conscientious in regard to myself, as well as in regard to the facts. I then fixed my eyes upon Mr Townshend, attentive to whatever passed. I was in very suitable circumstances; the hour being early, and one at which I was in the habit of studying, was far from disposing me to sleep. I was sufficiently master of myself to experience no emotion, and to repress all flights of imagination, even if I had been less calm; accordingly it was a long time before I felt any effect from the presence of Mr Townshend opposite me. However, after at least a quarter of an hour, I felt a sensation of a current through all my limbs, and from that moment my eyelids grew heavy. I then saw Mr Townshend extend his hands before my eyes, as if he were about to plunge his fingers into them; and then make different circular movements around my eyes, which caused my eyelids to become still heavier. I had the idea that he was endeavouring to make me close my eyes; and yet it was not as if some one had threatened my eyes, and, in the waking state, I had closed them to prevent him. It was an irresistible heaviness of the lids, which compelled me to shut them, and by degrees I found that I had no longer the power of keeping them open; but did not the less retain my consciousness of what was going on around me; so that I heard M. Desor speak to Mr Townshend, understood what they said, and heard what questions they asked me, just as if I had been awake; but I had not the power of answering. I endeavoured in vain several times to do so; and when I succeeded, I perceived that I was passing out of the state of torpor in which I had been, and which was rather agreeable than painful.

"In this state I heard the watchman cry ten o'clock; then I heard it strike a quarter past; but afterwards I fell into a deeper sleep, although I never entirely lost my consciousness. It appeared to me that Mr Townshend was endeavouring to put me into a sound sleep; my movements seemed under his control, for I wished several times to change the position of my arms, but had not sufficient power to do it, or even really to will it; while I felt my head carried to the right or left shoulder, and backwards or forwards, without wishing it; and, indeed, in spite of the resistance which I endeavoured to oppose, and this happened several times.

"I experienced at the same time a feeling of great pleasure in giving way to the attraction, which dragged me sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other; then a kind of surprise on feeling my head fall into Mr Townshend's hand, who appeared to me from that time to be the cause of the attraction. To his enquiry if I were well, and what I felt? I found I could not answer, but I smiled; I felt that my features expanded in spite of my resistance; I was inwardly confused at experiencing pleasure from an influence which was mysterious to me. From this moment I wished to wake, and was less at my ease; and yet on Mr Townshend asking me, whether I wished to be awakened, I made a hesitating movement with my shoulders. Mr Townshend then repeated some frictions, which increased my sleep; yet I was always conscious of what was passing around me. He then asked me, if I wished to become lucid, at the same time continuing, as I felt, the frictions from the face to the arms. I then experienced an indescribable sensation of delight, and for an instant saw before me rays of dazzling light, which instantly disappeared. I was then inwardly sorrowful at this state being prolonged—it appeared to me that enough had been done with me; I wished to awake, but could not, yet when Mr Townshend and M. Desor spoke, I heard them. I also heard the clock, and the watchman cry, but I did not know what hour he cried. Mr Townshend then presented his watch to me, and asked if I could see the time, and if I saw him; but I could distinguish nothing. I heard the clock strike the quarter, but could not get out of my sleepy state. Mr Townshend then woke me with some rapid transverse movements from the middle of the face outwards, which instantly caused my eyes to open, and at the same time I got up, saying to him, 'I thank you.' It was a quarter past eleven. He then told me, and M. Desor repeated the same thing, that the only fact which had satisfied them that I was in a state of mesmeric sleep, was the facility with which my head followed all the movements of his hand, although he did not touch me, and the pleasure which I appeared to feel at the moment when, after several repetitions of friction, he thus moved my head at pleasure in all directions."—(P. 385 to 388.)

This we think a most interesting and valuable document, and the best key we have ever seen to the facts of mesmerism. It is the production of a resolute, religious, and philosophic mind, and bears all the impress of truth; it proves that there are facts worthy of the most careful investigation—it proves a power of inducing a comatose or sleep-waking state—an influence exercised by one mind over another—and it goes far to prove a physical attraction subsisting between two persons in mesmeric relation. But, on the other hand, how strikingly do the phenomena here described differ from those exhibited by the other patients. In those cases, to use the general proposition of Mr Townshend, "the sleep-waker seems incapable of analysing his new sensations while they last, still more of remembering them when they are over. The state of mesmerism is to him as death."—(P. 156.) Here, on the other hand, the patient analyses all the sensations he experienced, and recollects them when they are over; here, notwithstanding the efforts of the mesmeriser, the production of the mesmeric effect, and no resistance on the part of the mesmerisee, the latter does not become clairvoyant; "je ne distinguais rien," are the emphatic words of Professor Agassiz.

Precisely similar is the testimony of Signor Ranieri, the historian—

Having been mesmerised by my honourable friend Mr Hare Townshend, I will simply describe the phenomena which I experienced before, during, and after my mesmerisation. Mr Townshend commenced by making me sit upon a sofa, he sat upon a chair opposite me, and keeping my hands in his, placed them on my knees. He looked at me fixedly, and from time to time let go my hands, and placed the points of his fingers in a straight line opposite my eyes, at an inch, I should think, from my pupils; then, describing a kind of ellipse, he brought his hands down again upon mine. After he had moved his hands thus alternately from my eyes to my knees for ten minutes, I felt an irresistible desire to close my eyelids. I continued, nevertheless, to hear his voice, and that of my sister, who was in the same room. Whenever they put questions to me, I always answered him correctly; but the whole of my muscular system was in a state of peculiar weakness, and of almost perfect disobedience to my will; and, consequently, the pronunciation of the words with which I wished to answer had become extremely difficult.

"Whilst I experienced to a certain point the effects of sleep, not only was I not a stranger to all that was passing around me, but I even took more than usual interest in it. All my conceptions were more rapid; I experienced nervous startings to which I am not accustomed; in short, my whole nervous system was in a state of perfect exaltation, and appeared to have acquired all the superabundance of power which the muscular system had lost.

"The following are the principal phenomena which I was able to feel distinctly. Mr Townshend did not fail to ask me occasionally if I could see him or my sister without opening my eyelids; but this was always impossible, and all that I could say I had seen was a glimmering of light, interrupted by the black and confused images of the objects presented to me; a light which appeared to me a little less clear than that which we commonly see when we shut the eyelids opposite the sun or a candle.

