FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: Since the appearance of the eleventh edition of this work, the detection of a singular literary deception has occurred. The evidence respecting The English Mercurie rests on the alleged discovery of the literary antiquary, George Chalmers. I witnessed, fifty years ago, that laborious researcher busied among the long dusty shelves of our periodical papers, which then reposed in the ante-chamber to the former reading-room of the British Museum. To the industry which I had witnessed, I confided, and such positive and precise evidence could not fail to be accepted by all. In the British Museum, indeed, George Chalmers found the printed English Mercurie; but there also, it now appears, he might have seen the original, with all its corrections, before it was sent to the press, written on paper of modern fabric. The detection of this literary imposture has been ingeniously and unquestionably demonstrated by Mr. Thomas Watts, in a letter to Mr. Panizzi, the keeper of the printed books in the British Museum. The fact is, the whole is a modern forgery, for which Birch, preserving it among his papers, has not assigned either the occasion or the motive. Mr. Watts says—"The general impression left on the mind by the perusal of the Mercurie is, that it must have been written after the Spectator"; that the manuscript was composed in modern spelling, afterwards antiquated in the printed copy; while the type is similar to that used by Caslon in 1766. By this accidental reference to the originals, "the unaccountably successful imposition of fifty years was shattered to fragments in five minutes." I am inclined to suspect that it was a jeu d'esprit of historical antiquarianism, concocted by Birch and his friends the Yorkes, with whom, as it is well known, he was concerned in a more elegant literary recreation, the composition of the Athenian Letters. The blunder of George Chalmers has been repeated in numerous publications throughout Europe and in America. I think it better to correct the text by this notice than by a silent suppression, that it may remain a memorable instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged documents; and a proof that multiplied authorities add no strength to evidence, when nil are to be traced to a single source.]



TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES.

The strange trials to which those suspected of guilt were put in the middle ages, conducted with many devout ceremonies by the ministers of religion, were pronounced to be the judgments of God! The ordeal consisted of various kinds: walking blindfold amidst burning ploughshares; passing through fires; holding in the hand a red-hot bar; and plunging the arm into boiling water: the popular affirmation—"I will put my hand in the fire to confirm this," was derived from this custom of our rude ancestors. Challenging the accuser to single combat, when frequently the stoutest champion was allowed to supply their place; swallowing a morsel of consecrated bread; sinking or swimming in a river for witchcraft; or weighing a witch; stretching out the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by this very short chancery suit, called the judicium crucis. The bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Denis disputed about the patronage of a monastery: Pepin the Short, not being able to decide on their confused claims, decreed one of these judgments of God, that of the Cross. The bishop and abbot each chose a man, and both the men appeared in the chapel, where they stretched out their arms in the form of a cross. The spectators, more devout than the mob of the present day, but still the mob, were piously attentive, but betted however now for one man, now for the other, and critically watched the slightest motion of the arms. The bishop's man was first tired:—he let his arms fall, and ruined his patron's cause for ever. Though sometimes these trials might be eluded by the artifice of the priest, numerous were the innocent victims who unquestionably suffered in these superstitious practices.

From the tenth to the twelfth century they were common. Hildebert, bishop of Mans, being accused of high treason by our William Rufus, was prepared to undergo one of these trials, when Ives, bishop of Chartres, convinced him that they were against the canons of the constitutions of the church, and adds, that in this manner Innocentiam defendere, set innocentiam perdere.

An abbot of St. Aubin, of Angers, in 1066, having refused to present a horse to the Viscount of Tours, which the viscount claimed in right of his lordship, whenever an abbot first took possession of that abbey, the ecclesiastic offered to justify himself by the trial of the ordeal, or by duel, for which he proposed to furnish a man. The viscount at first agreed to the duel; but, reflecting that these combats, though sanctioned by the church, depended wholly on the skill or vigour of the adversary, and could therefore afford no substantial proof of the equity of his claim, he proposed to compromise the matter in a manner which strongly characterises the times: he waived his claim, on condition that the abbot should not forget to mention in his prayers himself, his wife, and his brothers! As the orisons appeared to the abbot, in comparison with the horse, of little or no value, he accepted the proposal.

In the tenth century the right of representation was not fixed: it was a question whether the sons of a son ought to be reckoned among the children of the family, and succeed equally with their uncles, if their fathers happened to die while their grandfathers survived. This point was decided by one of these combats. The champion in behalf of the right of children to represent their deceased father proved victorious. It was then established by a perpetual decree that they should thenceforward share in the inheritance, together with their uncles. In the eleventh century the same mode was practised to decide respecting two rival Liturgies! A pair of knights, clad in complete armour, were the critics to decide which was the authentic.

"If two neighbours," say the capitularies of Dagobert, "dispute respecting the boundaries of their possessions, let a piece of turf of the contested land be dug up by the judge, and brought by him into the court; the two parties shall touch it with the points of their swords, calling on God as a witness of their claims;—after this let them combat, and let victory decide on their rights!"

In Germany, a solemn circumstance was practised in these judicial combats. In the midst of the lists they placed a bier.—By its side stood the accuser and the accused; one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier, and leaned there for some time in profound silence, before they began the combat.

The manners of the age are faithfully painted in the ancient Fabliaux. The judicial combat is introduced by a writer of the fourteenth century, in a scene where Pilate challenges Jesus Christ to single combat. Another describes the person who pierced the side of Christ as a knight who jousted with Jesus.[52]

Judicial combat appears to have been practised by the Jews. Whenever the rabbins had to decide on a dispute about property between two parties, neither of which could produce evidence to substantiate his claim, they terminated it by single combat. The rabbins were impressed by a notion, that consciousness of right would give additional confidence and strength to the rightful possessor. It may, however, be more philosophical to observe, that such judicial combats were more frequently favourable to the criminal than to the innocent, because the bold wicked man is usually more ferocious and hardy than he whom he singles out as his victim, and who only wishes to preserve his own quiet enjoyment:—in this case the assailant is the more terrible combatant.

Those accused of robbery were put to trial by a piece of barley-bread, on which the mass had been said; which if they could not swallow, they were declared guilty. This mode of trial was improved by adding to the bread a slice of cheese; and such was their credulity, that they were very particular in this holy bread and cheese, called the corsned. The bread was to be of unleavened barley, and the cheese made of ewe's milk in the month of May.

Du Cange observed, that the expression—"May this piece of bread choke me!" comes from this custom. The anecdote of Earl Godwin's death by swallowing a piece of bread, in making this asseveration, is recorded in our history. Doubtless superstition would often terrify the innocent person, in the attempt of swallowing a consecrated morsel.

Among the proofs of guilt in superstitious ages was that of the bleeding of a corpse. It was believed, that at the touch or approach of the murderer the blood gushed out of the murdered. By the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many innocent spectators must have suffered death. "When a body is full of blood, warmed by a sudden external heat, and a putrefaction coming on, some of the blood-vessels will burst, as they will all in time." This practice was once allowed in England, and is still looked on in some of the uncivilized parts of these kingdoms as a detection of the criminal. It forms a solemn picture in the histories and ballads of our old writers.

Robertson observes, that all these absurd institutions were cherished from the superstitious of the age believing the legendary histories of those saints who crowd and disgrace the Roman calendar. These fabulous miracles had been declared authentic by the bulls of the popes and the decrees of councils; they were greedily swallowed by the populace; and whoever believed that the Supreme Being had interposed miraculously on those trivial occasions mentioned in legends, could not but expect the intervention of Heaven in these most solemn appeals. These customs were a substitute for written laws, which that barbarous period had not; and as no society can exist without laws, the ignorance of the people had recourse to these customs, which, evil and absurd as they were, closed endless controversies. Ordeals are in truth the rude laws of a barbarous people who have not yet obtained a written code, and are not sufficiently advanced in civilization to enter into the refined inquiries, the subtile distinctions, and elaborate investigations, which a court of law demands.

