/J/./Ne\ ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED 1636 WASHINGTON, D.C THE OCCULT-SCIENCES. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAGIC, PRODIGIES, AND APPARENT MIRACLES. FROM THE FRENCH OF EUSEBE SALVERTE. • • < WITH NOTES ILLUSTRATIVE, EXPLANATORY, AND CRITICAL, BY ANTHONY TODD THOMSON, M.D., F.L.S., &c. " Non igitur oportet nos niagiris illusionibus uti, cum potestas philoso- pbica doceat operari quod sufficit."—Roo. Bacon, De seer. Oper. Art. et Nat., c. v. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 1 8 4 7.' ""»&>-, \ SI?3cL IS 4 7 PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR. Is not the history of civilization, in the most extended sense of this word, the history of man- kind in a social state, one of the most important all our studies ? About twenty years ago, consulting less my talents than my zeal, I undertook "to retrace this, history, and in 1813 I published an intro- duction,* in order to give an idea of the man- ner in which I thought it should be treated. This essay received some encouragement, which only convinced me of the necessity of examining more profoundly so important a sub-. ject. The history and origin of the sciences occupied a large place in those researches in which I was engaged, and I was soon convinced that it was impossible to have a just idea of the extent to which the sciences had been carried among the ancients, without examining the kind of knowledge employed by the founders of those sciences in working the wonders related in their annals. In the course of this inquiry, 1 discovered that much information was shut up * De la Civilisation depuis les premiers Temps Historiques jusqu'a la fin du xviiie siecle, Introduction. iv PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR. in the temples, and employed there, during many ages, to excite either wonder or fear; but, in the flight of time, decaying and at last fading altogether away, leaving behind only imperfect traditions, which have since been ranked as fables. The attempts to restore life to these ancient intellectual monuments accom- plished a part of my task, which, at the same time, filled up a great period in the history of the human mind. My treatise on this object soon became too ample to form merely a part of the principal work for which it was original- ly intended. It was easy to detach it, although connected with the object which I had propos- ed to myself to attain; and thus separated, it forms a whole, susceptible of special interest. I shall content myself with bearing in re- membrance the principle which has guided me in my various researches : that principle which distinguishes two very strongly marked forms of civilization, the fixed form, which formerly governed almost the whole world, and which still subsists in Asia; and the perfectible form, which more or less reigns throughout Europe, although it is not there fully developed; nor has it, as yet, borne all those fruits which its el- £^ fcments permit us to anticipate in its progress to perfection. In 1817 I published, in the " Esprit des Jour- PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR. V naux" (July volume), an article, in which those principles were pointed out, which are here more fully developed, and many of the facts and arguments on which they rest. I only mention this on account of the date, that I may not be accused of having borrowed, from some works which have appeared more recently, those ideas and explanations which I have now a right to reproduce, since they were original- ly my own. Far from deceiving myself other- wise on the insufficiency of this first essay, I have remodeled it entirely, and looked it over several times, with the assistance and advice of learned and benevolent men. The first edition of this book, published in 1829, being entirely sold, I found it necessary, in preparing a second, to take advantage of those criticisms which had been addressed to me, and of the numerous observations that my subsequent studies had furnished. The theory which guided me remains the same; I shall sum it up in a few words. 1. When the improbability of a fact is the chief objection to the belief in its reality, the evidence which attests it regains all its value, if the improbability be proved to be only appa- rent. Can a similar test be applied with suc- cess to the greater part of the prodigies and assumed miracles related by the ancients ? It Vi PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR. is more reasonable, then, to admit the truth of the facts, and the accuracy of their explanation, than to condemn as impostures those recitals, of which modern discoveries have frequently demonstrated the truth. 2. It is an incontestable fact, that anciently science, and more especially that science which was confined to the temples, was enveloped in a thick veil to conceal it from the eyes of the vulgar; and that it was employed to produce wonderful works fitted to subdue the obstinacy and credulity of the people, is a supposition so natural, that it will be difficult to oppose it, at least by any sound reasons. In the marvelous recitals which have been handed down to our times, some of this mystical learning may be discovered; and in prosecuting the research, we endeavor to complete the history of science and of mankind. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF M. SALVERTE, FROM AN ORATION SPOKEN OVER HIS GRAVE BY M. FRANCOrS AB^^, MEMBER OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES AND OF THE INSTITUTE. Salverte was born at Paris in 1771. His father, who filled a high situation in the admi istration of finance, destined him for the magis- tracy. At eighteen, after a brilliant course of study at the College of Juilly, Salverte entered at the Chatelet as an avocat du roi. At this period France awoke from a long and profound torpor. With the calmness which is always the true characteristic of strength, but with the energy which a good cause can not fail to in- spire, her children demanded on all sides the abolition of despotic government. The voice of the people proclaimed that the distinction of caste wounded at once human dignity and com- mon sense; that all men should weigh equally in the scale of justice ; that religious opinions Vlll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SALVERTE. can not, without crime, be subject to the inves- tigation of political authority. Salverte had too much penetration not to perceive the vast extent of reform which these great principles would introduce, and not to foresee that the brilliant career on which he had just entered might be closed to him fori ever. Behold, then, the young a_Y-Qcat du roi, from his first entrance into life, obliged to weigh his opinions as a citizen against his private in- terest. A thousand examples demonstrate that in these circumstances the ordeal is harsh, the decision doubtful; let us hasten to declare that the patriotism of Salverte carried it by main force ; our colleague, without a moment's hesi- tation, ranked himself with the most eager and conscientious partisans of our glorious political regeneration. When, after a time, a culpable opposition and the insolent interference of for- eigners had thrown the country into disorder, Salverte, with all the superior classes, was deep- ly afflicted. He foresaw the advantage that would be taken of it, sooner or later, by the en- -e ^mies of the liberty of the people ; but his reas- onable grief did not detach him from the cause of progression. He was deprived of the situa- tion he held in the office of foreign affairs; he answered this unmerited brutality by request- ing an examination by a commission as an offi- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SALVERTE. ix cer of engineers, and a mission to the army. The prejudices