"Mr Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to make elliptical movements with his hands, the reverse of those which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes without any kind of effort, my whole muscular system became perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get up, and was perfectly awake; but I remained nearly an hour in a kind of stupefaction very similar to that which sometimes attacks me in the mornings, if I rise two or three hours later than usual."—(P. 388 to 390.)

Similar, as to the general conclusions, are the reports of the French Academy and the testimonies of all rigorous and well-conducted scientific examination. These testimonies apply to facts which it is the duty of those experimentalists and physiologists, who have time and opportunity at their disposal, fairly to investigate.

The insensibility to pain, and to the effects of the galvanic shock, are also within the limits of the credible—and the latter is the more easy of proof, as being incapable of simulation. As we stated at the commencement, so we repeat here; mesmerism has been too little investigated by competent persons, and is too much mystified by charlatanism, to enable us accurately to define the limits of the true and false, far less to predict what may be the discoveries to which it may lead. With regard to the facts of clairvoyance, we are at present entirely incredulous. Mr Townshend says, p. 91—

"Let, then, body after body of learned men deny the phenomena of mesmerism, and logically disprove their existence; an appeal may ever, and at any moment, be made to the proof by experiment; and even should experiment itself fail a thousand times, the success of the thousandth and first trial would justify further examination. Till the authority of observation can be wholly set aside, the subject of our enquiry can never be said to have undergone its final ostracism."

This is certainly a strong proposition; nevertheless it is with the hope that observation may be directed to the facts of mesmerism, that we have written the preceding pages. In reasoning on a subject, we can use only those lights which experience has given us. The efficacy of logical disproof, somewhat contemptuously treated by Mr Townshend in the above passage, is yet fully vindicated by the latter half of the book itself, which is an endeavour, logically, to bring home mesmerism to the understanding of men of experience. It is vain to make light of logic, when the parties who set it at nought are themselves obliged to use it to prove its own worthlessness. You must not exalt reason, and we will give you the reason why—this cuts their own ground from under them. We so far agree with the last quoted sentence, as to admit that, when experiments fairly tried by competent parties have and do succeed, mesmerism will be established—hitherto they have not succeeded. The alleged proofs are not brought home to the observation of cautious, thinking men; and reason, thus at once derided and appealed to, is unsatisfied. Time "may bring in its revenges," may show things which would be to us marvellous; and we deny no future possibilities. At present, we admit some very curious phenomena, which we would willingly see further examined; but we are unconvinced of those facts of mesmerism enounced by its professors, which wholly contradict our previous experience. Upon what we consider the only safe grounds for the general admission of newly asserted facts, the evidence in support of these should more than counterpoise the evidence for their rejection. Up to the present time, balancing, as we have endeavoured to do, impartially, the evidence in favour of clairvoyance, and the preternatural powers of mesmerism, against those of an opposite tendency, the former seems to us inordinately outweighed. On the other hand, the production, by external influence, either of absolute coma or of sleep-waking, whether resulting from imagination in the patient, or from an effort of the will on the part of the mesmeriser, or from both conjointly, has been too lightly estimated and too little examined. This alone is in itself an effect so novel, so mysterious, and apparently so connected with the mainsprings of sentient existence, as to deserve and demand a rigorous, impartial, and persevering scrutiny.

* * * * *

Since this article was written, the letters of Miss Martineau have appeared. Had these been published earlier, we should undoubtedly have noticed them at some length; they have not, however, induced us to alter any thing we have written; they have, indeed, confirmed one remark made above. The effects described by Miss Martineau as produced upon herself, are credible and not preternatural, while the second-sight of the girl J—— is preternatural and not credible; i. e. not credible as preternatural, otherwise easily explicable.

In this, as in every mesmeric case, the marvellous effects are developed by the uneducated—the most easily deceived, and the most ready to be deceivers.

The clairvoyant writers have greatly the advantage of the sceptics in one respect, viz. the public interest of their communications. Every one reads the description of new marvels, few care to examine the arguments in contravention of them.

"Pol, me occidistis, amici, Non servastis, ait, cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: For an account of one of the most notorious of the public exhibitions of mesmeric clairvoyance, we refer the reader, who may feel sufficiently interested in the matter, to the papers of Dr Forbes in the Lancet, New Series, Vol. i. p. 581, and to the counter statement in the Zoist, Vol. ii. No. 7.]

[Footnote 4: P. 316.]



AESTHETICS OF DRESS.

NO. II.

ABOUT A BONNET.

So then, having "put down" hats, we come to bonnets; this is the due order of things—hats should be taken off before bonnets always; "common politeness makes us stop and do it." And here, as the immortal Butler found it necessary in olden times to lament the perils that environed a man meddling with a hard subject, so we might well indulge in an ejaculation at what may be our fate if we presume to take liberties with the head-dress of the ladies. Actaeon, when he contemplated Diana simplicem munditiis, paid a severe penalty in the transformation of his own head; and so, perhaps, we may incur—but never mind; the task, worthy of a Hercules, (for the hydra of female fashion is more than hundred-headed,) must be gone through with, and the scrivano umillimo must push his pen even under the pole of a lady's bonnet.