These ordeals probably originate in that one of Moses called the "Waters of Jealousy." The Greeks likewise had ordeals, for in the Antigonus of Sophocles the soldiers offer to prove their innocence by handling red-hot iron, and walking between fires. One cannot but smile at the whimsical ordeals of the Siamese. Among other practices to discover the justice of a cause, civil or criminal, they are particularly attached to using certain consecrated purgative pills, which they make the contending parties swallow. He who retains them longest gains his cause! The practice of giving Indians a consecrated grain of rice to swallow is known to discover the thief, in any company, by the contortions and dismay evident on the countenance of the real thief.

In the middle ages, they were acquainted with secrets to pass unhurt these singular trials. Voltaire mentions one for undergoing the ordeal of boiling water. Our late travellers in the East have confirmed this statement. The Mevleheh dervises can hold red-hot iron between their teeth. Such artifices have been often publicly exhibited at Paris and London. Mr. Sharon Turner observes, on the ordeal of the Anglo-Saxons, that the hand was not to be immediately inspected, and was left to the chance of a good constitution to be so far healed during three days (the time they required to be bound up and sealed, before it was examined) as to discover those appearances when inspected, which were allowed to be satisfactory. There was likewise much preparatory training, suggested by the more experienced; besides, the accused had an opportunity of going alone into the church, and making terms with the priest. The few spectators were always distant; and cold iron might be substituted, and the fire diminished, at the moment.

They possessed secrets and medicaments, to pass through these trials in perfect security. An anecdote of these times may serve to show their readiness. A rivalship existed between the Austin-friars and the Jesuits. The father-general of the Austin-friars was dining with the Jesuits; and when the table was removed, he entered into a formal discourse of the superiority of the monastic order, and charged the Jesuits, in unqualified terms, with assuming the title of "fratres," while they held not the three vows, which other monks were obliged to consider as sacred and binding. The general of the Austin-friars was very eloquent and very authoritative:—and the superior of the Jesuits was very unlearned, but not half a fool.

The Jesuit avoided entering the list of controversy with the Austin-friar, but arrested his triumph by asking him if he would see one of his friars, who pretended to be nothing more than a Jesuit, and one of the Austin-friars who religiously performed the aforesaid three vows, show instantly which of them would be the readier to obey his superiors? The Austin-friar consented. The Jesuit then turning to one of his brothers, the holy friar Mark, who was waiting on them, said, "Brother Mark, our companions are cold. I command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen-fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm themselves over your hands." Father Mark instantly obeys, and, to the astonishment of the Austin-friar, brought in his hands a supply of red burning coals, and held them to whoever chose to warm himself; and at the command of his superior returned them to the kitchen-hearth. The general of the Austin-friars, with the rest of his brotherhood, stood amazed; he looked wistfully on one of his monks, as if he wished to command him to do the like. But the Austin monk, who perfectly understood him, and saw this was not a time to hesitate, observed,—"Reverend father, forbear, and do not command me to tempt God! I am ready to fetch you fire in a chafing-dish, but not in my bare hands." The triumph of the Jesuits was complete; and it is not necessary to add, that the miracle was noised about, and that the Austin-friars could never account for it, notwithstanding their strict performance of the three vows!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 52: These curious passages, so strikingly indicative of the state of thought in the days of their authors, are worth clearly noting. Pilate's challenge to the Saviour is completely in the taste of the writer's day. He was Adam Davie, a poet of the fourteenth century, of whom an account is preserved in Warton's History of English Poetry; and the passage occurs in his poem of the Battle of Jerusalem, the incidents of which are treated as Froissart would treat the siege of a town happening in his own day.

The second passage above quoted occurs in the Vision of Piers Plowman, a poem of the same era, where the Roman soldier—whose name, according to legendary history, was Longinus, and who pierced the Saviour's side—is described as if he had given the wound in a passage of arms, or joust; and elsewhere in the same poem it is said that Christ,

"For mankyndes sake, Justed in Jerusalem, A joye to us all."

And in another part of the poem, speaking of the victory of Christ, it is said—

"Jhesus justede well."]



THE INQUISITION.

Innocent the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was successful in his enterprises, having sent Dominic with some missionaries into Languedoc, these men so irritated the heretics they were sent to convert, that most of them were assassinated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the aid of temporal arms, and published against them a crusade, granting, as was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all kinds of indulgences and pardons to those who should arm against these Mahometans, so he termed these unfortunate Languedocians. Once all were Turks when they were not Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without distinction of age or sex. It was then he established that scourge of Europe, THE INQUISITION. This pope considered that, though men might be compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain professing particular dogmas; and he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the interests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his persecuting inquiries, that he firmly established the Inquisition at Toulouse.

Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain. To another Dominican, John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise, that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Granada, and had expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they at least assumed the name; but it was well known that both these nations naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians. This race was afterwards distinguished as Christianos Novos; and in forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.

Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy chair, in the space of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames.

Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. "A general jealousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children."

The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the Inquisition. "Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I felt my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so greatly enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and praeses!"

In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars surround this tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, "If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model."

The Inquisition punished heretics by fire, to elude the maxim, "Ecclesia non novit sanguinem;" for burning a man, say they, does not shed his blood. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a mace in his hand, for the purpose that when he despatched his antagonist he might not spill blood, but only break his bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.

The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech, urged the necessity of setting up an Inquisition in England! It was on the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury, which highly provoked the said recorder. "Magna Charta," writes the prefacer to the trial, "with the recorder of London, is nothing more than Magna F——!" It appears that the jury, after being kept two days and two nights to alter their verdict, were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, "Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well with us, till something like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in England." Thus it will ever be, while both parties struggling for the pre-eminence rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, "Trial by Jury."

So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, was burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy Jesuit condemned? Not, as some have imagined, for his having been concerned in a conspiracy against the king of Portugal. No other charge is laid to him in this trial but that of having indulged certain heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the Inquisition would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of a fanatical old man. Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, that "The holy Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Anti-Christ, told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist; that there were to be three Anti-Christs, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; and that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies."

For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times. Granger assures us, that in his remembrance a horse that had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c., by significant tokens, was, together with his owner, put into the Inquisition for both of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.[53]

One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the terrible Inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was related to me by a Portuguese gentleman.

A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings confessed everything they wished! This enraged the nobleman, and feigning a dangerous illness he begged the inquisitor would come to give him his last spiritual aid.

As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had prepared his confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in their presence to acknowledge himself a Jew, to write his confession, and to sign it. On the refusal of the inquisitor, the nobleman ordered his people to put on the inquisitor's head a red-hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the sight of this new instrument of torture, "Luke's iron crown," the monk wrote and subscribed the abhorred confession. The nobleman then observed, "See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with unhappy men! My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism; but with this difference, only torments have forced that from him which fear alone has drawn from you!"

The Inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the "Origin of the Inquisition" in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that God was the first who began the functions of an inquisitor over Cain and the workmen of Babel! Macedo, however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears; for he obtained a Professor's chair at Padua for the arguments he delivered at Venice against the pope, which were published by the title of "The literary Roarings of the Lion at St. Mark;" besides he is the author of 109 different works; but it is curious to observe how far our interest is apt to prevail over our conscience,—Macedo praised the Inquisition up to the skies, while he sank the pope to nothing!

Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last edition of this work, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal is abolished—but its history enters into that of the human mind; and the history of the Inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious "Introduction," loses none of its value with the philosophical mind. This monstrous tribunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty of the intellectual world, without intellect.

In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is not the least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, was again restored—and at the present moment, I know not whether it is to be restored or abolished.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 53: See also the remark of Galileo in a previous page of this volume, in the article headed "The Persecuted Learned."]



SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY VARIOUS NATIONS IN THEIR REPASTS.

The Maldivian islanders eat alone. They retire into the most hidden parts of their houses; and they draw down the cloths that serve as blinds to their windows, that they may eat unobserved. This custom probably arises from the savage, in early periods of society, concealing himself to eat: he fears that another, with as sharp an appetite, but more strong than himself, should come and ravish his meal from him. The ideas of witchcraft are also widely spread among barbarians; and they are not a little fearful that some incantation may be thrown among their victuals.