of the time caused the son of a fermier-general to be refused military service; Salverte, however, not discouraged, requested at least to be allowed to be useful to his coun- try in a civil career. He entered, therefore, as a pupil, the College of Civil Engineers, and soon afterward became one of its most zeal- ous tutors. Salverte was too good a Frenchman to re- main insensible to the glories of the empire; he was, on the other hand, too friendly to liberty not to perceive the heavy and firmly riveted chains that covered the abundant harvests of laurels. He never let fall from his lips or his pen a word of praise that could swell the tor- rent of adulation, which so soon led astray the hero of Castiglione and of Rivoli. Our colleague devoted the whole period of the existence of the empire to retirement and study. During that time he became, by perse- vering labor, one of the most learned men of our age, in languages, science, and political economy. Salverte was not mistaken as to the reaction of the measures into which the second restora- tion would be inevitably led to precipitate itself. He thought that, in spite of the explicit word- ing of the capitulation of Paris, the thunderbolt A2 X BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SALVERTE. of political passions would fall upon many of our military leaders; he guessed that these sanguinary acts would be excited, or at least encouraged, by the allied generals; he fore- saw that in the South those odious dragonnades would be renewed which history has ranked among the darkest stains in the reign of Louis XIV. He felt his heart oppressed by the pros- pect of so direful a future. He resolved, above , all, to avoid the humiliating spectacle of the mil- / ftary occupation of France, and he therefore , set out for Geneva. Madame Salverte, so em- L> 'HP fnently distinguished, so capable of understand- ing and of entering into his noble feelings— whose fate it had been to be united to two men,* who in different modes have done equal honor to France—accompanied her husband in this voluntary exile, which lasted for five years. The public and political life of Salverte only commenced, properly speaking, in 1828. In that year one of the electoral districts, compos- ed of the third and fifth municipal districts of Paris, confided to our friend the honor of rep- ■ '< Renting it in the Chamber of Deputies. With a few weeks' interruption, he ever afterward retained this honor ;f and during the eleven * M. de Fleurieu, who was successively Ministre de la Ma- rine, S6nateur, and Governor of the Tuileries—and M. E. Sal- verte. t Tn 1839, at the time of the general election, M. E. Salverte BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SALVERTE. XI years of his legislative career, he was a model of honesty and independence, zeal and assiduity. Our age is essentially a writing age. Many persons have doubted the necessity of the innu- merable official distribution of speeches, re- ports, tables, and statistics of all kinds, which daily overrun our abodes. It is even said that not one deputy has ever had the time or the perseverance to read the whole of these pam- phlets ; but I am mistaken, gentlemen ; one ex- ception is cited by the public, and that excep- tion is M. Salverte. There is not a single person who, casting aside party feeling, does not hasten to do hom- age to the integrity of the deputy of the fifth district of Paris. Perhaps the same justice has not been rendered in other particulars. The ambitious Salverte, since I am forced to con- nect two words so little suited to each other, never accepted a single one of those gewgaws, which, under the name of decorations, crosses, and ribbons, are so strenuously sought after by all classes of society. The ambitious Salverte, was paralyzed, almost dying; the electors of the fifth district of Paris, who knew the desperate state of their former deputy, wish- ed, nevertheless, to render him a last homage in again choosing him to represent them; and M. Salverte, without the slightest canvass, was re-elected by an immense majority. This homage, so rare at the period in which we live, was as honorable to those who bestowed it as to him who received it. Xii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SALVERTE. after the three immortal days, refused the im- portant place of director-general of the posts. Still later, the ambitious Salverte replied to an offer of a ministerial appointment, by demand- ing conditions so distinct, so precise, so liberal, that they were in his opinion, as they proved to be in fact, equivalent to a formal refusal. When we recollect the excessive readiness of legislative votes on matters of taxation, the re- serve, the rigidness of Salverte, far from being a cause of reproach, presents to me the most honorable feature of his Parliamentary career. On questions where the honor, the dignity, or the liberty of France was concerned, the vote of our colleague was certain. Is it not principally to the deep indignation, to the passionate repugnance, that every insti- tution opposed to the strict rules of morality, that existed in the noble and elevated heart of our friend, that the town of Paris owes the sup- pression of those privileged houses, peopled by agents of the police, which were hideous gam- ing houses, in which the honor and fortune of families were daily swallowed up ? The mem- ory of Salverte has nothing to fear from the poisoned darts of calumny. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. The author of the following work, one of great erudition and research, has endeavored to establish a theory which maintains that the im- probability of the prodigies and assumed mira- cles related by the ancients is not sufficient to authorize their being regarded as fabulous, " if that improbability be proved to be only appa- rent." He founds his reasoning on the fact that the degree of scientific knowledge existing in an early period of society was much greater than the moderns are willing to admit; but that it was confined to the temples, carefully veiled from the eyes of the people, and exposed only to the priesthood. This fact was well exem- plified in Egypt, where the ascendency of the priesthood, from this cause, was so paramount, that a prince could not be established on his throne until he was initiated into the greater mysteries of the temples ; yet, prjor to that pe- riod, if the royal personage happened to be a member of the military order, he could not be a partaker of these important secrets until he be- came king.* The priests, consequently, were justly esteem- ed to possess all the knowledge that could be acquired by a peculiar education ingrafted upon superior understanding; and they constituted a hierarchy, having almost unbounded influence * Clement of Alexandria bears evidence to this fact Xiv PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. in the civil as well as the religious polity of the state. As priests, they were the interpreters of the sacred books, the confidential advisers of the monarch, and the regulators of his conduct. They were also the judges of the land, and fill- ed most of the important offices of the govern- ment. Their great object was to maintain their influence over the multitude; for which pur- pose, they not only preserved all knowledge in their own body, but intrusted the higher mys- teries of their faith only to such individuals, even of the priesthood, as were known to excel in virtue and wisdom. To render their ascend- ency, also, over the minds of the people more secure, they pretended to skill in divination ; to be able to presage future events ; to foresee and to avert impending calamities, and to bring down the vengeance of the gods upon the pro- fane for every dereliction of duty, or neglect of their service. It must be