The best-dressed woman in the world was our great-great-great progenitrix; we really cannot trace up the pedigree, but you all know whom we mean—your common mother and ours: we have the highest authority among our own poets for saying so. There can be no doubt that her coiffure was perfect. It is a law of nature—it was true then—it has been true ever since—it is indisputable at the present day—the expressive beauty of a woman lies in her face: whatever, therefore, conceals the face is a disfigurement, and inherits the principle of the ugly. Ye who would study the aesthetics of human habiliments, look at the lovely lines of the female face; contemplate that fairest type of the animated creation; observe the soft emotions of her gentle soul, now shooting forth rays of tender light from between her long enclasping eyelashes, now arching her rosy lips into the playful lineaments of Cupid's mortal bow; or gaze upon the subdued and affectionate contentment of the maternal countenance—remember, while you were yet young, your mother's look of love, that look which was all-powerful to master your fiercest passions in your wildest mood—who will say that the female face ought to be concealed? As far as we, the more powerful, though not the better, portion of the human race are concerned—off with the bonnet! off with the veil! say we. But there are others to be consulted in settling this preliminary dogma of taste—the feelings and the inclinations of woman herself are entitled to at least as much regard as the imperious wishes of man. She, who possesses the bright but fleetly fading gift of beauty, has also that inestimable, indefinable accompaniment of it—modesty. Beauty is too sensitive a gem to be always exposed to the light of admiration; it must be ensheathed in modesty for its rays to retain their primitive lustre; it would perish from exposure to the natural changes of the atmosphere, but it would die much sooner from the incomprehensible, yet positive, effects of moral lassitude. To use a commonplace simile, gentle reader, woman's beauty is like champagne, it gets terribly into a man's head: do not, however, leave the cork out of your champagne bottle—the sparkling spirit will all evaporate; and do not quarrel with your sweet-heart if she muffles up her face sometimes, and will not let you look at it for a week together—her eyes will be all the brighter when you next see them. There is a good cause for it; man is an ungrateful, hardly-pleased animal; every indulgence that woman grants him loosens her power over him. Women have an innate right to conceal their heads!

We arrive, then, at the foundation of taste for a lady's head-dress. Her face, her head, is naturally so beautiful, that the less it is concealed—as far as the mere gratification of the eye is concerned—the better; but the necessity for veiling and protecting this precious object is so inevitable, that a suitable extraneous covering must be provided; let that covering be as consonant to her natural excellence as it is possible to make it.

Now, we are not going to write a history of all the changes of female head-dress that have taken place since the world began: nothing at all of the kind. We refer the curious amateur to the work of that learned Dutchman—we forget his name, 'tis all the same—De Re Vestiaria; or he may look into Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians—there is a pretty considerable variety of bonnets or caps to be seen therein, we calculate. If he be a decided cognoscente, let him rather go to the Attic gallery in the British Museum, and examine the Panathenaic procession, where the virgins are in the simple attire of the best days of Greece: but here, or in any of the monuments of that foster-country of art, and in all the series of Roman sculpture and coins, he will find no head-dress for a female beyond that of the veil. The great artists and the great conquerors of the world never tolerated any thing beyond this flowing drapery of the veil, as the covering for their wives' or daughters' heads. They were satisfied with the beautiful contrast given by the curving lines of its graceful folds; they admired its simplicity; and they saw the perfect suitableness of its nature to its purpose. The veil could be hastily drawn over the head, so as to conceal every feature, and protect it from the gaze of man or the roughness of the seasons—and it could as easily be withdrawn partially to allow of "a sidelong glance of love," or wholly to give "a gaze of welcome," to a relation and a friend. Happy men those old Greeks and Romans! they had no bills for milliners—whatever their jewellers' accounts might have come to! When they travelled, their slaves were not pestered with bonnet-boxes and similar abominations—a clean yard or two of Phoenician gauze, or Asian linen, set up Mrs Secretary Pericles, or Mrs General Caesar, with a braw new veil. There was little caprice of fashion—the veil would always fall into something like the same or at least similar folds; and we do believe that, for a thousand years or more, the type of the mode remained fixed. Whether the ancient Asiatics made their women wear precisely the same mask-veils as those jealous rascals the Turks and Arabs do at the present day, we do not know, and we are not now going to enquire: we only wish to protest, en passant, against these same modern Eastern veils; they are the most frightful, unclassical, unbecoming things ever invented as face-cases. Our present purpose is with the head-dress of modern British ladies—let us look into their bonnets.

And truly a bonnet, taken by itself, without the jewel that often lies under it—a bonnet per se—is as bad a thing as a hat; something between a coal-scuttle and a bread-basket; it is only fit to be married to the hat, and, let us add—settled in the country. But it is, nevertheless capricious in its ugliness, just as its possessor is capricious in her prettiness; for, look at it from behind, its lines do not greatly deviate from the circular form of the head; it seems like a smart case;—look at it from before; there it is seen to best advantage as an oval frame, set with ribands, flowers, and laces, for the sweet picture within; but look at it from the side, and the genuine, vulgar, cookmaid form of the coal-scuttle is instantly perceived. It serves in this view evidently as blinkers do to a horse in harness, just to keep the animal from shying, or to guard off a chance stroke of the whip. But it is uncommonly tantalizing into the bargain. You walk along Regent Street some fine day, and for a hundred paces or more you are troubled by the crowd keeping you always in the rear of an old, faded, frumpy bonnet, that hinders you from watching a sweet little chapeau-de-soie immediately beyond. Your patience is exhausted, and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety; you make a desperate stride, push by the old bonnet, and look round with indignation to see what beldam had thus been between you and the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes:"—whew! 'tis the pretty young shop-girl that served you with your last pair of gloves, and measured them so fascinatingly along your hand, that your heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. You pocket your indignation, exchange one of your blandest smiles, and pass on, still striding to see what lovely features grace that exquisite chapeau. Half afraid, of course—for she is a lady evidently, and you pique yourself on being a perfect gentleman—you venture, as you pass, to let your eye just glance within the sacred enclosure of blonde and primroses;—pshaw! it's old Miss Thingamy, that you had to hand down to dinner the other day at Lady Dash's; and instantly catching your eye, she gives you a condescending nod, and you're forced to escort her all the way up to Portland Place! It's enough to make a man hang himself; and, to say the truth, many a poor fellow has been ruined by bonnets before now—even Napoleon himself had to pay for thirty-six new bonnets within one month for Josephine!