In noticing the solitary meal of the Maldivian islander, another reason may be alleged for this misanthropical repast. They never will eat with any one who is inferior to them in birth, in riches, or dignity; and as it is a difficult matter to settle this equality, they are condemned to lead this unsocial life.

On the contrary, the islanders of the Philippines are remarkably social. Whenever one of them finds himself without a companion to partake of his meal, he runs till he meets with one; and we are assured that, however keen his appetite may be, he ventures not to satisfy it without a guest.[54]

Savages, says Montaigne, when they eat, "S'essuyent les doigts aux cuisses, a la bourse des genitoires, et a la plante des pieds." We cannot forbear exulting in the polished convenience of napkins!

The tables of the rich Chinese shine with a beautiful varnish, and are covered with silk carpets very elegantly worked. They do not make use of plates, knives, and forks: every guest has two little ivory or ebony sticks, which he handles very adroitly.

The Otaheiteans, who are naturally social, and very gentle in their manners, feed separately from each other. At the hour of repast, the members of each family divide; two brothers, two sisters, and even husband and wife, father and mother, have each their respective basket. They place themselves at the distance of two or three yards from each other; they turn their backs, and take their meal in profound silence.

The custom of drinking at different hours from those assigned for eating exists among many savage nations. Originally begun from necessity, it became a habit, which subsisted even when the fountain was near to them. A people transplanted, observes an ingenious philosopher, preserve in another climate modes of living which relate to those from whence they originally came. It is thus the Indians of Brazil scrupulously abstain from eating when they drink, and from drinking when they eat.[55]

When neither decency nor politeness is known, the man who invites his friends to a repast is greatly embarrassed to testify his esteem for his guests, and to offer them some amusement; for the savage guest imposes on himself this obligation. Amongst the greater part of the American Indians, the host is continually on the watch to solicit them to eat, but touches nothing himself. In New France, he wearies himself with singing, to divert the company while they eat.

When civilization advances, men wish to show their confidence to their friends: they treat their guests as relations; and it is said that in China the master of a house, to give a mark of his politeness, absents himself while his guests regale themselves at his table with undisturbed revelry.[56]

The demonstrations of friendship in a rude state have a savage and gross character, which it is not a little curious to observe. The Tartars pull a man by the ear to press him to drink, and they continue tormenting him till he opens his mouth; then they clap their hands and dance before him.

No customs seem more ridiculous than those practised by a Kamschatkan, when he wishes to make another his friend. He first invites him to eat. The host and his guest strip themselves in a cabin which is heated to an uncommon degree. While the guest devours the food with which they serve him, the other continually stirs the fire. The stranger must bear the excess of the heat as well as of the repast. He vomits ten times before he will yield; but, at length obliged to acknowledge himself overcome, he begins to compound matters. He purchases a moment's respite by a present of clothes or dogs; for his host threatens to heat the cabin, and oblige him to eat till he dies. The stranger has the right of retaliation allowed to him: he treats in the same manner, and exacts the same presents. Should his host not accept the invitation of him whom he had so handsomely regaled, in that case the guest would take possession of his cabin, till he had the presents returned to him which the other had in so singular a manner obtained.

For this extravagant custom a curious reason has been alleged. It is meant to put the person to a trial, whose friendship is sought. The Kamschatkan who is at the expense of the fires, and the repast, is desirous to know if the stranger has the strength to support pain with him, and if he is generous enough to share with him some part of his property. While the guest is employed on his meal, he continues heating the cabin to an insupportable degree; and for a last proof of the stranger's constancy and attachment, he exacts more clothes and more dogs. The host passes through the same ceremonies in the cabin of the stranger; and he shows, in his turn, with what degree of fortitude he can defend his friend. The most singular customs would appear simple, if it were possible for the philosopher to understand them on the spot.

As a distinguishing mark of their esteem, the negroes of Ardra drink out of one cup at the same time. The king of Loango eats in one house, and drinks in another. A Kamschatkan kneels before his guests; he cuts an enormous slice from a sea-calf; he crams it entire into the mouth of his friend, furiously crying out "Tana!"—There! and cutting away what hangs about his lips, snatches and swallows it with avidity.

A barbarous magnificence attended the feasts of the ancient monarchs of France. After their coronation or consecration, when they sat at table, the nobility served them on horseback.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: In Cochin-China, a traveller may always obtain his dinner by simply joining the family of the first house he may choose to enter, such hospitality being the general custom.]

[Footnote 55: Esprit des Usages, et des Coutumes.]

[Footnote 56: If the master be present, he devotes himself to cramming his guests to repletion.]



MONARCHS.

Saint Chrysostom has this very acute observation on kings: Many monarchs are infected with a strange wish that their successors may turn out bad princes. Good kings desire it, as they imagine, continues this pious politician, that their glory will appear the more splendid by the contrast; and the bad desire it, as they consider such kings will serve to countenance their own misdemeanours.

Princes, says Gracian, are willing to be aided, but not surpassed: which maxim is thus illustrated.

A Spanish lord having frequently played at chess with Philip II., and won all the games, perceived, when his Majesty rose from play, that he was much ruffled with chagrin. The lord, when he returned home, said to his family—"My children, we have nothing more to do at court: there we must expect no favour; for the king is offended at my having won of him every game of chess." As chess entirely depends on the genius of the players, and not on fortune, King Philip the chess-player conceived he ought to suffer no rival.

This appears still clearer by the anecdote told of the Earl of Sunderland, minister to George I., who was partial to the game of chess. He once played with the Laird of Cluny, and the learned Cunningham, the editor of Horace. Cunningham, with too much skill and too much sincerity, beat his lordship. "The earl was so fretted at his superiority and surliness, that he dismissed him without any reward. Cluny allowed himself sometimes to be beaten; and by that means got his pardon, with something handsome besides."

In the Criticon of Gracian, there is a singular anecdote relative to kings.

A Polish monarch having quitted his companions when he was hunting, his courtiers found him, a few days after, in a market-place, disguised as a porter, and lending out the use of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much surprised as they were doubtful at first whether the porter could be his majesty. At length they ventured to express their complaints that so great a personage should debase himself by so vile an employment. His majesty having heard them, replied—"Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me carry here: the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in four nights than I have during all my reign. I begin to live, and to be king of myself. Elect whom you choose. For me, who am so well, it were madness to return to court." Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic monarchical porter, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, exclaimed—"I had rather tug at an oar!" The vacillating fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these anecdotes; their monarchs appear to have frequently been philosophers; and, as the world is made, an excellent philosopher proves but an indifferent king.

Two observations on kings were offered to a courtier with great naivete by that experienced politician, the Duke of Alva:—"Kings who affect to be familiar with their companions make use of men as they do of oranges; they take oranges to extract their juice, and when they are well sucked they throw them away. Take care the king does not do the same to you; be careful that he does not read all your thoughts; otherwise he will throw you aside to the back of his chest, as a book of which he has read enough." "The squeezed orange," the King of Prussia applied in his dispute with Voltaire.

When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-founded notion. "Being a king does not exclude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The King of Prussia, the only great king at present (this was THE GREAT Frederic) is very social. Charles the Second, the last king of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henries and Edwards were all social."

The Marquis of Halifax, in his character of Charles II., has exhibited a trait in the royal character of a good-natured monarch; that trait, is sauntering. I transcribe this curious observation, which introduces us into a levee.

"There was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours which he passed amongst his mistresses, who served only to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called SAUNTERING, was the sultana queen he delighted in.

"The thing called SAUNTERING is a stronger temptation to princes than it is to others.—The being galled with importunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces; the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill-grounded pretences; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised:—all these would make any man run away from them, and I used to think it was the motive for making him walk so fast."



OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE.

The title of illustrious was never given, till the reign of Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this noble word into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book to record those who had possessed this title; and, as it was then bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain their names.

In the time of Constantine, the title of illustrious was given more particularly to those princes who had distinguished themselves in war; but it was not continued to their descendants. At length, it became very common; and every son of a prince was illustrious. It is now a convenient epithet for the poet.