evident that such a state of mental control could not be preserved without opera- I fing on the superstitious feelings of the multi- tude ; consequently, sacrifices, rites, and cere- monies were instituted ; and displays of sacer- dotal power over the elements of nature which appear altogether improbable were witnessed. The object of our author, as I have already said, was to explain the character of that power, and to remove the effects produced by it from the region of fable, by demonstrating that their im- probability can be proved to be only apparent. How far he has succeeded I shall leave to the readers of his proofs to determine ; but, like all promulgators of a theory, he has attempted to PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. XV extend it too far, and has supposed it capable of explaining not only the apparent miracles of Polytheism, but even those which, in a great degree, form the foundation of our purer faith, and which the benevolence of the Deity deign- ed to mortals as a revelation, and the best sanc- tion of its Divine origin. For the above reasons, in undertaking the task of editing these volumes, I have felt it my duty to expunge from their pages every pass- age referring to the sacred Volume; and, at the same time, to change somewhat the title of the work, by substituting the words " apparent miracles" for the word " miracles." This has not been done without due consideration, and from a conviction that the author had no correct idea of miracles, and, consequently, could not be supposed to regard those of the Bible as ob- jects of belief. I consider it necessary, how- ever, after this assertion, to lay before the read- er my own opinions of the distinction between real and apparent miracles. But, before doing so, I must disown my belief in an opinion often put forth, that the indulgence of a certain de- gree of skepticism tends to improve argumenta- tive acuteness; on the contrary, in clouding with a doubtful light both truth and error, it creates a tendency to make error as worthy of assent as truth. We may define a real miracle a new and extraordinary event, added to the ordinary se- ries of events ; the result of extraordinary cir- cumstances, and such as may be reasonably supposed to proceed directly from the Divine Will operating on the usual phenomena of the XVI PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. universe: certainly " not a violation of the laws of nature."* The recitals of real miracles that have been witnessed, and the opinion that they are likely again, at any time, to be witnessed, I may un- hesitatingly assert can only be denied by him who is skeptical as to the direct operation of the Supreme Power which created the world, the greatest, and assuredly the most incompre- hensible of all miracles. In every real miracle the Deity must directly act, as it can not be regarded otherwise than " as a new event re- sulting from a new antecedent,"! depending wholly on the will of the Omnipotent, in the same manner as the creation of the world. One of the greatest miracles, next to that of the creation, is the universal deluge, a miracle anterior to all existing records, and yet univer- sally believed by every nation and people on the face of the globe. It is, indeed, remarka- ble that a theological philosopher, an amiable and pious dignitary of the Church of England, Bishop Burnet, should have labored to explain this awful catastrophe upon physical principles. It is unnecessary to enter upon any refutation of the absurd, hypothetical romance of this worthy divine. He conceived that this globe consisted of a nucleus of waters, surrounded by a crust of solid earth, which " at a time appoint- ed by Divine Providence, and from causes made ready to do that great execution upon a sinful world," fell into the immense abyss, the waters of which, rushing out, overflowed " all the parts * Brown's Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, Notes E F, p. 500-540. t Dr. Brown, J. c.' PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. xvii and regions of the broken earth during the great commotion and agitation of the abyss." Another theory, advanced by ^Ir. Whiston, although more plausible, yet is not more difficult of refutation than that of Burnet. He attributed the awful phenomenon to the near approach of a comet. I have said it is more plausible than that of the bishop, because the effect of such a shock might be, as La Place has stated (suppos- ing it possible), to change the axis and motion of rotation of the globe ; and, consequently, not only to overthrow every thing upon its surface, but to cause the waters to abandon their ancient beds, and to precipitate themselves upon the equator, drowning every man and animal in their progress. But this opinion can not be support- ed, even upon the physical proofs that are so plausibly and ingeniously advanced. In the first place, there is every astronomical certainty that no change has taken place in the axis of the globe; in the second place, the deluge, as it is recorded in the Bible, continued only one hun- dred and fifty days, a period not of sufficient duration to cause the extensive deposits in the crust of the earth detected by geologists, which must, therefore, be referred to some prior catas- trophe. Neither have any human bones been found in these deposits, although the bones of many other mammalia, equally perishable, are abundantly scattered through them. Indeed, it is probable that the bones and debris of any an- imals destroyed by the deluge would not be preserved; as the bodies of both man and ani- mals being exposed to the air when the waters retired, they would undergo rapid decomposi- I. B Xviii PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. tion and return to their primeval earth. In the third place, La Grange and La Place have dem- onstrated that although, as Sir Iaac Newton conjectured, great irregularities and disturban- ces may occur in the action of one planet upon another, yet they are counterbalanced by the period of every planet's revolution, and its mean distance from the sun being unassailable by any of the causes of change. From these elements, therefore, we are authorized to affirm that the utmost order and regularity must be preserved in our system, and disorder so excluded, that neither a universal deluge, nor any extraneous cause of destruction to this globe, can ever oc- cur without the immediate interposition of the Creator; or, in other words, without a direct miracle. In this great miracle, however, it must not be supposed that there was any violation of the laws of nature, but that a new event was required for a special purpose, and that it was effected by a direct act of the Deity. In contemplating the tremendous and awful- ly sublime nature of the universal deluge—the magnitude of the catastrophe—the overthrow of a world—it can not but be regarded as an essential ingredient in constituting it a miracle. But such sublime effects are not necessary to constitute a miracle : the transmutation of wa- ter into wine at Cana; the healing of the sick ; and the raising of Lazarus from the grave, with the other extraordinary actions of our Savior, are equally deserving the name of miracles, and equally inexplicable upon every principle except that which has been already stated as constitu- ting a miracle. The Divine Will that preceded PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. xix them may be safely regarded as the efficient cause of their miraculous results; and none but an atheist would exclude the exercise of Omnirf- Jr- jv Aotence in producing new events at any period, ,' as well as at that of the creation. . r But it may be justly argued that every hi#i- T^erto unobserved, and, therefore, new and extra- ordinary event, which is inexplicable by our