Bonnets, however, have more to do with women than with men; and we defy our fair friends to prove that these articles of dress, about which they are always so anxious, (a woman—a regular genuine woman, reader—will sacrifice a great deal for a bonnet,) are either useful or ornamental. And first, for their use; if they were good for any thing, they would protect the head from cold, wet, and sunshine. Now, as far as cold is concerned, they do so to a certain degree, but not a tenth part so well as something else we shall talk of by and by; as for wet—what woman ever trusted to her bonnet in a shower of rain? What woman does not either pop up her parasol, or green cotton umbrella, or, if she has not these female arms, ties over it her pocket-handkerchief, in a vain attempt to keep off the pluvious god? Women are more frightened at spoiling their bonnets than any other article of their dress: let them but once get their bonnets under the dripping eaves of an umbrella, and, like ostriches sticking their heads under ground, they think their whole persons safe;—we appeal to any man who has walked down Cheapside with his eyes open, on a rainy day, whether this be not true. And then for the sun—who among the ladies trust to her bonnet for keeping her face from freckling? Else why all the paraphernalia of parasols? why all these endless patents for sylphides and sunscreens of every kind, form, and colour? why can you never meet a lady in a summerwalk without one of these elegant little contrivances in her hand? Comfort, we apprehend, does not reside in a bonnet: look at a lady travelling, whether in a carriage or a railroad diligence—she cannot for a moment lean back into one of the nice pillowed corners of the vehicle, without running imminent risk of crushing her bonnet; her head can never repose; she has no travelling-cap, like a man, to put on while she stows away her bonnet in some convenient place: the stiffened gauze, or canvass, or paper, of which its inner framework is composed, rustles and crackles with every attempt at compression; and a pound's worth or two of damage may be done by a gentle tap or squeeze. Women, if candid, would allow that their bonnets gave them much more trouble than comfort, and that they have remained in use solely as conventional objects of dress—we will not allow, of ornament. The only position in which a bonnet is becoming—and even then it is only the modern class of bonnets—is, when they are viewed full front: further, as we observed before, they make a nice encadrement for the face: and, with their endless adjuncts of lace, ribands, and flowers, they commonly set off even moderately pretty features to advantage. But is only the present kind of bonnet that does so; the old-fashioned, poking, flaunting, square-cornered bonnet never became any female physiognomy: it is only the small, tight, come-and-kiss-me style of bonnet now worn by ladies, that is at all tolerable. All this refers, however, only to that portion of the fairer half of the human race which is in the bloom and vigour of youth and womanhood: those that are still in childhood, or sinking into the vale of years, cannot have a more inappropriate, more useless, covering for the head than what they now wear, at least in England. Simplicity, which should be the attribute of youth, and dignity, which should belong to age, cannot be compatible with a modern bonnet: fifty inventions might be made of coverings more suitable to these two stages of life.

How, then, has it come to pass that women have persuaded themselves, or have been overpersuaded, into the belief that a bonnet is the highest point of perfection in their dress? It has all been done by a foolish imitation of the caprices of French milliners, themselves actuated by millions of caprices and fancies—but at the same time by one steadily-enduring principle, that novelty and change, no matter how useless, how extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down—the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet—as we understand the word in England—is not an article of national costume in any portion of the world except our own island—America and Australia we place, of course, out of the pale of taste. In France itself, the peasantry, and all classes of women immediately under the conventional denomination of ladies, wear bonnets. This word does not signify the same thing as with us, gentle reader. The French word bonnet means a snow-white cap, whether rising into an enormous cone, like those of the Norman beauties, or limited to a jaunting frill and lappels, like those of the Parisian grisettes. The real bonnets, the French female chapeau, is worn only by those who call themselves ladies; and this difference of costume marks a most decided difference of rank and self-esteem in the various grades of Gallic society. In the Bourbonnois, it is true, and in some parts of Switzerland and Germany, straw-hats of various sizes are worn by the peasantry; but these do not resemble the actual bonnet of the nineteenth century. Who does not know the exquisite national head-dresses of the Italian and Spanish women, from pictorial representation, if not from actual inspection? Who has not read of the Greek cap and veil? Who has not heard of the national caps of Poland, Hungary, and Russia? Not the slightest approximation to the eccentricity of the bonnet is to be found in any of these. In all of them, not caprice, but the more rational qualities of use and ornament, have been studiously regarded. It is in England only that our lower classes of women have abandoned their national costume, and are content to suffer the inconvenient consequences of imitating their superiors. Let any one who has traversed Europe only recall to his mind the appearances of the female peasants as to their head-dress, whether in their houses or in the fields, and comparing them with the tattered, dirty things worn by the labourers' wives and daughters of England, say which are to be preferred in point of taste—which are the cleanest—which are the most becoming.

Not to go too far back into the mist of antiquity, the earliest traces that we can find of hats being commonly worn in England, are to be met with somewhere in the first half of the last century. Previous to that time ladies wore hoods and caps; and in the Middle Ages muffled their heads in wimples and veils; but some time or other—in the reign of the second George, we believe—some lady or other stuck on her head a round silk hat with a low crown and a broad brim, perfectly circular, and the brim or ledge at right angles to the crown or head-piece. This she subsequently changed into a straw one, and this was the root of the evil—hinc illae lachrymae! We are aware that, at the gay court of Louis XIV., and even before he had a court, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, when she went to battle or to hunt, wore a gold-laced semi-cocked hat: so did Madame de Montespan when she accompanied the king to one of his grand parties de chasse. But then, at the same time, these illustrious "leaders of ton" put on gold-embroidered male coats, and evidently endeavoured to transform themselves into men while partaking in manly sports and dangers. Their hunting-hats bore no more relation to the bonnets of their descendants, than do the black beaver hats of the latter, when they mount their horses in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. Indeed this very custom of wearing the male hat, is derived by our modern belles from the times we are speaking of. Plain beaver or felt hats were worn by some of our farmers' wives as early as the reign of Charles I.; but, to judge from the prints of that date, they borrowed them from their husbands. And to a period like this is to be traced the custom, still extant throughout most parts of Wales, for the women to wear the same head-costume as the men. The round ladies' hat, however, of the middle and end of the last century, may be seen in its primitive state in those enormous circles of straw, brought from Tuscany, and sold in our milliners' shops, fit to be pinched and cut into the prevailing fashion. The hats, both of men and women—when once they had quitted the becoming costume of the Middle Ages—arose out of one and the same type; a large circle of stuff with a projecting central cap for the skull. Human invention, in the matter of hats, seems for several centuries to have rested in this solitary idea. When this circular adumbral and pluvial roofing had to be adapted to the female head, it was found advisable to fasten it down to the cranium—not, indeed, by any screw driven therein, nor by any intriguing with the locks of woman's hair, but by the simple expedient of ribands passing under the chin. The difficulty consisted in attaching the upper ends of these ribands; for if they were sewn on under the overlapping brim, the same brim would take liberties on a windy day, and would flap up and down like an Indian punka. If they were sewn outside, they acted like the sheets of a ship's sail, and pulled down the struggling circumference into two ugly projections, bellying out before and behind. However, women, for comfort's sake, having got an awkward article to deal with, preferred the latter alternative—tied down their hats with ribands, (men, be it remembered, at the same time, tied up their brims into the prim, high, cocked shape,) and called these ugly coverings "gipsy hats." We remember something like them, dear reader,

"When first we went a-gipsying, long long ago."