In the rage for TITLES the ancient lawyers in Italy were not satisfied by calling kings ILLUSTRES; they went a step higher, and would have emperors to be super-illustres, a barbarous coinage of their own.

In Spain, they published a book of titles for their kings, as well as for the Portuguese; but Selden tells us, that "their Cortesias and giving of titles grew at length, through the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes to such an insufferable forme, that a remedie was provided against it." This remedy was an act published by Philip III. which ordained that all the Cortesias, as they termed these strange phrases they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, "To the king our lord," leaving out those fantastical attributes of which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in increasing the number.

It would fill three or four of these pages to transcribe the titles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he assumes in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his "Titles of Honour," first part, p. 140, has preserved them. This "emperor of victorious emperors," as he styles himself, at length condescended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, that in all their letters and instruments they should be only styled father and son: the emperor calling the sultan his son; and the sultan the emperor, in regard of his years, his father.

Formerly, says Houssaie, the title of highness was only given to kings; but now it has become so common that all the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to highness. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that of majesty.

Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his queen Isabella of Castile, were only treated with the title of highness. Charles was the first who took that of majesty: not in his quality of king of Spain, but as emperor. St. Foix informs us, that kings were usually addressed by the titles of most illustrious, or your serenity, or your grace; but that the custom of giving them that of majesty was only established by Louis XI., a prince the least majestic in all his actions, his manners, and his exterior—a severe monarch, but no ordinary man, the Tiberius of France. The manners of this monarch were most sordid; in public audiences he dressed like the meanest of the people, and affected to sit on an old broken chair, with a filthy dog on his knees. In an account found of his household, this majestic prince has a charge made him for two new sleeves sewed on one of his old doublets.

Formerly kings were apostrophised by the title of your grace. Henry VIII. was the first, says Houssaie, who assumed the title of highness; and at length majesty. It was Francis I. who saluted him with this last title, in their interview in the year 1520, though he called himself only the first gentleman in his kingdom!

So distinct were once the titles of highness and excellence, that when Don Juan, the brother of Philip II., was permitted to take up the latter title, and the city of Granada saluted him by the title of highness, it occasioned such serious jealousy at court, that had he persisted in it, he would have been condemned for treason.

The usual title of cardinals, about 1600, was seignoria illustrissima; the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister and cardinal, in his old age, assumed the title of eccellencia reverendissima. The church of Rome was in its glory, and to be called reverend was then accounted a higher honour than to be styled illustrious. But by use illustrious grew familiar, and reverend vulgar, and at last the cardinals were distinguished by the title of eminent.

After all these historical notices respecting these titles, the reader will smile when he is acquainted with the reason of an honest curate of Montferrat, who refused to bestow the title of highness on the duke of Mantua, because he found in his breviary these words, Tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus; from all which he concluded, that none but the Lord was to be honoured with the title of highness! The "Titles of Honour" of Selden is a very curious volume, and, as the learned Usher told Evelyn, the most valuable work of this great scholar. The best edition is a folio of about one thousand pages. Selden vindicates the right of a king of England to the title of emperor.

"And never yet was TITLE did not move; And never eke a mind, that TITLE did not love."



TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS.

In countries where despotism exists in all its force, and is gratified in all its caprices, either the intoxication of power has occasioned sovereigns to assume the most solemn and the most fantastic titles; or the royal duties and functions were considered of so high and extensive a nature, that the people expressed their notion of the pure monarchical state by the most energetic descriptions of oriental fancy.

The chiefs of the Natchez are regarded by their people as the children of the sun, and they bear the name of their father.

The titles which some chiefs assume are not always honourable in themselves; it is sufficient if the people respect them. The king of Quiterva calls himself the great lion; and for this reason lions are there so much respected, that they are not allowed to kill them, but at certain royal huntings.

The king of Monomotapa is surrounded by musicians and poets, who adulate him by such refined flatteries as lord of the sun and moon; great magician; and great thief!—where probably thievery is merely a term for dexterity.

The Asiatics have bestowed what to us appear as ridiculous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones: "Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads under his feet."

His majesty of Ava is called God: when he writes to a foreign sovereign he calls himself the king of kings, whom all others should obey, as he is the cause of the preservation of all animals; the regulator of the seasons, the absolute master of the ebb and flow of the sea, brother to the sun, and king of the four-and-twenty umbrellas! These umbrellas are always carried before him as a mark of his dignity.

The titles of the kings of Achem are singular, though voluminous. The most striking ones are sovereign of the universe, whose body is luminous as the sun; whom God created to be as accomplished as the moon at her plenitude; whose eye glitters like the northern star; a king as spiritual as a ball is round; who when he rises shades all his people; from under whose feet a sweet odour is wafted, &c. &c.

The Kandyan sovereign is called Dewo (God). In a deed of gift he proclaims his extraordinary attributes. "The protector of religion, whose fame is infinite, and of surpassing excellence, exceeding the moon, the unexpanded jessamine buds, the stars, &c.; whose feet are as fragrant to the noses of other kings as flowers to bees; our most noble patron and god by custom," &c.

After a long enumeration of the countries possessed by the king of Persia, they give him some poetical distinctions: the branch of honour; the mirror of virtue; and the rose of delight.



ROYAL DIVINITIES.

There is a curious dissertation in the "Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," by the Abbe Mongault, "on the divine honours which were paid to the governors of provinces during the Roman republic;" in their lifetime these originally began in gratitude, and at length degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how far the human mind can advance, when led on by customs that operate unperceivably on it, and blind us in our absurdities. One of these ceremonies was exquisitely ludicrous. When they voted a statue to a proconsul, they placed it among the statues of the gods in the festival called Lectisternium, from the ridiculous circumstances of this solemn festival. On that day the gods were invited to a repast, which was however spread in various quarters of the city, to satiate mouths more mortal. The gods were however taken down from their pedestals, laid on beds ornamented in their temples; pillows were placed under their marble heads; and while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with a magnificent repast. When Caesar had conquered Rome, the servile senate put him to dine with the gods! Fatigued by and ashamed of these honours, he desired the senate to erase from his statue in the capitol the title they had given him of a demi-god!

The adulations lavished on the first Roman emperors were extravagant; but perhaps few know that they were less offensive than the flatterers of the third century under the Pagan, and of the fourth under the Christian emperors. Those who are acquainted with the character of the age of Augustulus have only to look at the one, and the other code, to find an infinite number of passages which had not been tolerable even in that age. For instance, here is a law of Arcadius and Honorius, published in 404:—

"Let the officers of the palace be warned to abstain from frequenting tumultuous meetings; and that those who, instigated by a sacrilegious temerity, dare to oppose the authority of our divinity, shall be deprived of their employments, and their estates confiscated." The letters they write are holy. When the sons speak of their fathers, it is, "Their father of divine memory;" or "Their divine father." They call their own laws oracles, and celestial oracles. So also their subjects address them by the titles of "Your Perpetuity, your Eternity." And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, that the emperors at length added this to their titles. It begins, "If any magistrate, after having concluded a public work, put his name rather than that of Our Perpetuity, let him be judged guilty of high-treason." All this reminds one of "the celestial empire" of the Chinese.

Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier tells us that some of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, crying, "Wonder! wonder! wonder!" And a proverb current in his dominion was, "If the king saith at noonday it is night, you are to say, Behold the moon and the stars!" Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition and fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign without knowing what it is to be one. He was brought out of the seraglio to be placed on the throne, and it was he, rather than the spectators, who might have truly used the interjection of astonishment!



DETHRONED MONARCHS

Fortune never appears in a more extravagant humour than when she reduces monarchs to become mendicants. Half a century ago it was not imagined that our own times should have to record many such instances. After having contemplated kings raised into divinities, we see them now depressed as beggars. Our own times, in two opposite senses, may emphatically be distinguished as the age of kings.

In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire's. Eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation, they are discovered to be eight monarchs in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns!

What added to this exquisite satire was, that there were eight living monarchs at that moment wanderers on the earth;—a circumstance which has since occurred!