experience, can not be regarded as a miracle. Certainly not. The fall of aerolites has fre- - quently taken place, although we are utterly ig- norant of the peculiar combination of circum- stances that physically precede them; and, when first observed, they must not only have excited the utmost astonishment, but given suf- ficient occasion for belief in their miraculous character. They have now so frequently been observed, that the phenomenon can no longer be doubted ; they can not, therefore, be regard- ed as miracles, because " the necessary combi- nation, whatever it may have been, must pre- viously have taken place;" and although they , were not observed, yet there is much probabif- : ^ity that they must have frequently Lefore fallen. The physical probabilities, therefore, have only to be weighed, as in the case of every other ex- traordinary event related to us ; and, according to the result, our belief or disbelief will be fix- ed. If the event, however extraordinary, can be explained by physical causes, it can not be regarded as supernatural, and, consequently, not as a miracle. An apparent miracle may be defined an ex- traordinary, and, as far as the knowledge of those who witness it for the first time extends, XX PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. an unprecedented event; but when it is careful- ly examined, it can be explained upon ordinary physical principles, and, if not a natural event, it may be performed by any one who is in pos- session of the method of working it. The first attempt, which succeeded, to attract lightning from the clouds, when witnessed by those ignorant of the method of effecting it, was proclaimed as a miracle, and consistently re- garded as such by the ignorant multitude. Nothing, indeed, could be better calculated to subdue and enchain their minds in the bondage of superstition; but, since the principles upon which the phenomenon depends are well under- stood, it has ceased to be regarded as miracu- lous, and is classed among the other remarkable discoveries of physical science. Many of the astounding phenomena of initiation into the mys- teries of the temples, and those intended to be considered as supernatural when displayed be- fore the people in ancient times, and even, proh pudor! some in our own times, especially in the legends and the rituals of the Church of Rome, are readily explained upon physical principles, and may be confidently classed as sacred frauds. Nothing can be more unworthy of the Church who sends them forth. Well may the scoffer at religion exclaim, does the honor and the wor- ship of the Deity require for its advancement the aid of falsehood and imposture ! Such is my opinion of the distinction between real and apparent miracles. With reference to the former, the Supreme Being may will, as he possesses the power, to perform every thing, at any time, that is truly miraculous, and we can PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. XXI always trace the intention to some gracious pur- pose. But, however closely the ingenuity of man may imitate real miracles, and however the results of his operations may appear mirac^ fllous, yet, when they are examined, they can be referred, as I have already said, to physical causes; and their influence is found not to be directed to the beneficent and gracious ends which follow, as a regular sequence, every real miracle. The apparent miracle is worked, not for an act worthy of the Divinity, but to elevate the dignity of certain individuals, or to augment the consequence of particular classes of men in the eyes of the ignorant, or to forward some other object not extending to general good, but confined in its influence to comparatively nar- row limits ; namely, to satisfy ambition and the love of power. To affirm positively that an event which is consonant with the ordinary powers of nature is the immediate result of the intervention of Divine agency, displays an arrogant assump- tion of superior wisdom, and of such an ac- quaintance with all the tendencies of the oper- o ♦lous interposition. It may be argued that the estimony of credible witnesses may be adduc- ed in support of such apparent miracles; but, before admitting such testimony, we must take into account the condition of mind of the wit- nesses ; for, when there is a tendency in the mind, either from its original structure, or from the nurture of improper education, to believe in miraculous events, a spirit of self-deception is practiced, and appearances are adopted as truths, without the smallest feeling of doubt, and assuredly without any attempt to estimate their degree of probability. Under such circumstan- ces, the respectability of the witnesses does not enhance the value of the testimony if, after weighing all the probabilities, we are satisfied that they concur against the truth of the event having really happened. Do not, we may in- quire, the strongest minds sometimes, in such cases, demonstrate that the most perfect speci- mens of human intellect, like the sun, have their XX1V PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. spots, since we find the immortal Newton him- self paying the penalty to mortal weakness on the subject of prophetical interpretations ? Sel- den, in his apology for the law against witches, displayed a lurking belief in witchcraft; and both Sir Thomas Brown and Sir Matthew Hale were believers in that absurd infatuation. In- deed, the extraordinary extent to which the be- lief in witchcraft existed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the north of Europe, and in Great Britain, is almost incredible. Like the spectres which it was supposed to invoke, it vanished before the light which experimental science threw upon those events, natural or ar- tificial, that were previously considered to de- pend on supernatural interposition. On that portion of his subject which treats of Magic, and its modifications, sorcery and witch- craft, our author has displayed much research; but he has scarcely noticed the opinion which at one time very generally prevailed, and which still forms part of the Roman Catholic faith, that every man at his nativity has a good and a bad angel assigned to him. This belief was proba- bly a remnant of that part of the doctrine of Zo- roaster, which describes the Supreme Being as assigning, at the creation, the government of the world to two principles, one of good, and the other of evil; which originated the pagan doctrine of the agency of good and evil genii, to which also the Grecian philosophers were addicted. This belief seems to have prevailed even in the time of Shakspeare, who refers to it in set- ■v Aeral of his dramas, and especially in the follow- ing passage: PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. XXV " Thy demon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is Noble, courageous, high, untamable When Cassar's is not; but, near him, thy angel Becomes a Fear, as being overpowered— I say again, thy spirit Is all abroad to govern thee near him; But be aware, 'tis noble."