Before matters had arrived at this pitch of ugliness, the ladies of the court of George III.—the very antipodes of that of Louis XIV.—had essayed, under the auspices of good Queen Charlotte, to render the round hat, with the straight-projecting brim, less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it, at one time, with a deep ruff of ribands, or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another, they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be said in their excuse—they hardly knew what parasols and umbrellas were. They wielded enormous fans, nearly two feet long; they had capuchins to their cloaks; and they delighted in the rotundity of hoops. Peace be with the souls of our grandmothers! Good old creatures! they were not very tasty, to be sure; but they wore glorious stiff taffety fardingales, and they have left us many an ample commode full of real china. As times wore on, and as the free-and-easy revolutionary school came to inculcate their loose doctrines on women as well as men, the ladies began to find the hinder pokes of their hats uncommon nuisances; and so, in a fit of spleen, one day the Duchess of G——, or some other woman of fashion, cut off this hinder protuberance, and appeared, to the scandal of her neighbours, plus the front poke, minus the back one. This was a daring, free-thinking, revolutionary innovation. Somebody had probably done it at Paris before her; but the startling idea had gone forth—women began to see daylight through their hats—the dawn of emancipation appeared—clip, clip, went the scissors, and, for the time being, the dynasty of gipsy hats had ceased to reign. Hereupon—the consequence of all changes of dynasties—whether of bonnets or Bourbons, 'tis much the same—a fearful period of anarchy ensued: every milliner's shop in Paris and London was pregnant with new shapes—bonnets periodically overturned bonnets, numbers were devoted to the block every week, and each succeeding month saw fresh competitors for public favour coming to the giddy vortex of fashion. Husbands suffered dreadfully during those troublous times: many a man's temper and purse were then irremediably damaged; and there seemed to be no means of escaping from this reign of female terror, this bonnetian chaos, until the great peace of 1814 brought about a prompt solution. Here, to be classical in so grave a matter, we may observe, that, just as Virgil in his Georgics represents a civil tumult, even in its loudest hubbub, to be suddenly calmed by the appearance of some man of known virtue and authority, so in London—and therefore in England—the visit of an illustrious lady, and the cut of her bonnet, appeased the agitated breasts of our fair countrywomen, and reduced their fancy to a fixed idea. The Grand-duchess of Oldenburg came over with her brother, the Emperor of all the Russias, and wore on her head, not a coronet—but such a bonnet!

"Ye powers who dress the head, if such there are, And make the change of woman's taste your care!"

—so Cowper might well have exclaimed, had he been then living. Tell us, ye gods, whence did her imperial highness derive the idea of her bonnet? Truly, we can conjecture no other source, than these very words designating her rank, for the bonnet was imperial—none but such a lady would have dared to originate it; and it was also high—high indeed! The crown rose eighteen inches in perpendicular altitude from the nape of the neck, while the front poke retained the modest dimensions of the original gipsy hat. We recollect the duchess in Hyde Park with this monstrous headgear, and the women all in ecstacy at the delightful novelty. The success of this bonnet was universal—it was a "tremendous hit," as they say in the play-bills; every woman that could afford it raised her crown, and Oldenburgized her head. Well, this fashion lasted tolerably long; it had the great value of rendering public opinion nearly uniform; but it got old, as all fashions must do, and died a natural death—not without an heir, a worthy heir. The new idea, you will perceive, was that of inordinate length, in one way or the other. The duchess had got it all up aloft—up in her top-royals—the new bonnet (we really do not know who invented it, but some wicked little hussy at Paris, no doubt) had it all down below, in the main-sail; the crown dwindled to nothing, and out went the front poke to exactly the same length, eighteen inches. This was truly exquisite—every body was in raptures. The bonnet was tied tight under the chin, and to see a woman's face you had to look down a sort of semi-funnelled hollow, where the ambiguous shade of her countenance was illuminated only by the radiance of her eyes. Here, too, the success was immense; the mothers of us, the young bloods, the choice spirits of the present day, all wore bonnets of this kind, when our governors went wooing them in narrow-brimmed overtopping hats. The next change of any note worth mentioning, was one of comparatively recent times, such as some of us may remember their first loves in; it was derived from a partial return to the primitive round expanded hat, and was in its chief glory, when that last great piece of French dirty work, the Revolution of 1830, was perpetrated. Women had retrograded to the old circular idea; they had given up their pokes. It was too much—female folly had, it was supposed, worn itself out—a revolution was wanted, and it came. To wear the hat, however, in its primitive rotundity was impossible—it would have suited a lady in the West Indies, but not in Europe; to tie down the brim would not do, it would have been re-adopting the worn-out fashions; so, just as was done in the Parisian political revolution, a compromise of principles was resorted to—women cut off part of their brims, turned the circle into a sort of eccentric oval, and rejoiced in the redundant curve projecting now from the left, now on the right side of their heads. Ribands, stiffened out into gigantic bows, set forth the ample chapeau right gaily; the brim stretched itself out with all the insolence of a public favourite; and at length Tom Hood showed us how a lady might go to church on a rainy day, and shelter the whole family beneath her maternal hat. The present queen of the French wore an enormous chapeau of this kind at the audience which Louis Philippe gave to the peers and deputies that came to offer him the throne; every lady in England, of a certain age, has worn a hat of the same sort.

