A hundred years have not yet expired since sorcerers were burnt all over Europe; and even so recently as 1750, a sorceress, or witch, was burnt at Wurtzburg. It is unquestionable, that certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of sheep, if administered with a sufficient portion of arsenic. The Critical History of Superstitious Ceremonies, by Le Brun of the Oratory, is a singular work. His object is to oppose the ridiculous doctrine of witchcraft, and yet he is himself so ridiculous as to believe in its reality. He pretends that Mary Bucaille the witch, while in prison at Valogna, appeared at some leagues distance, according to the evidence given on oath to to the judge of Valogna. He relates the famous prosecution of the shepherds of Brie, condemned in 1691, by the parliament of Paris, to be hanged and burnt. These shepherds had been fools enough to think themselves sorcerers, and villains enough to mix real poisons with their imaginary sorceries.. Father Le Brun solemnly asserts,* that there was much of what was "supernatural" in what they did, and that they were hanged in consequence. The sentence of the parliament is in direct opposition to this author's statement. "The court declares the accused duly attainted and convicted of superstitions, impieties, sacrileges, profanations, and poisonings." The sentence does not state that the death of the cattle was caused by profanations, but by poison. A man may commit sacrilege without as well as with poison, without being a sorcerer. Other judges, I acknowledge, sentenced the priest Ganfredi to be burnt, in the firm belief that, by the influence of the devil, he had had illicit commerce with all his female penitents. Ganfredi himself imagined that he was under that influence; but that was in 1611, a period when the majority of our provincial population was very little raised abovethe Caribs and negroes. Some of this description have existed even in our own times; as, for example, the jesuit Girard, the ex-jesuit * See the Trial of the Shepherds of Brie, from page 516. Nonotte, the jesuit Duplessis, and the ex-jesuit Malagrida; but this race of imbeciles is daily hastening to extinction. With respect to lycanthropy, that is, the transformation of men into wolves by the power of enchantment, we may observe, that a young shepherd's having killed a wolf, and clothed himself with its skin, was enough to excite the terror of all the old women of the district, and to spread throughout the province, and thence through other provinces, the notion of a man's having been changed into a wolf. Some Virgil will soon be found to say: His ego sæpè lupum fieri, et se condere silvis With these to call from tombs the stalking ghosts. DRYDEN. To see a man-wolf must certainly be a great curiosity; but to see human souls must be more curious still; and did not the monks of Mount Cassin see the soul of the holy Benedict or Bennet? Did not the monks of Tours see St. Martin's? and the monks of St. Denis that of Charles Martel? Enchantments to kindle Love. These were for the young. They were vended by the Jews at Rome and Alexandria, and are at the present day sold in Asia. You will find some of these secrets in the "Petit Albert;" but will become farther initiated by reading the pleading composed by Apuleius on his being accused by a christian, whose daughter he had married, of having bewitched her by philtres. Emilian, his father-in-law, alleged that he had made use of certain fishes, since, Venus having been born of the sea, fishes must necessarily have prodigious influence in exciting women to love. What was generally made use of consisted of vervain, tenia, and hippomanes; or a small portion of the * Eclogue viii. v. 97. VOL. III. I secundine of a mare that had just foaled, together with the little bird called wag-tail; in Latin, motacilla. But Apuleius was chiefly accused of having employed shell-fish, lobster patties, sea-hedgehogs, spiced oysters, and cuttle-fish, which was celebrated for its productiveness. Apuleius clearly explains the real philtre, or charm, which had excited Pudentilla's affection for him. He' undoubtedly admits, in his defence, that his wife had called him a magician. "But what," says he, "if she had called me a consul, would that have made me one?" The plant satyrion was considered, both among the Greeks and Romans, as the most powerful of philtres. It was called planta aphrodisia, the plant of Venus. That called by the Latins eruca, is now often added to the former. * Et venerem revocans eruca morantem. Man A little essence of amber is frequently used. dragora has gone out of fashion. Some exhausted debauchees have employed cantharides, which strongly affect the susceptible parts of the frame, and often produce severe and painful consequences. Youth and health are the only genuine philtres. Chocolate was for a long time in great celebrity with our debilitated petit-maîtres. But a man may take twenty cups of chocolate without inspiring any attachment to his person. ut amoris amabilis esto. OVID, A. A. ii. 107. Wouldst thou be loved, be amiable. END OF THE WORLD. THE greater part of the Greek philosophers held the universe to be eternal, both with respect to commencement and duration. But as to this petty portion of the world or universe, this globe of stone and earth and water, of minerals and vapours, which we inhabit, *Martial. it was somewhat difficult to form an opinion: it was however deemed very destructible. It was even said that it had been destroyed more than once, and would be destroyed again. Every one judged of the whole world from his own particular country, as an old woman judges of all mankind from those in her own nook and neighbourhood. This idea of the end of our little world, and its renovation, strongly possessed the imagination of the nations under subjection to the Roman empire, amidst the horrors of the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey. Virgil, in his Georgics (book i. v. 468), alludes to the general apprehension which filled the minds of the common people from this cause :— Impiaque eternam timuerunt secula noctem. And impious men now dread eternal night. Lucan, in the following lines, expresses himself much more explicitly : Hos Cæsar populos, si nunc non usserit ignis PHARS. book vii. v. 812, 14. Though now thy cruelty denies a grave, ROWE. And Ovid, following up the observations of Lucan, says: Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus, MET. i. v. 256, 58, For thus the stern unyielding fates decree, And in fierce flames the blazing world expire. Consult Cicero himself, the philosophic Cicero. He tells us, in his book concerning the Nature of the Gods,* the best work perhaps of all antiquity, unless we make * On the Nature of the Gods, book ii. p. 46. an exception in favour of his treatise on human duties, called "The Offices;" in that book, I say, he remarks: "Ex quo eventurum nostri putant id, de quo Pancetium addubitare dicebant; ut ad extremum omnis mundus ignesceret, cum, humore consumpto, neque terra ali posset, neque remearet aër cujus ortus, aqua omni exhausta, esse non posset; ita relinqui nihil præter ignem, a quo rursum animante ac Deo renovatio mundi fieret; atque idem ornatus oriretur." According to the stoics, the whole world will eventually consist only of fire; the water being then exhausted will leave no nourishment for the earth; and the air, which derives its existence from water, can of course no longer be supplied. Thus fire alone will remain, and this fire, re-animating everything with, as it were, godlike power and energy, will restore the world with improved beauty." This natural philosophy of the stoics, like that indeed of all antiquity, is not a little absurd; it shows, however, that the expectation of a general conflagration was universal. * Prepare, however, for greater astonishment than the errors of antiquity can excite. The great Newton held the same opinion as Cicero. Deceived by an incorrect experiment of Boyle, he thought that the moisture of the globe would at length be dried up, and that it would be necessary for God to apply his reforming hand " manum emendatricem." Thus we have the two greatest men of ancient Rome and modern England precisely of the same opinion, that at some future period fire will completely prevail over water. This idea of a perishing and subsequently to be renewed world was deeply rooted in the minds of the inhabitants of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, from the time of the civil wars of the successors of Alexander. Those of the Romans augmented the terror, upon this subject, of the various nations which became the victims of them. They expected the destruction of the world and hoped for a new one. The Jews, who are * Question at the end of the " Optics." |