Adelaide, the widow of Lothario, king of Italy, one of the most beautiful women in her age, was besieged in Pavia by Berenger, who resolved to constrain her to marry his son after Pavia was taken; she escaped from her prison with her almoner. The archbishop of Reggio had offered her an asylum: to reach it, she and her almoner travelled on foot through the country by night, concealing herself in the day-time among the corn, while the almoner begged for alms and food through the villages.

The emperor Henry IV. after having been deposed and imprisoned by his son, Henry V., escaped from prison; poor, vagrant, and without aid, he entreated the bishop of Spires to grant him a lay prebend in his church. "I have studied," said he, "and have learned to sing, and may therefore be of some service to you." The request was denied, and he died miserably and obscurely at Liege, after having drawn the attention of Europe to his victories and his grandeur!

Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Great, mother of Louis XIII., mother-in-law of three sovereigns, and regent of France, frequently wanted the necessaries of life, and died at Cologne in the utmost misery. The intrigues of Richelieu compelled her to exile herself, and live an unhappy fugitive. Her petition exists, with this supplicatory opening: "Supplie Marie, Reine de France et de Navarre, disant, que depuis le 23 Fevrier elle aurait ete arretee prisonniere au chateau de Compiegne, sans etre ni accusee ni soupconne," &c. Lilly, the astrologer, in his Life and Death of King Charles the First, presents us with a melancholy picture of this unfortunate monarch. He has also described the person of the old queen-mother of France:—

"In the month of August, 1641, I beheld the old queen-mother of France departing from London, in company of Thomas, Earl of Arundel. A sad spectacle of mortality it was, and produced tears from mine eyes and many other beholders, to see an aged, lean, decrepit, poor queen, ready for her grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no place of residence in this world left her, but where the courtesy of her hard fortune assigned it. She had been the only stately and magnificent woman of Europe: wife to the greatest king that ever lived in France; mother unto one king and unto two queens."

In the year 1595, died at Paris, Antonio, king of Portugal. His body is interred at the Cordeliers, and his heart deposited at the Ave-Maria. Nothing on earth could compel this prince to renounce his crown. He passed over to England, and Elizabeth assisted him with troops; but at length he died in France in great poverty. This dethroned monarch was happy in one thing, which is indeed rare: in all his miseries he had a servant, who proved a tender and faithful friend, and who only desired to participate in his misfortunes, and to soften his miseries; and for the recompense of his services he only wished to be buried at the feet of his dear master. This hero in loyalty, to whom the ancient Romans would have raised altars, was Don Diego Bothei, one of the greatest lords of the court of Portugal, and who drew his origin from the kings of Bohemia.

Hume supplies an anecdote of singular royal distress. The queen of England, with her son Charles, "had a moderate pension assigned her; but it was so ill paid, and her credit ran so low, that one morning when the Cardinal de Retz waited on her, she informed him that her daughter, the Princess Henrietta, was obliged to lie a-bed for want of a fire to warm her. To such a condition was reduced, in the midst of Paris, a queen of England, and a daughter of Henry IV. of France!" We find another proof of her extreme poverty. Salmasius, after publishing his celebrated political book, in favour of Charles I., the Defensio Regia, was much blamed by a friend for not having sent a copy to the widowed queen of Charles, who, he writes, "though poor, would yet have paid the bearer."

The daughter of James the First, who married the Elector Palatine, in her attempts to get her husband crowned, was reduced to the utmost distress, and wandered frequently in disguise.

A strange anecdote is related of Charles VII. of France. Our Henry V. had shrunk his kingdom into the town of Bourges. It is said that having told a shoemaker, after he had just tried a pair of his boots, that he had no money to pay for them, Crispin had such callous feelings that he refused his majesty the boots. "It is for this reason," says Comines, "I praise those princes who are on good terms with the lowest of their people; for they know not at what hour they may want them."

Many monarchs of this day have experienced more than once the truth of the reflection of Comines.

We may add here, that in all conquered countries the descendants of royal families have been found among the dregs of the populace. An Irish prince has been discovered in the person of a miserable peasant; and in Mexico, its faithful historian Clavigero notices, that he has known a locksmith, who was a descendant of its ancient kings, and a tailor, the representative of one of its noblest families.



FEUDAL CUSTOMS.

Barbarous as the feudal customs were, they were the first attempts at organising European society. The northern nations, in their irruptions and settlements in Europe, were barbarians independent of each other, till a sense of public safety induced these hordes to confederate. But the private individual reaped no benefit from the public union; on the contrary, he seems to have lost his wild liberty in the subjugation; he in a short time was compelled to suffer from his chieftain; and the curiosity of the philosopher is excited by contemplating in the feudal customs a barbarous people carrying into their first social institutions their original ferocity. The institution of forming cities into communities at length gradually diminished this military and aristocratic tyranny; and the freedom of cities, originating in the pursuits of commerce, shook off the yoke of insolent lordships. A famous ecclesiastical writer of that day, who had imbibed the feudal prejudices, calls these communities, which were distinguished by the name of libertates (hence probably our municipal term the liberties), as "execrable inventions, by which, contrary to law and justice, slaves withdrew themselves from that obedience which they owed to their masters." Such was the expiring voice of aristocratic tyranny! This subject has been ingeniously discussed by Robertson in his preliminary volume to Charles V.; but the following facts constitute the picture which the historian leaves to be gleaned by the minuter inquirer.

The feudal government introduced a species of servitude which till that time was unknown, and which was called the servitude of the land. The bondmen or serfs, and the villains or country servants, did not reside in the house of the lord: but they entirely depended on his caprice; and he sold them, as he did the animals, with the field where they lived, and which they cultivated.

It is difficult to conceive with what insolence the petty lords of those times tyrannized over their villains: they not only oppressed their slaves with unremitted labour, instigated by a vile cupidity, but their whim and caprice led them to inflict miseries without even any motive of interest.

In Scotland they had a shameful institution of maiden-rights; and Malcolm the Third only abolished it, by ordering that they might be redeemed by a quit-rent. The truth of this circumstance Dalrymple has attempted, with excusable patriotism, to render doubtful. There seems, however, to be no doubt of the existence of this custom; since it also spread through Germany, and various parts of Europe; and the French barons extended their domestic tyranny to three nights of involuntary prostitution. Montesquieu is infinitely French, when he could turn this shameful species of tyranny into a bon mot; for he boldly observes on this, "C'etoit bien ces trois nuits-la, qu'il falloit choisir; car pour les autres on n'auroit pas donne beaucoup d'argent." The legislator in the wit forgot the feelings of his heart.

Others, to preserve this privilege when they could not enjoy it in all its extent, thrust their leg booted into the bed of the new-married couple. This was called the droit de cuisse. When the bride was in bed, the esquire or lord performed this ceremony, and stood there, his thigh in the bed, with a lance in his hand: in this ridiculous attitude he remained till he was tired; and the bridegroom was not suffered to enter the chamber till his lordship had retired. Such indecent privileges must have originated in the worst of intentions; and when afterwards they advanced a step in more humane manners, the ceremonial was preserved from avaricious motives. Others have compelled their subjects to pass the first night at the top of a tree, and there to consummate their marriage; to pass the bridal hours in a river; or to be bound naked to a cart, and to trace some furrows as they were dragged; or to leap with their feet tied over the horns of stags.

Sometimes their caprice commanded the bridegroom to appear in drawers at their castle, and plunge into a ditch of mud; and sometimes they were compelled to beat the waters of the ponds to hinder the frogs from disturbing the lord!

Wardship, or the privilege of guardianship enjoyed by some lords, was one of the barbarous inventions of the feudal ages; the guardian had both the care of the person, and for his own use the revenue of the estates. This feudal custom was so far abused in England, that the king sold these lordships to strangers; and when the guardian had fixed on a marriage for the infant, if the youth or maiden did not agree to this, they forfeited the value of the marriage; that is, the sum the guardian would have obtained by the other party had it taken place. This cruel custom was a source of domestic unhappiness, particularly in love-affairs, and has served as the ground-work of many a pathetic play by our elder dramatists.

