dressed in gilt leather and silver paper, and sometimes in coats of white and spangled fustian. They had purses in. their girdles, and garters to which bells were attached, vary. ing in number from twenty to forty, and distinguished by different appellations, as the fore bell, the second bell, the treble, the tenor, the bass, and the double bell. Sometimes the hat was decorated with a nosegay, or with the herb thrift, formerly called our lady's cushion. A very few years since a company of morris-dancers, attended by a boy, Maia Mariai., a hobby-horse, and a fi »l, was seen at Usk, in Monmouthshire, where they profess to have kept up this ceremony for the last three hundred years. This, and one or two other modern instances, Mr. Douce has thought it proper to record in the dissertation to which we have been so largely, indebted, because he thinks it extremely probable “that from the present rage for refinement and innovation, there will remain in the course of a short tino but few vestiges of our popular customs and antiquities."

CHAPTER XIX.

Jugglers. “ Gardener.-Prythee. John, what sort of a creature is a conjurer?

Butler.-Why, he's made much as other men are, if it was not for his long gray beard. His beard is at least half a yard long; he's dressed in a strange dark cloak, as black as a coal. He has a long white wand in his hand.

Coachman.-I fancy it is made out of witch elm.

Butler.-No; the wand, look you, is to make a circle. A circle, you must know, is a conjurer's trap.

The Drummer. Shorld any utilitarian reader blame us for wasting our time and his upon a class of people not often deemed either respectable or useful, we beg to refer him to the third volume of the History of Inventions, by Professor Beckmann, who vindicates their cause, including in his defence, under the general denomination of Jugglers, the ropedancers, and such as exhibit feats of uncommon strength. At a moment like the present, when from the effects of a

and as

redundant population every useful employment is full, and even overstocked, his arguments ought to be considered cogent, at least by the political economists.

These arts, he observes, are not unprofitable, for they afford a comfortable subsistence to those who practise them, which they usually spend upon the spot, and this he considers a good reason why their stay in a place ought to be encouraged. He is also of opinion, that if the arts of juggling served no other end than to amuse the most ignorant of our citizens, it is proper that they should be patronised for the sake of those who cannot enjoy the more expensive deceptions of an opera, especially as they often convey instruction in the most acceptable manner, and serve as an antidote to superstition. In these observations we fully concur, holding that it is wise on every account to preserve the few harmless amusements still left to the poor; to the trite objection that it is cajoling them of their hardearned pittance by useless deceptions, we reply that their money is much better thus expended than in the gin-shop or the ale-house, to which they are already too much driven by the curtailment of their appropriate recreatio

Juggling is certainly of very great antiquity. Pharaoh's magicians may be deemed the earliest practitioners of the art. Some of the slaves in Sicily performed the deception of breathing out flames about 150 years before the Christian era ; and according to Plutarch, Alexander the Great was astonished and delighted with the secret effects of naphtha, exhibited to him at Ecbatana. Wonder has been excited in modern times by persons who could walk over burning coals or hot iron, which is easily done by rendering the skin of the feet :allous and insensible. Beckmann asserts that the Hirpi wło dwelt near Rome jumped through burning coals; that woren were accustomed to perform a similar exploit at Castabala, near the temple of Diana ; that the exhibition of cups and balls is often mentioned in the works of the ancients; and that the various feats of horsemanship exhibited in our circuses passed, in the thirteenth century, from Egypt to the Byzantine court, and thence over all Europe.

The joculator or jongleur of the Normans, whence was derived the juggler of more modern times, received abou. the fourteenth century the name of tragetour, a term mo.

especially applied to those performers wh“, by sleight of hand, with the assistance of various machines and confede. rates, deceived the eyes of the spectators and produced illusions that were usually attributed to enchantment. According to the descriptions transmitted to us, the wonders they performed prove them to have been no mean practitioners in the art, and excite the less surprise that in a credulous age they should have been ranked with magicians. Chaucer, who had no doubt frequently seen the tricks he describes, thus speaks of them :

There are," says he, “sciences by which men can delude the eye with divers appearances, such as the subtle tragetours perform at feasts. In a large hall they will produce water, with boats rowed up and dowr. upon it. Sometimes they will bring in the similitude cf a grim lion, or make flowers spring up as in a meadow; sometimes they cause a vine to flourish bearing white and red grapes, or show a castle built with stone ; and, when they please, ihey cause the whole to disappear.”