We are bound to allow that this hat had something of the useful in it: the ample size of the brim effectually warded off both sun and rain; and we much question whether the parasol trade did not rather languish under its influence. But then it had corresponding disadvantages; it was unbearable in a windy day, and rendered any thing like close contact with a friend impossible. To get a kiss from your pretty cousin, or your maiden aunt, if you met them in the street, was quite out of the question, unless you previously doffed your hat; and, as for two young ladies laying their heads together and whispering soft secrets, no such thing was practicable. The downfall, therefore, of such stiff and unwieldy hats might have been foretold from an early period of their existence; it came, and with it a counter-revolution—a restoration of the legitimist bonnet. But, mark the malignity of a certain elderly personage, whose name and residence we never mention in ears polite; a change, a final change, came, and it came from the source of all abominations—Paris! Yes! 'twas a pure and genuine invention of the fickle people—of la jeune France! We gave up the restored bonnet, and we adopted the little, reduced, cut-away, impudent bonnet of the present moment. Now, with regard to the actual origin of this same form of bonnet, which has met with universal approbation, but which has no really good qualities to recommend it, except those of portability and warmth to the ears of the wearer—we make, with some regret, the following assertion, upon the accuracy of which we stake our aesthetic reputation. We were witnesses of the fact; any man in Paris, who had his eyes about him, must have witnessed the same thing; we appeal to all the lions of the Bois, or the Boulevard des Italiens: these small bonnets, and the peculiar mode of wearing them at the back of the head were first introduced in Paris by a class of persons, to whom we cannot make any more definite allusion than to say that their names must not be mentioned. These people invented these bonnets, and wore them for nearly six months before they were imitated; and then, the fashion being taken up by the milliners, became general both in France and England. A corresponding change in the cut of the upper portions of ladies' gowns, and in the manner of putting on the shawl—that very cut and manner now universally adopted—came from the same source, and at the same time. These changes added greatly to female comfort, we admit; and they were founded, mainly, on principles of good taste; but they had also other causes, obvious to the aesthetician and the ethnologist, which we abstain from noticing. Once more, having been eye-witnesses to the change, and having at the time maliciously speculated within our own breasts as to how long it would take for such a mode to run the round of women's heads—our anticipations having been fully realized—we pledge ourselves to the accuracy of this statement.

Well, then, having thus run a-muck against bonnets, what reparation are we to make to the fair sex, for abusing their taste and condemning their practice? We will try to point out to them certain leading ideas, which may bring them back to sounder principles, and make the covering of their heads worthy of the beauty of their faces. And here, as in the case of hats, the first thing to be aimed at must be, utility—the second, ornament. Be it observed, too, that we are writing for the latitude of England; because in this respect, as in most others, the climate ought to decide upon the basis of national costume. Now an Englishwoman, of whatever grade she may be, requires, when she goes out of doors, protection principally from wet, next from cold, and lastly from heat. Her head-dress, to be really useful, ought to comprise qualities that will effect these three objects. The substance, therefore, of the covering cannot consist of cotton, linen, or silk, at all times of the year; these substances will do for the more temperate or the hotter seasons, but not in winter—that is to say, they will not be serviceable during five months out of the twelve. In this inclement season nothing but woollen cloth or fur ought to be the principal article of female head-dress; only these two substances will effectually keep off wet and cold. They may be lined with silk or any other soft substance, but the foundation, we repeat, ought to be fur or woollen cloth; both of them articles of English manufacture or preparation—one varying through all degrees of price; the other within the reach of most persons, even in the middling classes of society. In the summer, silk, linen, cotton, or any other light fabric, will effect the purpose proposed—protection from the rays of the sun, and from the casual wet that may occur—though from the last, less than from the first inconvenience. So much for the common substance of an Englishwoman's out-of-door head-dress—for the material, that is to say: its use should always be modified by the rank and occupation of the wearer. The form must be ascertained from a reference to the principles laid down above, as to the combining a proper degree of concealment, with the due exhibiting of the beautiful features of the female face; the covering should afford ample concealment when wanted, but should also admit of the head being completely exposed when required. Now, the veil gives abundant concealment, but does not admit of total removal, and is rather inconvenient to the wearer; it is apt to get in the way, and is in danger of causing a slovenly, or even a dirty, appearance; it is more suited for in-door, than for out-of-door use—more for a warm than a cold climate. The hood is the best thing we know of, for combining the two requisites of complete concealment and complete exposure. It unites by its shape all the purposes of form, to the applicability of any kind of soft material; and it is suitable to the climate of this country at any period of the year. But, "how ugly!" the ladies will exclaim—"who could bear to tie her head up in a pudding-bag?—Does not the very form of the hood approach too nearly to that of the head, and thus violate a fundamental principle of aesthetics?" Our reply must be, that there are various kinds of hoods, and that, if they be considered ugly, it is more from their strangeness, through long disuse, than from any fault in their natural form. Besides, the very principle of concealment, so essential to a woman's modesty, militates rather against the principle of beauty; we admit it to be a difficulty—we would even say that the head of the female while out-of-doors, amid the busy throng, does not admit of the same degree of ornament as the head of the male. If we can make woman's covering graceful, it is enough; the beauty of it should be reserved for the drawing-room and the boudoir—it should not be exhibited in the street. And after all, beauty for beauty, we will back a hood against a bonnet any day in the week.