There was a time when the German lords reckoned amongst their privileges that of robbing on the highways of their territory; which ended in raising up the famous Hanseatic Union, to protect their commerce against rapine and avaricious exactions of toll.

Geoffrey, lord of Coventry, compelled his wife to ride naked on a white pad through the streets of the town; that by this mode he might restore to the inhabitants those privileges of which his wantonness had deprived them. This anecdote some have suspected to be fictitious, from its extreme barbarity; but the character of the middle ages will admit of any kind of wanton barbarism.

When the abbot of Figeac made his entry into that town, the lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin's coat, and one of his legs naked, was compelled by an ancient custom to conduct him to the door of his abbey, leading his horse by the bridle. Blount's "Jocular Tenures" is a curious collection of such capricious clauses in the grants of their lands.[57]

The feudal barons frequently combined to share among themselves those children of their villains who appeared to be the most healthy and serviceable, or remarkable for their talent; and not unfrequently sold them in their markets.

The feudal servitude is not, even in the present enlightened times, abolished in Poland, in Germany, and in Russia. In those countries, the bondmen are still entirely dependent on the caprice of their masters. The peasants of Hungary or Bohemia frequently revolt, and attempt to shake off the pressure of feudal tyranny.

An anecdote of comparatively recent date displays their unfeeling caprice. A lord or prince of the northern countries passing through one of his villages, observed a small assembly of peasants and their families amusing themselves with dancing. He commands his domestics to part the men from the women, and confine them in the houses. He orders the coats of the women to be drawn up above their heads, and tied with their garters. The men were then liberated, and those who did not recognise their wives in that state received a severe castigation.

Absolute dominion hardens the human heart; and nobles accustomed to command their bondmen will treat their domestics as slaves, as capricious or inhuman West Indians treated their domestic slaves. Those of Siberia punish theirs by a free use of the cudgel or rod. The Abbe Chappe saw two Russian slaves undress a chambermaid, who had by some trifling negligence given offence to her mistress; after having uncovered as far as her waist, one placed her head betwixt his knees; the other held her by the feet; while both, armed with two sharp rods, violently lashed her back till it pleased the domestic tyrant to decree it was enough!

After a perusal of these anecdotes of feudal tyranny, we may exclaim with Goldsmith—

"I fly from PETTY TYRANTS—to the THRONE."

Mr. Hallam's "State of Europe during the Middle Ages" renders this short article superfluous in a philosophical view.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57: Many are of the nature of "peppercorn rents." Thus a manor was held from the king "by the service of one rose only, to be paid yearly, at the feast of St. John the Baptist, for all services; and they gave the king one penny for the price of the said one rose, as it was appraised by the barons of the Exchequer." Nicholas De Mora, in the reign of Henry III., "rendered at the Exchequer two knives, one good, and the other a very bad one, for certain land which he held in Shropshire." The citizens of London still pay to the Exchequer six horseshoes with nails, for their right to a piece of ground in the parish of St. Clement, originally granted to a farrier, as early as the reign of Henry III.]



GAMING.

Gaming appears to be an universal passion. Some have attempted to deny its universality; they have imagined that it is chiefly prevalent in cold climates, where such a passion becomes most capable of agitating and gratifying the torpid minds of their inhabitants.

The fatal propensity of gaming is to be discovered, as well amongst the inhabitants of the frigid and torrid zones, as amongst those of the milder climates. The savage and the civilized, the illiterate and the learned, are alike captivated by the hope of accumulating wealth without the labours of industry.

Barbeyrac has written an elaborate treatise on gaming, and we have two quarto volumes, by C. Moore, on suicide, gaming, and duelling, which may be placed by the side of Barbeyrac. All these works are excellent sermons; but a sermon to a gambler, a duellist, or a suicide! A dice-box, a sword, and pistol, are the only things that seem to have any power over these unhappy men, for ever lost in a labyrinth of their own construction.

I am much pleased with the following thought. "The ancients," says the author of Amusemens Serieux et Comiques, "assembled to see their gladiators kill one another; they classed this among their games! What barbarity! But are we less barbarous, we who call a game an assembly—who meet at the faro table, where the actors themselves confess they only meet to destroy one another?" In both these cases the philosopher may perhaps discover their origin in the listless state of ennui requiring an immediate impulse of the passions, and very inconsiderate as to the fatal means which procure the desired agitation.

The most ancient treatise by a modern on this subject, is said to be by a French physician, one Eckeloo, who published in 1569, De Alea, sive de curanda Ludendi in Pecuniam cupiditate, that is, "On games of chance, or a cure for gaming." The treatise itself is only worth notice from the circumstance of the author being himself one of the most inveterate gamblers; he wrote this work to convince himself of this folly. But in spite of all his solemn vows, the prayers of his friends, and his own book perpetually quoted before his face, he was a great gamester to his last hour! The same circumstance happened to Sir John Denham, who also published a tract against gaming, and to the last remained a gamester. They had not the good sense of old Montaigne, who gives the reason why he gave over gaming. "I used to like formerly games of chance with cards and dice; but of that folly I have long been cured; merely because I found that whatever good countenance I put on when I lost, I did not feel my vexation the less." Goldsmith fell a victim to this madness. To play any game well requires serious study, time, and experience. If a literary man plays deeply, he will be duped even by shallow fellows, as well as by professed gamblers.

Dice, and that little pugnacious animal the cock, are the chief instruments employed by the numerous nations of the East, to agitate their minds and ruin their fortunes; to which the Chinese, who are desperate gamesters, add the use of cards. When all other property is played away, the Asiatic gambler scruples not to stake his wife or his child, on the cast of a die, or the courage and strength of a martial bird. If still unsuccessful, the last venture he stakes is himself.

In the Island of Ceylon, cock-fighting is carried to a great height. The Sumatrans are addicted to the use of dice. A strong spirit of play characterises a Malayan. After having resigned everything to the good fortune of the winner, he is reduced to a horrid state of desperation; he then loosens a certain lock of hair, which indicates war and destruction to all whom the raving gamester meets. He intoxicates himself with opium; and working himself into a fit of frenzy, he bites or kills every one who comes in his way. But as soon as this lock is seen flowing, it is lawful to fire at the person and to destroy him as fast as possible. This custom is what is called "To run a muck." Thus Dryden writes—

"Frontless and satire-proof, he scours the streets, And runs an Indian muck at all he meets."

Thus also Pope—

"Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run a muck, and tilt at all I meet."

Johnson could not discover the derivation of the word muck. To "run a muck" is an old phrase for attacking madly and indiscriminately; and has since been ascertained to be a Malay word.

To discharge their gambling debts, the Siamese sell their possessions, their families, and at length themselves. The Chinese play night and day, till they have lost all they are worth; and then they usually go and hang themselves. Such is the propensity of the Javanese for high play, that they were compelled to make a law, that "Whoever ventures his money at play shall be put to death." In the newly-discovered islands of the Pacific Ocean, they venture even their hatchets, which they hold as invaluable acquisitions, on running-matches.—"We saw a man," says Cook, "beating his breast and tearing his hair in the violence of rage, for having lost three hatchets at one of these races, and which he had purchased with nearly half his property."

The ancient nations were not less addicted to gaming: Persians, Grecians, and Romans; the Goths, and Germans. To notice the modern ones were a melancholy task: there is hardly a family in Europe which cannot record, from their own domestic annals, the dreadful prevalence of this passion.

Gamester and cheater were synonymous terms in the time of Shakspeare and Jonson: they have hardly lost much of their double signification in the present day.

The following is a curious picture of a gambling-house, from a contemporary account, and appears to be an establishment more systematic even than the "Hells" of the present day.

"A list of the officers established in the most notorious gaming-houses," from the DAILY JOURNAL, Jan. 9th, 1731.

1st. A COMMISSIONER, always a proprietor, who looks in of a night; and the week's account is audited by him and two other proprietors.