He then speaks of a learned clerk, who, for the amusement of his friend, showed to him forests full of wild deer, where he saw a hundred of them slain, some with hands and some with arrows: the hunting being finished, a company of falconers appeared upon the banks of a fair river, where the birds pursued the herons and slew them. He then saw knights jousting upon a plain ; and, by way of conclusion, the resemblance of his beloved lady, dancing. But when the master who had wrought this magic thought fit, he clapped his hands, and all was gone in an instant. If these illusions were not produced by means of a magic lantern or some similar device, they must be confessed to equal all that is recorded of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries: Chaucer attributes such deceptions to natural magic; meaning probably some occult combination of natural powers: a solution which would hardly pass current with the vulgar in those days, when the properties of matter and of the elements were very little understood.

Froissart records a scarcely less marvellous instance of a jugglei, who possessed not, however, the art of saving his own head from the block. When the Duke of Anjou and the Earl of Savoy,” says that author, “were lying with their army before the city of Naples, there was an en

chanter, a cunning man in necromancy, who promised the duke that he would put him in possession of the castle of Leufe, at that time besieged by him. The duke was desirous of knowing by what means this could be effected, and the magician said, 'I shall, by enchantment, make the air so thick that they within the castle will think there is a great bridge over the sea, large enough for ten men abreast to come to them; and when they see this bridge they will readily yield themselves to your mercy, lest they should be taken perforce.' And may not my men,' said the duke, 'pass over this bridge in reality? To this question the juggler artfully replied, 'I dare not, sir, assure you that; for if any one of the men that passeth over the bridge shall make the sign of the cross upon him, all shall go to naught, and they that be upon it shall fall into the sea.' The Earl of Savoy, being made acquainted with this conference, said to the duke, I know well it is the same enchanter who caused by his craft the sea to seem so high, that they within this castle were sore abashed, and feared all to have died.' The earl then commanded the enchanter to be brought before him, when he boasted that by the power of his art he had caused the castle to be delivered to Sir Charles de la Paye, who was then in possession of it. By iny faith,' said the Earl of Savoy, ye shall never do more enchantments to deceive him, nor yet any other.' So saying he ordered him to be beheaded; and the sentence was instantly put into execution before the door of the earl's tent.”

In England the king's juggler continued to have an establishment in the royal household till the time of Henry VIII., in whose reign the office and title seem to have been discontinued. Our learned monarch James I. imagined that the feats exhibited by these people could only be performed by the agency of the Devil, who, he says, "will learne them many juglarie trickes at cardes and dice, to deceive men's senses thereby, and such innumerable false practicques, which are proved by over many in this age.” His majesty proceeds to inform us, in explanation of the mystery they employ, that "the art of sorcery consists in diverse forms of circles and conjurations rightly joined together, few or more in number, according to the number of the persons conjurers and the form of the apparition. All things being ready and prepared, the circles are made, triangular, quadrangular. round, double, or single."

This, Grose observes, may be a very accurate description of the mode of conjuration styled the circular method ; but with all due respect to his majesty's learning, square and triangular circles are figures not to be found in Euclid, or in any of the common writers on 'geometry. But perhaps King James learned his mathematics from the same system as Dr. Sacheverell, who, in one of his speeches or sermons, made use of the following simile ; “They concur like parallel lines meeting in one common centre.” Reginald Scott tells us that these magic circles are commonly nine feet in breadth, but the eastern magicians must give seven. He was a liberal, however, for the age in which he lived (1584, for he adds, “howbeit, if these things be done for mirth and recreation, and not to the hurt of our neighbour, nor to the abusing or prophaning of God's name, in mine opinion they are neither impivus nor altogether unlawful ; though herein or hereby a natural thing be made to seem unnatural.”

Ady, in his “Candle in the Dark,” p. 29, speaking of common jugglers, that go up and down to play their tricks in fairs and markets, says, "I will speak of one man more excelling in that craft than others, that went about in King James his time, and long since, who called himself the king's majesties most excellent HOCUS POCUS, and so was he called, because that at the playing of every trick he used to say Hocus pocus,* tontus, talontus, vade celeriter jubeo,' a darke composure of words to blinde the eyes of beholders.”

In the fourteenth century, the tragetours seem to have been in the zenith of their glory, from which period they gradually declined in the popular esteem. In an old morality, or interlude, written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a servant, describing the sports at his master's wedding, says:

What juggling was there upon the boards !

What thrustyng of knives thro' many a nose!

* Archbishop Tillotson tells us that those common juggling words hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the church of Rome in their trick of transubstantiation. Hiccius doctius, also a common term among our modern sleight-of-hand men, is probably borrowed from the old Ro. man Catholics, the presence of whose priests in the assemblies of the people was usually announced by exclamations of hic est doctus! hig est doctus!

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