* It is not my intention, as it would be out of place here, to comment upon this subject, al- though one of considerable interest, and still en- tertained by several good and pious individuals, who ascribe all evil thoughts and temptations to the immediate instigation of the devil. It is also a curious fact that the act of suicide, which foo frequently is the consequence of insanity, is often caused by the illusion of a voice constant- ly whispering in the ear of the unfortunate indi- vidual, and urging the committal of the crime. On the subject of prodigies and visions, our author is not so copious as the title of his work would lead the reader to anticipate : those " Signs, Abortions, presages, and tongues of heaven," that, in spite of the rapid advancement and ex- tension of knowledge, so characteristic of the present period, still press like an incubus upon the minds of many persons, and a total freedom from which can be conscientiously boasted of only by a few. In confirmation of this assertion, it is not necessary that I should prove a belief in spectral appearances, although there are spectral illusions occurring when the nervous system is deranged in any one laboring under febrile disease, or in a healthy person exhaust- ed with long and anxious watching by the bed of sickness, which might be regarded as predic- tive of death; nor is it requisite that I should * Antony and Cleopatra, act vii., scene 3. XXVi PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. refer to the belief in screams and fearful noises heard at the dead of night; corpse candles, nor tomb fires ; nor those alterations in the burning of lights which a guilty conscience fancies may take place at midnight, and which are omens of some approaching disaster, the merited punish- ment of crime. " The lights burn blue: it is now dead midnight. Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd Came to my tent."* But, independent of any belief in these visions —these aerial simulacra—there are certain feel- ings of the mind which seem to indicate disas- ter, and which to a certain degree influence more or less the belief of every man. Much might be said upon the Second Sight, a property of recognizing "the coming events A which cast their shadow, before," and which is still believed to be possessed by some persons in the remote parts of the Highlands of Scotland. The second sight is a species of divination; a gift of prophecy, or of prediction from visions. One writer on the Highlands, a man of genius and high acquirements, Doctor Macculloch, treats the whole as a fanciful romance ; a mere specimen of superstition in the believers, and of impudent assumption of a possession which never existed only in the declaration of the seers, and the trick of which, in truth, might be acquired by any one in the Island of Sky for a mere trifle. The object seen by the mountain seer is often a close resemblance of himself, at whatever period of life he may be; and upon this fact, believing that the object is really seen, I have attempted an explanation in a note upon * Richard III, act v., scene 3. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. XXvii it. How far I have succeeded I leave to the judgment of the reader. Certain conditions of the nervous system, also, especially hypochon- driacal affections, cause spectral illusions, which the patient in some degree believes to be real. My explanation, however, refers to those visions only that are seen of the seers themselves ; not to those which display the whole machinery of the predicted event, whether disastrous-or joyful. In this respect I am inclined to think, with Dr. Macculloch, that the honesty of the seers may be placed on a parallel with that of the Delphian Pythoness ; and it is of little consequence what the cause of the excitement is, whether whisky, or carbonic acid gas. In the exercise of the second sight, the predic- tions have been usually accomplished before the seer has published his anticipatory knowledge; hence the facility with which predictions may be at any time announced. The wonder is that the impudent assertions of their being known before- hand should find believers; it can only be af- firmed that the credulity balances the impos- ture. Absurd as these facts show this assumed gift of lllivination to have been, the belief in it was at one time universal; but it is now, hap- pily, on the wane, and practiced only in the re- >Jf mote Hebrides. If at any period those predict- ive visions really occurred, they must be view- ed only as reveries, the sports of mental associ- ation in a state between sleeping and waking. With respect to other omens, they are nearly the same over all the world, as well as in the Highlands. " A spark of fire," says Dr. Mac- culloch, in treating of Sky," falling on the breast or arms of a woman, was the omen of a dead XXV111 PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. child. Certain sounds were the omens of death;" and these are certainly not confined to Sky; we find them prevailing among the uned>- u- T Seated classes even in England, and, what is more remarkable, among some whose education should have placed them above lending an ear of credence to such absurdities. Many of these forebodings attract the attention of the individ^ " v> |lals merely from that listless, dozing condition which is the result of want of occupation. The vision is, in truth, the recollection of something that has previously occurred, which begins a series of associations, or false ideas, that impress and keep their hold of the imagination in hours between sleeping and watchfulness. It might be supposed that the seers could not believe, and that, like the augurs of old, who laughed in each others faces when they met, the seers, also, must have felt strange emotions on encountering one another; but this idea does not always hold. How many confessions of witchcraft were made at the time when that delusion enchained the human mind in its bond- age may be seen in the pages of our author. These confessions may be regarded as a species of insanity, especially when those who uttered them were carried to the stake, or were suffer- ing under the most horrific tortures of breaking on the wheel. The argument in favor of witch- craft resting on evidence is valid for every ab- surdity detailed of it; but it is almost degrading to condescend to prove the small value of hu- man testimony upon numerous points, when we see men of every rank and denomination de- ceiving their eyesight, and believing that they have seen what never existed. Instances of PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. xxix this extraordinary fact are abundantly scatter- ed through the following volumes; and it has been well remarked, that" when once the minds of a people are prepared with a solution for ev- ^ ,£ry event, there will never be wanting events adapted to the situation."* With regard to the predictions of the temples, I am of opinion that our author ascribes too much knowledge to the priesthood. In their own operations, there is no reason why their predictions should not be fulfilled; but, in the series of natural events, where all things are so mingled together, and the untwining of the com- plication so much beyond our power, that to predict the manner and the particular moment in which the anticipated effect will take place can not be supposed possible. Long experience, and the constant observation of natural events, may do much in enabling truth to be approximated under such circumstances; but even these aids are not adequate to insure its full attainment. To suppose, however, that the fulfil/ment of a prediction of a supernatural character can de- pend, in any degree, on the interposition of the individual who has hazarded it, must be regard- ed as absurd, and as resting upon the same ground as the belief in witchcraft; the stories of men without heads, described by St. Augus- tine as having been seen by himself; or the sa- tyrs of St. Jerome ;f mermaids; the clairvoyance of mesmerizers ; the cures of Prince Hohenlohe, performed at two thousand miles from the pa- tient ; or those fictitious ones now enslaving the * Macculloch's Highlands and Western Islands, &c, vol. ii., p. 86. t St. Jerome averred that there were actual satyrs, men with goats' legs and tails, exhibited at Alexandria; and that one was pickled and sent in a cask to Constantine. XXX PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. minds of many whose rank in life and education should have prevented them from becoming the dupes of so silly an imposture—I refer to the gift of healing possessed by a young French woman, Mademoiselle Julie, now in the British metropolis. She professes to judge of diseases, when placed in the mesmeric slumber, by feel- ing a few hairs from the head of the sick person, who is not required to be present, and prescrib- ing for them; a most impudent imposture, which has been justly exposed by Dr> John Forbes.