2nd. A DIRECTOR, who superintends the room.

3rd. An OPERATOR, who deals the cards at a cheating game, called Faro.

4th. Two CROWPEES, who watch the cards, and gather the money for the hank.

5th. Two PUFFS, who have money given them to decoy others to play.

6th. A CLERK, who is a check upon the PUFFS, to see that they sink none of the money given them to play with.

7th. A SQUIB is a puff of lower rank, who serves at half-pay salary while he is learning to deal.

8th. A FLASHER, to swear how often the bank has been stript.

9th. A DUNNER, who goes about to recover money lost at play.

10th. A WAITER, to fill out wine, snuff candles, and attend the gaming-room.

11th. An ATTORNEY, a Newgate solicitor.

12th. A CAPTAIN, who is to fight any gentleman who is peevish for losing his money.

13th. An USHER, who lights gentlemen up and down stairs, and gives the word to the porter.

14th. A PORTER, who is generally a soldier of the Foot Guards.

15th. An ORDERLY MAN, who walks up and down the outside of the door, to give notice to the porter, and alarm the house at the approach of the constable.

16th. A RUNNER, who is to get intelligence of the justices' meeting.

17th. LINK-BOYS, COACHMEN, CHAIRMEN, or others who bring intelligence of the justices' meetings, or of the constables being out, at half-a-guinea reward.

18th. COMMON-BAIL, AFFIDAVIT-MEN, RUFFIANS, BRAVOES, ASSASSINS, cum multis aliis.

The "Memoirs of the most famous Gamesters from the reign of Charles II. to Queen Anne, by T. Lucas, Esq., 1714," appears to be a bookseller's job; but probably a few traditional stories are preserved.[58]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 58: This curious little volume deserves more attention than the slight mention above would occasion. It is diffuse in style, and hence looks a little like a "bookseller's job," of which the most was to be made; but the same fault has characterised many works whose authors possess a bad style. Many of the tales narrated of well-known London characters of the "merry days" of Charles the Second are very characteristic, and are not to be met with elsewhere.]



THE ARABIC CHRONICLE.

An Arabic chronicle is only valuable from the time of Mahomet. For such is the stupid superstition of the Arabs, that they pride themselves on being ignorant of whatever has passed before the mission of their Prophet. The Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem contains the most curious information concerning the crusades: Longuerue translated several portions of this chronicle, which appears to be written with impartiality. It renders justice to the Christian heroes, and particularly dwells on the gallant actions of the Count de St. Gilles.

Our historians chiefly write concerning Godfrey de Bouillon; only the learned know that the Count de St. Gilles acted there so important a character. The stories of the Saracens are just the reverse; they speak little concerning Godfrey, and eminently distinguish Saint Gilles.

Tasso has given in to the more vulgar accounts, by making the former so eminent, at the cost of the other heroes, in his Jerusalem Delivered. Thus Virgil transformed by his magical power the chaste Dido into a distracted lover; and Homer the meretricious Penelope into a moaning matron. It is not requisite for poets to be historians, but historians should not be so frequently poets. The same charge, I have been told, must be made against the Grecian historians. The Persians are viewed to great disadvantage in Grecian history. It would form a curious inquiry, and the result might be unexpected to some, were the Oriental student to comment on the Grecian historians. The Grecians were not the demi-gods they paint themselves to have been, nor those they attacked the contemptible multitudes they describe. These boasted victories might be diminished. The same observation attaches to Caesar's account of his British expedition. He never records the defeats he frequently experienced. The national prejudices of the Roman historians have undoubtedly occasioned us to have a very erroneous conception of the Carthaginians, whose discoveries in navigation and commercial enterprises were the most considerable among the ancients. We must indeed think highly of that people, whose works on agriculture, which they had raised into a science, the senate of Rome ordered to be translated into Latin. They must indeed have been a wise and grave people.—Yet they are stigmatised by the Romans for faction, cruelty, and cowardice; and the "Punic" faith has come down to us in a proverb: but Livy was a Roman! and there is such a thing as a patriotic malignity!



METEMPSYCHOSIS.

If we except the belief of a future remuneration beyond this life for suffering virtue, and retribution for successful crimes, there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to our understanding, as that of the metempsychosis. The pains and the pleasures of this life are by this system considered as the recompense or the punishment of our actions in an anterior state: so that, says St. Foix, we cease to wonder that, among men and animals, some enjoy an easy and agreeable life, while others seem born only to suffer all kinds of miseries. Preposterous as this system may appear, it has not wanted for advocates in the present age, which indeed has revived every kind of fanciful theory. Mercier, in L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante, seriously maintains the present one.

If we seek for the origin of the opinion of the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls into other bodies, we must plunge into the remotest antiquity; and even then we shall find it impossible to fix the epoch of its first author. The notion was long extant in Greece before the time of Pythagoras. Herodotus assures us that the Egyptian priests taught it; but he does not inform us of the time it began to spread. It probably followed the opinion of the immortality of the soul. As soon as the first philosophers had established this dogma, they thought they could not maintain this immortality without a transmigration of souls. The opinion of the metempsychosis spread in almost every region of the earth; and it continues, even to the present time, in all its force amongst those nations who have not yet embraced Christianity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, Tonquin, Cochin-China, Japan, Java, and Ceylon still entertain that fancy, which also forms the chief article of the Chinese religion. The Druids believed in transmigration. The bardic triads of the Welsh are full of this belief; and a Welsh antiquary insists, that by an emigration which formerly took place, it was conveyed to the Bramins of India from Wales! The Welsh bards tell us that the souls of men transmigrate into the bodies of those animals whose habits and characters they most resemble, till after a circuit of such penitential miseries, they are purified for the celestial presence; for man may be converted into a pig or a wolf, till at length he assumes the inoffensiveness of the dove.

My learned friend Sharon Turner has explained, in his "Vindication of the ancient British Poems," p. 231, the Welsh system of the metempsychosis. Their bards mention three circles of existence. The circle of the all-enclosing circle holds nothing alive or dead, but God. The second circle, that of felicity, is that which men are to pervade after they have passed through their terrestrial changes. The circle of evil is that in which human nature passes through those varying stages of existence which it must undergo before it is qualified to inhabit the circle of felicity.

The progression of man through the circle of evil is marked by three infelicities: Necessity, oblivion, and deaths. The deaths which follow our changes are so many escapes from their power. Man is a free agent, and has the liberty of choosing; his sufferings and changes cannot be foreseen. By his misconduct he may happen to fall retrograde into the lowest state from which he had emerged. If his conduct in any one state, instead of improving his being, had made it worse, he fell back into a worse condition, to commence again his purifying revolutions. Humanity was the limit of the degraded transmigrations. All the changes above humanity produced felicity. Humanity is the scene of the contest; and after man has traversed every state of animated existence, and can remember all that he has passed through, that consummation follows which he attains in the circle of felicity. It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin, the Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital of his pretended transmigrations. He tells how he had been a serpent, a wild ass, a buck, or a crane, &c.; and this kind of reminiscence of his former state, this recovery of memory, was a proof of the mortal's advances to the happier circle. For to forget what we have been was one of the curses of the circle of evil. Taliessin, therefore, adds Mr. Turner, as profusely boasts of his recovered reminiscence as any modern sectary can do of his state of grace and election.

In all these wild reveries there seems to be a moral fable in the notion, that the clearer a man recollects what a brute he has been, it is a certain proof that he is in an improved state!

According to the authentic Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on in the West, and not less fancifully than in the countries of the East. The people of Tlascala believe that the souls of persons of rank went after their death to inhabit the bodies of beautiful and sweet singing birds, and those of the nobler quadrupeds; while the souls of inferior persons were supposed to pass into weasels, beetles, and such other meaner animals.

There is something not a little ludicrous in the description Plutarch gives at the close of his treatise on "the delay of heavenly justice." Thespesius saw at length the souls of those who were condemned to return to life, and whom they violently forced to take the forms of all kinds of animals. The labourers charged with this transformation forged with their instruments certain parts; others, a new form; and made some totally disappear; that these souls might be rendered proper for another kind of life and other habits. Among these he perceived the soul of Nero, which had already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body by nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on him to make a viper of, under which form he was now to live, after having devoured the breast that had carried him.—But in this Plutarch only copies the fine reveries of Plato.