Bear with us, however, gentle ladies, while we explain to you how we would have you make and wear your hoods; and, to do so the better, examine with us some of those delightful portraits of the time of Rubens and Vandyke, when, among the nobler classes of females, dress had certainly attained a high, if not its highest point of picturesque and elegant effect. Look at some of those admirable Flemish pictures, where you will see many a pretty face enveloped in a fur-trimmed hood, and observe how much grace and modest dignity is given by that simple habiliment. It is something of this kind which we would recommend. For example—if a hood, so cut as not to admit of too close a conformation to the shape of the head, were attached to a tippet which might descend and protect the shoulders, or come even lower, at the fancy of the wearer, and were fastened round the neck, the hood itself might be elevated so as to cover the head, and might be drawn even over the face; or it might be instantly thrown back, and would lie on the upper part of the neck in picturesque and graceful folds. The lines of such a covering, not so flowing, indeed, as those of a veil, would yet be not inelegant; and they would afford sufficient contrast to the features of the face, while they would be far superior to the unmeaning rigidity of the bonnet. Hoods, such as those, are even now worn by some ladies for carriage purposes, or while going to evening parties; and they would look just as well in the bright light of the sun, as by the pale rays of the moon. Consider for a moment the comfort and the utility of such a dress; what a complete protection from cold, and, if necessary, from wet! Even in summer, the hood would keep off the sun's beams much more effectually than any bonnet; it would be light, warm, portable—useable at pleasure, always ornamental, always becoming. These hoods would be of service, whether for a walk or for a journey in a carriage; they would not need to be disentangled from the person like bonnets; they would merely have to be thrown back; they never could get spoiled by crushing; they never would need cumbrous boxes to be carried in; and, what is worthy of consideration, their cost might always be suited to the means of the wearer. They would admit of any kind of ornament that would not destroy their principle of utility;—for ornament ceases to be ornament when it negatives the purpose of the object to which it is applied—it becomes in such a case a mere excrescence: they might be edged and lined with any, the most sumptuous or the plainest materials: they might be attached round the neck by rich cords of gold and jewelled clasps; or they might be fastened with simple ribands. Thus, in spring time, a young and high-born damsel might wear her hood and tippet of light-coloured silk or brocade, edged with ermine or swan's-down, and attached with silver cords and clasps of pearl—while the noble matron might wear the same of crimson or purple velvet, edged with sable, and attached with golden cords and diamonds. The peasant's wife and daughter might use hoods of black, blue, or grey woollen cloth, lined with grey linen, edged with plain riband, and fastened with a simple button. How much better, how much more rational, how much more becoming, such head-dresses as these, than the gay but useless ribands, feathers, and chapeaux of the one class, or the misshapen, uncomfortable, untidy-looking bonnets of the other! According to the present system, it is almost impossible to infer the rank of a lady from her external costume—many a milliner's girl has passed for a duchess before now—whereas by the adoption of articles of dress, founded on principles like those of the hood, some decisive marks of distinction might be obtained. Thus the rich furs and the jewels, or the gold brocade of the princess, might indeed be imitated by the merchant's wife—who at the present day is nearly her equal in wealth—the representative of political power in, what is called, a constitutional government; but the shop-girl and the dancing-mistress might break their hearts with spite, ere they could set up a system of dress in keeping with hoods of the kind alluded to. We do not recommend, that distinction of dress according to difference of rank should be carried to an undue limit; for in the present age of the world, and especially in our country, where the basis of society is shifting, and where the pivots of the commonweal are loose, too little distinction of rank is allowed; rank is not respected as it ought to be; but, nevertheless, the promiscuous jumbling together and confounding of all men is carried too far; it is one of the elements of republicanism and anarchy that we should do well to discourage. To ladies, more than to men, would distinctions of dress be useful, and with them they would be more practicable of reintroduction; any thing that would tend to augment the outward respect of men for women, and of women for each other, would be so much gained toward a revival of some of the soundest maxims of former days.

Bonnets, then, to Orcus! Hoods to the seventh heaven!

H. L. J.



GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES.

THE VICEROY AND THE ARISTOCRACY, OR MEXICO IN 1812.

PART THE FIRST.

The most obvious defect of the German school of romance is the universal tendency of its writers to the indefinite and periphrastic, and the consequent absence of the characteristic and the true in their descriptions both of human and of external nature. Much of this prevailing habit may perhaps be attributed to the example of Goethe, who, in his works of fiction, narrates the adventures of A and B, residing in the town of C, situate in some nameless and inscrutable section of Germany. And when, to all this mystery, is superadded the ponderous and ungraceful style of most German writers, and the Latin construction of their interminable sentences, for the solution of which the reader must wade to the final word, the lack of good original novels, and the universal preference, in Germany, of translations from French and English authors, will be readily accounted for. The main source of these defects in the German writers may be found in their retired and bookish habits. Shut up in their studies, with no companions but their books and their meerschaums, and viewing the eternal world through the loopholes of retreat, often anxious, too, to advance and illustrate some pet theory of their own, their writings smell horribly of the lamp, and are long-winded, tedious, and unnatural. Another cause of the deficiencies above-named, may perhaps be discovered in the severity of German censorship, and the apprehension that more clearness and identity in their descriptions of persons and places might be twisted into political and personal allusions.

The admitted superiority of French and English works of fiction, may be attributed to the widely different habits of the writers. Nearly all the French, and many of the English writers of the present day, are men of the world, eschewing solitude, and mixing largely in society. The good effects of this frequent collision with their fellow-men are visible in their works, many of which display a deep knowledge of human nature, a vivid power of description, and a command of dialogue, not only spirited and natural, but often rising with the occasion into dramatic point and brilliancy.

At length, however, a new and radiant star has arisen in the cloudy firmament of German fiction—a novel-writer whose works exhibit a striking example of entire exemption from the defects so evident in the great majority of his brethren. This is a nameless personage, known among German reviewers as Der Unbekannte, or the Unknown, and who has broken ground that no German writer had hitherto ventured upon. Some have supposed him to be a Pennsylvanian, a considerable part of which state was originally colonized by Germans, whose descendants still, to a large extent, preserve the language and habits of the mother country. Another report stated him to be a native German, who had emigrated to Louisiana, and established himself there as a planter. Nothing definite, in short, is known; but what is certain is, that he has been long resident in the United States and in Mexico, and has made excellent use of his opportunities for becoming acquainted with those countries and their inhabitants. His subjects are, with slight exceptions, Transatlantic, his materials original, his style singularly natural and forcible; proving that however rugged the German language may appear in the works of others, it will yield to the hand of a master, and readily adapt itself to every subject.

Our readers will probably not have forgotten a series of American, Texian, and Mexican tales and sketches, which have appeared during the last few months in the pages of this magazine. With some alterations and adaptations, intended to render them more acceptable to English tastes, they are selections from the works of the writer above described. These works being published, as already mentioned, anonymously, and at prices beyond the means of most German readers, are but partially known and read even in Germany; and in this country they are entirely unknown, such portions excepted as have appeared without a name in our recent numbers. Having there presented our readers with specimens only, and for the most part of his latest works, we will now proceed to give them some account of one of his earliest and most important productions—a Mexican historical romance of striking interest, dated two years subsequently to the first revolutionary outbreak in Mexico, and exhibiting a degree of descriptive and dramatic power unparalleled in the whole range of German fiction.