* - A considerable portion of these volumes is occupied in tracing many of the extraordinary apparent miracles of antiquity to mechanical and scientific sources; but the knowledge of the erudite author is not very profound on this part of his subject; and here I trust my notes shall be found to illustrate his remarks, as well as to clear up many obscure passages; to ex- plain processes which seem to have been little known to him ; and to correct errors into which he has been led from being only superficially acquainted with the subject. I have also add- ed many brief biographical notices of the prin- cipal individuals mentioned in the text, chiefly for the sake of the general English reader, whose moderate acquaintance with classical antiquity may require such an aid. It is not for me to say how much the notes may be thought to add to the value of the work ; they have been writ- ten with the intention of rendering the whole subject better understood. I contemplated add- ing to the Illustrations at the conclusion of the ' second volume an Essay on Credulity in Med- l> fcine, tracing it to its course, and giving an ex- * See British and Foreign Medical Review. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. XXXi position of the various successful efforts of char- latanism which have at various times imposed upon the understanding of mankind, and con- tributed to the stability of the empire of super- stition. But on looking over my materials for such a dissertation, collected during many years, I was convinced that the subject could not be embraced within any reasonable compass to serve as an appendage to these volumes; I have therefore determined to lay it, at some fu- ture time, before the public as a distinct work. In conclusion, I have no hesitation in declar- ing my opinion that M. Salverte has performed a beneficial service to mankind in throwing open the gates of the ancient sanctuaries. The benefit would have been enhanced had he ex- tended his researches from the fallacies of pol- ytheism to the pious frauds which disfigure the middle age of the Christian world ; " and from which," to borrow the language of Paley, "Christianity has suffered more injury than from all other causes put together;" another proof, were it required, that Credulity and Su- perstition belong to no particular age nor coun- try. Their labors constitute a large portion of the history of the human race, which may be regarded as little more than a record of the fol- lies and vices of man, rather than a display of his virtues and intellectual energies. Whatev- er may be our religious faith, we drink in, al- most with our mother's milk, an admiration of classic antiquity; and from the influence of early education we are insensibly led to give some degree of credence to its mythology. One beneficial effect, however, it must be con- fessed, results from tracing conditions; name- XXXii PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. ly, the tendency which they have, in many im- portant particulars, to confirm the truths of the Bible. Whether disgraced by the cruel and remorseless absurdities that deform the Hindoo rites, or emerging from the frowning darkness that shrouded Egyptian mysticism, or conceal- ed by the graceful drapery which decorated Grecian polytheism, we may discover in all of them nearly the same account of the infant condition of the world, the creation of the hu- man race, and the catastrophe of the deluge; thence a confirmation of the cosmogony of the book of Genesis. The Hindoos, for example, divide the creation info six successive periods, the last of which terminates with the formation of man; and in the Purana, amid the wildest allegories and most fanciful exuberance of ma- chinery, we discover evident traces of the uni- versal flood, and the preservation of one family destined to renew and to continue the human race. Among the Parsees, the followers of Zo- roaster, the belief in one Supreme Being, and of a good and an evil principle, constitutes their primitive faith, the superstitions now mingled with the fire-worship having originated in the ambition of the. priesthood for power rather than in the tenets of its original founder. The sun of Christianity has dispersed the darkness of paganism ; and, as knowledge extends suffi- ciently to dissipate the divisions introduced, un- happily, into the Christian churches, the bless- ings that result more and more from its influ- ence will afford only additional evidence of its divine origin. A. T. T. 30 Welbeck-street, June, 1846. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER I. Man is Credulous oecause he is naturally Sincere.—Men of supe- rior intellect have reduced their Fellow-men to Submission by acting upon their Passions through their Credulity.—The Recit- als of Marvels which conduced to this End are not wholly in ventive.—It is useful as well as curious to study the Facts con- tained in these Narrations, and their Cause . . Page 37-41 CHAPTER II. DifiFerence between Miracles and Prodigies.—Circumstances that render marvelous Histories credible: 1st. The Number and Agreement of the Narrations, and the Confidence which the Observers and Witnesses of them merit; 2d. the Possibility of tracing out some one or other of the principal Causes that may have given a miraculous Coloring to a natural Event 42-50 CHAPTER III. Enumeration and Discussion of Causes.—Singular and deceptive Appearances of Nature. — Exaggeration of the Details and Duration of Phenomena.—Improper Terms, ill-conceived and badly explained.—Figurative Expressions.—Poetic Style.— Erroneous Explanations of Emblematic Representations. — Allegories and Fables adopted as real Facts . . 50-88 CHAPTER IV Real but rare Phenomena successfully held up as Prodigies pro- ceeding from the Intervention of a Divine Power, and believed because Men were ignorant that a Phenomenon could be local and periodical; because they had forgotten some natural Fact, which would at once have removed all Idea of the Marvelous ; and, finally, because it was often dangerous to disabuse a de ceived Multitude.—As the ancient Authors have adhered to Truth in this respect, they may be, also, depended upon in what they relate of magical Operations .... 88-115 J, C XXXIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. Magic.—Antiquity and Universality of the Belief in Magic.—Its Operations attributed equally to the Principle of Evil and of Good.—It was not considered by the Ancients to imply the Subversion of the Order of Nature.—Its Truth was not dis- puted even when emanating from the Disciples of an inimical Religion . ......Page 115-124 CHAPTER VI. Trial of Skill between the Thaumaturgists.—It was admitted that the Victor derived his Science from the Deity ; but it was founded on Natural Philosophy.—The Proofs of which are de- rived : 1st. From the Conduct of the Thaumaturgists ; 2d. From their own Assertions regarding Magic, that the Genii invoked by the Magicians sometimes signified the Physical or Chemical Agents accessory to the Occult Science; sometimes the Men who cultivated that Science ; 3d. The Magic of the Chaldeans embraced all the Occult Sciences . . . . 125-143 CHAPTER VII. Errors mingled with the positive Truths of Science.—These have their Origin sometimes in deliberate Imposture, sometimes in the Mystery in which the Occult Science is involved.—Im- postures exaggerated.—Pretensions of the Thaumaturgists: Charlatanism; Jugglery; Tricks of Legerdemain more or less palpable.