SPANISH ETIQUETTE.

The etiquette, or rules to be observed in royal palaces, is necessary for keeping order at court. In Spain it was carried to such lengths as to make martyrs of their kings. Here is an instance, at which, in spite of the fatal consequences it produced, one cannot refrain from smiling.

Philip the Third was gravely seated by the fire-side: the fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quantity of wood, that the monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, and his grandeur would not suffer him to rise from the chair; the domestics could not presume to enter the apartment, because it was against the etiquette. At length the Marquis de Potat appeared, and the king ordered him to damp the fire; but he excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the etiquette to perform such a function, for which the Duke d'Ussada ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The duke was gone out: the fire burnt fiercer; and the king endured it, rather than derogate from his dignity. But his blood was heated to such a degree, that an erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in 1621, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign.

The palace was once on fire; a soldier, who knew the king's sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have been consumed in a few moments by the flames, at the risk of his life rushed in, and brought her highness safe out in his arms: but the Spanish etiquette was here wofully broken into! The loyal soldier was brought to trial; and as it was impossible to deny that he had entered her apartment, the judges condemned him to die! The Spanish Princess however condescended, in consideration of the circumstance, to pardon the soldier, and very benevolently saved his life.

When Isabella, mother of Philip II., was ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished: that if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, "Madam, cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in good Spanish, "How dare you give me such advice? I would rather die than cry out."

"Spain gives us pride—which Spain to all the earth May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth!"—Churchill.

Philip the Third was a weak bigot, who suffered himself to be governed by his ministers. A patriot wished to open his eyes, but he could not pierce through the crowds of his flatterers; besides that the voice of patriotism heard in a corrupted court would have become a crime never pardoned. He found, however, an ingenious manner of conveying to him his censure. He caused to be laid on his table, one day, a letter sealed, which bore this address—"To the King of Spain, Philip the Third, at present in the service of the Duke of Lerma."

In a similar manner, Don Carlos, son to Philip the Second, made a book with empty pages, to contain the voyages of his father, which bore this title—"The great and admirable Voyages of the King Mr. Philip." All these voyages consisted in going to the Escurial from Madrid, and returning to Madrid from the Escurial. Jests of this kind at length cost him his life.



THE GOTHS AND HUNS.

The terrific honours which these ferocious nations paid to their deceased monarchs are recorded in history, by the interment of Attila, king of the Huns, and Alaric, king of the Goths.

Attila died in 453, and was buried in the midst of a vast champaign in a coffin which was inclosed in one of gold, another of silver, and a third of iron. With the body were interred all the spoils of the enemy, harnesses embroidered with gold and studded with jewels, rich silks, and whatever they had taken most precious in the palaces of the kings they had pillaged; and that the place of his interment might for ever remain concealed, the Huns deprived of life all who assisted at his burial!

The Goths had done nearly the same for Alaric in 410, at Cosenca, a town in Calabria. They turned aside the river Vasento; and having formed a grave in the midst of its bed where its course was most rapid, they interred this king with prodigious accumulations of riches. After having caused the river to reassume its usual course, they murdered, without exception, all those who had been concerned in digging this singular grave.



VICARS OF BRAY.

The vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a papist under the reign of Henry the Eighth, and a Protestant under Edward the Sixth; he was a papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth.[59] When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray!"

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this county, "The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this vicar should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, acting the same part, should have escaped notice? Dr. Kitchen, bishop of Llandaff, from an idle abbot under Henry VIII. was made a busy bishop; Protestant under Edward, he returned to his old master under Mary; and at last took the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth, and finished as a parliament Protestant. A pun spread the odium of his name; for they said that he had always loved the Kitchen better than the Church!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 59: His name was Simon Symonds. The popular ballad absurdly exaggerates his deeds, and gives them untrue amplitude. It is not older than the last century, and is printed in Ritson's English Songs.]



DOUGLAS.

It may be recorded as a species of Puritanic barbarism, that no later than the year 1757, a man of genius was persecuted because he had written a tragedy which tended by no means to hurt the morals; but, on the contrary, by awakening the piety of domestic affections with the nobler passions, would rather elevate and purify the mind.

When Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas, had it performed at Edinburgh, some of the divines, his acquaintance, attending the representation, the clergy, with the monastic spirit of the darkest ages, published a paper, which I abridge for the contemplation of the reader, who may wonder to see such a composition written in the eighteenth century."

"On Wednesday, February the 2nd, 1757, the Presbytery of Glasgow came to the following resolution. They having seen a printed paper, intituled, 'An admonition and exhortation of the reverend Presbytery of Edinburgh;' which, among other evils prevailing, observing the following melancholy but notorious facts: that one who is a minister of the church of Scotland did himself write and compose a stage-play, intituled, 'The tragedy of Douglas,' and got it to be acted at the theatre of Edinburgh; and that he with several other ministers of the church were present; and some of them oftener than once, at the acting of the said play before a numerous audience. The presbytery being deeply affected with this new and strange appearance, do publish these sentiments," &c Sentiments with which I will not disgust the reader; but which they appear not yet to have purified and corrected, as they have shown in the case of Logan and other Scotchmen, who have committed the crying sin of composing dramas!



CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY.

M. Morin, in the Memoirs of the French Academy, has formed a little history of Poverty, which I abridge.

The writers on the genealogies of the gods have not noticed the deity of Poverty, though admitted as such in the pagan heaven, while she has had temples and altars on earth. The allegorical Plato has pleasingly narrated, that at the feast which Jupiter gave on the birth of Venus, Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the fragments of the celestial banquet; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the most delightful of pleasures.

The golden age, however, had but the duration of a flower; when it finished, Poverty began to appear. The ancestors of the human race, if they did not meet her face to face, knew her in a partial degree; the vagrant Cain encountered her. She was firmly established in the patriarchal age. We hear of merchants who publicly practised the commerce of vending slaves, which indicates the utmost degree of poverty. She is distinctly marked by Job: this holy man protests, that he had nothing to reproach himself with respecting the poor, for he had assisted them in their necessities.

In the scriptures, legislators paid great attention to their relief. Moses, by his wise precautions, endeavoured to soften the rigours of this unhappy state. The division of lands, by tribes and families; the septennial jubilees; the regulation to bestow at the harvest-time a certain portion of all the fruits of the earth for those families who were in want; and the obligation of his moral law to love one's neighbour as one's self; were so many mounds erected against the inundations of poverty. The Jews under their Theocracy had few or no mendicants. Their kings were unjust; and rapaciously seizing on inheritances which were not their right, increased the numbers of the poor. From the reign of David there were oppressive governors, who devoured the people as their bread. It was still worse under the foreign powers of Babylon, of Persia, and the Roman emperors. Such were the extortions of their publicans, and the avarice of their governors, that the number of mendicants dreadfully augmented; and it was probably for that reason that the opulent families consecrated a tenth part of their property for their succour, as appears in the time of the evangelists. In the preceding ages no more was given, as their casuists assure us, than the fortieth or thirtieth part; a custom which this singular nation still practise. If there are no poor of their nation where they reside, they send it to the most distant parts. The Jewish merchants make this charity a regular charge in their transactions with each other; and at the close of the year render an account to the poor of their nation.

By the example of Moses, the ancient legislators were taught to pay a similar attention to the poor. Like him, they published laws respecting the division of lands; and many ordinances were made for the benefit of those whom fires, inundations, wars, or bad harvests had reduced to want. Convinced that idleness more inevitably introduced poverty than any other cause, it was rigorously punished; the Egyptians made it criminal, and no vagabonds or mendicants were suffered under any pretence whatever. Those who were convicted of slothfulness, and still refused to labour for the public when labour was offered to them, were punished with death. The famous Pyramids are the works of men who otherwise had remained vagabonds and mendicants.