When, in the year 1776, the British colonies, now known as the United States of America, made their declaration of independence, the struggle that ensued was unmarked by any circumstances of particular atrocity or blood-thirstiness, except perhaps, occasionally, on the part of the Indian allies of either party. The fight was between men of the same race, who had been accustomed to look upon each other as countrymen and brothers, and whose sympathies and feelings were in many respects in unison; it was fought manfully and fairly, as beseemed civilized men in the eighteenth century of the Christian era. Whatever wrongs, real or imaginary, the British Americans had to complain of, they had none that sufficed, even in their own eyes, to justify reprisals or cruelties beyond those which the most humanely conducted and least envenomed wars inevitably entail. But it was under strikingly different circumstances that the second of the two great republics which, with the exception of British possessions, now comprise the whole civilized portion of the North American continent, started into existence. In the former instance was seen the young and vigorous country which, having attained its majority, and feeling itself able to dispense with parental guardianship, asserted its independence, and vindicated it, with a strong hand, it is true, but yet with a warm heart and a cool judgment. In the latter case it was the spring of the caged tiger, that for years had pined in narrow prison beneath the scourge of its keeper, whom it at last turned upon and rent in its fury.

Subdued by the fierce assault of a handful of desperate adventurers, the history of Mexico, from the earliest period of its conquest, is one continuous record of oppression and cruelty on the one hand, of long and bitter suffering on the other. Deprived of its religious and customs, its priesthood and legitimate sovereigns mercilessly tortured and slain, its temples and institutions annihilated, its very history and traditions blotted out, Mexico, in the hands of the Spaniards, was rapidly transformed from a flourishing and independent empire into a huge province; while its inhabitants became a disposable horde, on whom the conquerors seemed to think they were conferring a benefit, when they made gift of them by hundreds and thousands, like sheep or oxen, to a lawless and reckless soldiery. Their houses and lands, sometimes even their wives and children, were snatched from them, and they were driven in herds to labour in the mines, or condemned to carry burdens over pathless and precipitous mountains; like the Gibeonites of old, they were made hewers of wood and drawers of water to all the congregation. Expelled from the towns, and confined to hamlets and villages, whence they were only summoned to toil in the service of their oppressors, they became in time entirely brutalized, losing the finer and more noble qualities that distinguish man from the beast of the forest, and retaining only a bitter sense of their degradation, a vivid impression of the sufferings they daily endured, and a gloomy instinctive longing after a bloody revenge.

With these Indians, who, at the commencement of the present century, composed two-fifths of the population of Mexico, may be classed a race of beings equally numerous, equally unfortunate and destitute, and still wilder and more despised—namely, the various castes sprung from the intercourse of the conquerors of the country, of their successors and slaves, with the aborigines. These half-bloods, who united the apparent stupidity and real apathy of the Indian with the lawlessness and impatience of restraint of their white fathers, found themselves driven out into a world that branded them for the accident of their birth; deprived of all property, and reduced to the most ignoble employments; continual objects of fear and detestation to the better classes, because they had nothing to risk, and every thing to gain, by a political convulsion. Such were the principal elements of a population which, after centuries of patient endurance, was at last roused to enter the lists and struggle for its independence, with all the fury of the captive who breaks the long-worn fetters from his chafed and bleeding limbs, and seeks his deliverance in the utter extermination of his jailers.

For three hundred years had the Mexicans groaned under the lash of their taskmasters, ruled by monarchs whom they never beheld, and enduring innumerable evils, without nourishing a single rebellious or revolutionary thought. If the breeze of liberty that blew over from the north, occasionally awakened in their minds the idea of an improved state of things, the hope, or rather wish, speedily died away, crushed and annihilated under the well-combined system of oppression employed by the Spaniards. The nobles had ranged themselves entirely on the side of the government, the middle classes had followed their example, and the people were compelled to obey. All was quiet in Mexico, long after insurrections had broken out in Spanish colonies further south; and this state of tranquillity was not even disturbed, when news were brought of the invasion of Spain by its hereditary foe, of the occupation of Madrid by French armies, and of the scenes of butchery that took place in that capital on the second day of May 1808. The Mexicans, far from availing themselves of this favourable opportunity to proclaim their own independence, hastened to give proofs of their sympathy with the aggrieved honour of the mother country; and on all sides resounded curses upon the head of the powerful usurper who had ousted their legitimate but unknown monarch from his throne, and now detained him in captivity. Intelligence of the Junta's declaration of war against Napoleon was received with unbounded applause, and all were striving to demonstrate their enthusiasm in the most efficient manner, when a royal decree arrived, issued by the very prince whose misfortunes they were deploring, and by which Mexico was ordered to recognise as its sovereign the brother of that usurper who had dispossessed its rightful king.

A stronger proof of Ferdinand's unworthiness to rule, could hardly have been given to the Mexicans than the decree in question. Loyalty had long been an article of faith with the whole nation; but even as the blindest superstition is sometimes metamorphosed on a sudden into total infidelity, passing from one extreme to the other, so was all feeling of loyalty utterly extinguished in the breast of the Mexican people by this instance of regal abjectness. It would have been long before they revolted against their hereditary Spanish ruler; but to find themselves given away by him in so ignominious a manner, was a degradation which they felt the more deeply from its being almost the only one that had been hitherto spared them. Discontent was universal; and by a unanimous and popular movement, the decree was publicly burned.

With just indignation did the Mexicans now discover that those persons who had hitherto most prided themselves on their loyalty and fidelity to the king and the reigning dynasty, were precisely the first to transfer their allegiance to the new sovereign. The whole of the government officers, Spaniards nearly to a man, hastened to take measures for the surrender of the nation to its new ruler, without even enquiring whether it approved of the change. One man only was in favour of a more honourable expedient, and that man was Iturrigaray, the viceroy. Well acquainted with the cowardice and cunning of his captive sovereign, the former of which qualities had dictated the decree, he had nevertheless formed a plan to preserve Mexico for him, in accordance with the wish of its population. A junta, composed of Spaniards and of the most distinguished Mexicans, was to represent the nation till the arrival of further news or orders from Europe. This plan was generally approved of by the Mexicans, who looked forward with unbounded delight to the moment when they should have a voice in the public affairs of their country. The joy was universal; but in the very midst of this joy, and of the preliminaries to the carrying out of this project, the author of it, the viceroy himself, was seized in his palace by his own countrymen, conducted with his family to Vera Cruz, and slipped off to Spain as a state prisoner.