—Chance, and the Facility with which its Results may be controlled.—Oracles conjoined with Equivocation and Im- posture, to insure their Fulfillment by natural Means, such as Ventriloquism, &c.; and by, finally, exact, but very simple Ob- servations ......... 144-175 CHAPTER VIII. Safeguards of the Mystery that surrounded the Occult Sciences. —Hieroglyphics, Idioms, and Sacred Writing.—Not understood by the Uninitiated.—Enigmatical Language of the Invocations. —Gradual and partial Revelations known in their Plenitude only to a small Number of Priests.—Oaths, and Falsehoods respecting the Nature of the Processes, and the Extent of Magi- cal Operations.—Consequences of this Mystery : 1st. The Sci- ence of Magic was reduced, in the Hands of the Thaumaturgists, to a Practice, the Nature of which, devoid of Theory, became in Time unintelligible ; 2d. Great Errors universally prevailed, owing to Ignorance of the Limits that circumscribed this Power; the Desire to penetrate into Secrets of Magic, and the Habit of attributing its Efficacy to the visible and ostensible Processes of Science.........176-203 CONTENTS. XXXV CHAPTER IX. Notwithstanding the Rivalry of religious Sects, the Spirit of a fixed Form of Civilization existed.—Mystery in the Schools of Philosophy was ultimately banished by the Influence of more perfect Civilization.—In the first Epoch there was an habitual Communication of the Greeks with the Successors of the Magi who were dispersed through Asia after the Death of Smerdis : 1st. The Revelation of Magic; 2d. The Impoverishing of Egypt after the Conquest of the Romans caused Priests of inferior Grades, who trafficked in the Secrets of the Temples, to abound in Rome ; 3d. The Polytheists, who were converted to Christ- ianity, carried into its Bosom the Knowledge of the Magic which they possessed.—In the secondiEpoch, the Remains only of the Sacred Science existed: 1st. In the Schools of the The- urgian Philosophy ; 2d. lathe Possession of wandering Priests, and, above all, of Egyptian Priests. As Successors to the former maybe assigned, with much probability, the Secret Societies of Europe; to the latter, the modern Jugglers . Page 203-234 CHAPTER X. Enumeration of the Wonders that the Thaumaturgists acquired the Power of Working, by the Practice of the Occult Science 234-239 CHAPTER XL Apparent Miracles performed by Mechanism.—Moving Floors.— Automata.—Experiments in the Art of Flying . . 239-246 CHAPTER XII. Acoustics.—Imitation of Thunder.—Organs.—Resounding Chests. —Androides, or Speaking-Heads.—The Statue of Memnon 247-255 CHAPTER XIII. Optics.—Effects similar to those exhibited in the modern Dio- ramas and Phantasmagorias.—Apparitions of the Gods, and Shades of the Dead.—The Camera Obscura.—Magicians chan- ging their Appearances and their Forms is an incredible Miracle 255-279 CHAPTER XIV. Hydrostatics.—Miraculous Fountain of Andros.—Tomb ofBelus.— Statues that shed Tears.—Perpetual Lamps.—Chemistry.— Liquids changing Color.—Condensed Blood becoming Liquid.— Inflammable Liquid.—The Art of-distilling Alcoholic Liquors was formerly known even beyond the Temples . . 280-292 XXXVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. Secrets employed in working apparent Miracles in Initiations and in religious Rites.—Those giving Security against the Effects of Fire, and used in the Fiery Ordeal, known in Asia and in Italy, and practiced in the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as in Europe, in more modern Times.—Process by which Wood may be rendered Incombustible .... Page 292-305 CHAPTER XVI. Secrets to work upon the Senses of Animals.—Ancient and modern Examples.—Of the Power of Harmony.—The Power of good Treatment.—Crocodiles and Snakes tamed.—Reptiles whose Venom can either be Destroyed or Extracted.—Ancient Psylli.—The Faculty which they possessed of braving the Bites of Serpents put beyond Doubt, by the frequent recent and re- peated Experiments in Egypt.—This Faculty proceeds from odoriferous Emanations, which affect the Senses of the Reptiles, and escape those of Man......305-332 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAGIC, PRODIGIES, AND APPARENT MIRACLES. CHAPTER I. Man is Credulous because he is naturally Sincere.—Men of supe- rior Intellect have reduced their Fellow-men to Submission by acting upon their Passions through their Credulity.—The Reci/- "f .als of Marvels which conduced to this End are not wholly iii- ' ventive.—It is useful as well as curious to study the Facts con- tained in these Narrations, and their Causes. Man is credulous from the cradle to the grave; yet this disposition, the consequences of which plunge him into many errors and misfortunes, pro- ceeds from an honorable principle. Naturally sin- cere, he is desirous of making his words as correct an expression of his feelings, thoughts, and recol- lections, as his tears and exclamations of grief, and of joy, and, above all, his looks, and the changes of his countenance, are of his sufferings, his fears, or his pleasures. Speech is more frequently de- ceptive than silent gesticulations, since it has a great- er affinity to art than nature; yet, such is the strength of that inclination which attracts us to truth, that the man the most habituated to deceit is the most disposed to believe that others respect truth; and, before refusing his credit to the state- ments of others, he must detect something in them which does not accord with his previous knowledge ; 38 INTRODUCTION. or he must have some cause to suspect a design formed to deceive him. Novelty, and the difficulty of reconciling anoma- lies with experience, will never startle the faith of an uneducated man. There are, moreover, some impressions which all men are inclined to adopt without investigation; and the very singularity of these is, perhaps, a charm which causes them to be received with more delight. Is this taste, we may inquire, natural 1 or is it the result of that educa- tion which for so many ages the human race has received from its founders ? This is a vast and an unexplored field of inquiry; but it forms no part of our subject. It is sufficient to observe that the love of the marvelous, and the preference ever giv- en to the extraordinary over the natural, have been the cause why facts have been not only too much disregarded, but sometimes altogether set aside. There are instances, nevertheless, and we shall bring forward several, where the simple truth has escaped the power of oblivion. The man of a confiding disposition may be fre- quently deceived; still his credulity will not be found an instrument sufficiently powerful to gov- ern his whole existence. The marvelous excites but a transient admiration. In 1798, our country- men observed with surprise how little the sight of balloons affected the indolent Egyptians. Savages behold Europeans execute feats of skill, and per- form physical experiments that they are neither able nor desirous to explain; the exhibition amu- ses without exciting them, and without invading their tranquil independence. Man is governed by his passions, and, above all, by Hope and Fear. What is better able to create, maintain, and exalt these feelings than unrestrained credulity ] Reason is perplexed, and the imagina* INTRODUCTION. 39 tion filled with wonders. It is easy to believe in supernatural events; we are apt to discern bene- fits and punishments in them, and to read in them also the mandates and threats of all-powerful be- ings, whose direful hands hold the destinies of frail mortals. From the most ancient times, men of superior intellect, desirous of enthralling the human mind, have adduced miracles and prodigies as the certain proof of their missions, and as the inimitable works of the divinities whom they revered. Seized with terror, the multitude have bent beneath the yoke of superstition, and the proudest man has touched the steps of the altar with his humbled brow. Ages have passed away, consoled and terrified by turns : sometimes governed by just laws, more frequently subject to capricious and ferocious ty- rants, the human race has believed and obeyed. The history of every country and of all ages is en- cumbered with marvelous tales; but, in the pre^- vent day, we reject them with a disdain not very philosophical. Do not the convictions which have exercised so powerful an influence on the human race merit a high interest? Shall we forget that supreme power of Providence, visible, we believe, in prodigies and miracles, has been almost always the most powerful means of civilization; that the wisest men have doubted whether it were possible for laws, or for durable institutions to exist without the guarantee of an intervention so universally re- spected 1* If we consider these facts in connection with their causes, the contempt for them has still less foundation, and the origin of fables, which we often deem revolting, merits, perhaps, an honorable place in the history of mankind. Statements, however * J. J. Rousseau, Dw Contrat Social, liv. iv., c. viii. 40 INTRODUCTION. incredible they may seem, can not all be falsehood and illusion. Credulity and invention have alike their limits. Let us study man, not from deceitful traditions, but in his ordinary habits of life, and we shall see that it would be difficult for an imposture to become established if, in our feelings and recol- lections, we find nothing to second its pretensions, nothing to support them. We recur again to our inquiry: Man is credulous because he is naturally Bincere. A falsehood can more easily deny, dis- guise, and set aside truth than imitate it.* Invention, even in trifles, costs some effort of which the inventor is not always capable. An in- ventive genius, also, when exercised for our pleas- ure or for our instruction, yields at every step to the desire of approaching reality ; of mingling truth with its creations ; convinced that without this ar- tifice falsehood would find little place in the hu- man mind. With still more reason does the man who has some great interest in practicing upon our credulity, rarely revert to a fable which has not for its foundation some fact, or the possibility of which is not at least probable. This skillful attempt ap- pears in referring to distant ages and countries, and to those repetitions with which the histories of prodigies abound, and which so imperfectly dis- guise the alteration of some of the details. This will be obvious if we can convince our readers that the greater part of marvelous facts may be ex- plained by a small number of causes more or less easy to discern and to develop. An inquiry into these causes has not for its ob- ject merely the gratification of idle curiosity. Prod- igies connected with natural phenomena, inventions^ * Tt is with difficulty we can imagine any thing full of improba- bility ; and we say " a fact of this nature is rarely forged."—St. Croix, Examen Critique des Historiens d'Alexandre. Paris, 1804, p. 29. INTRODUCTION. 41 impostures, the sorcery of ihaumaturgy* can, for the most part, be explained by physical science. Viewed in this light, the history of science, its prog- ress, and its variations, may furnish valuable ideas respecting the antiquity, the changes, and vicissi- tudes of civilization; and we may thence draw some curious evidence regarding the sources of part of our knowledge hitherto unsuspected. Finally, another advantage will reward our re- searches : history will be presented to us in a new light. We shall restore to it facts ; give back to historians a character for veracity, without which the whole of the past would be lost to the annals of civilized man; for, convicted of falsehood and ignorance in their narrations, and of a constant rep- etition of marvelous events, what credit would they merit in their accounts even of the most probable occurrences ] Justly denounced as an amalgama- tion of truth and error, and devoid of interest mor- al or political. History would be regarded only r as an admitted fiction: and has it not been so des- ignated by the learned ? But a man who has de- scribed and studied the manners of his species is not reduced to the degradation of preserving only the fables in those records which are supposed to give an insight into past ages. Far from present- ing merely a collection of falsehoods and folly, the most marvelous or incredible pages of history open to us the archives of a learned and mysterious pol; ley, which some wise men in every age have em- ployed to govern the human race ; to lead it to mis- fortune or to happiness; to greatness or to degra- dation ; to slavery or to freedom. * From two Greek words, signifying a worker of wonders. 42 DEFINITION OF MAGIC. CHAPTER II. Difference between Miracles and Prodigies.—Circumstances that render marvelous Histories credible : 1st. The Number and Agreement of the Narrations, and the Confidence which the Ob- servers and Witnesses of them merit; 2d. The Possibility of tracing out some one or other of the principal Causes that may have given a miraculous Coloring to a natural Event. The dominion of the marvelous may be divided into two parts : that of prodigies, and that of mag- ical works. Independent of all human action, prodigies are singular events that nature produces, apparently deviating from those laws which invariably regu- late her operations. Every thing is a prodigy in the eyes of the ig- norant man, who sees the universe only in the nar- row circle of his existence. The philosopher be- holds no prodigies: he knows that a monstrous birth, or the sudden crumbling of the hardest rock, result from causes as natural as the alternate return of night and day.* Those prodigies, once so powerfully acting upon the fears, desires, and resolutions of mankind, awak- en in the present day only incredulity, and excite the investigation of the learned. In the infancy of * Our author's assertion in this paragraph is too general. Prod- igies are, undoubtedly, traceable to natural causes; but not to 'these in their regular and ordinary operation; on the contrary, they are truly attributable to decided deviations from it. In a monstrous birth the same organic force and formative power are exerted in the development of the germ as in ordinary cases ; but, in the progress of the development, something occurs to interrupt the action of the organizing principle, and a monster is the result. The formative power is a creative faculty, stamped upon organic matter by the Deity, which modifies it, but operates " blindly and unconsciously, according to the laws of adaptation."*—Ed. * Miiller's Physiology, trans., vol. i., p. 25. CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. 43 society, men possessed themselves of rare facts, and of all real or apparent wonders, in order to hold them up to the eyes of the vulgar as signs of the anger, the threats, promises, or the benevolence of the gods. Miracles and marvelous events, equally in con- nection with supernatural influence, are often won- ders worked by men, whether they pretend that a benevolent or a terrible Divinity employs them as instruments ; or whether, by the study of the trans- cendental sciences, they assume that they have sub- jected to their empire spirits endowed with some power over the phenomena of the visible world. Every miracle impresses a religious man with a sense of veneration ; at the same time, he bestows this name on those supernatural operations only that are consecrated by his belief. We shall, there- fore, apply the name magic to the art of working wonders ; and in so doing, we shall digress from re- ceived opinions, and recall the ancient ideas of faith. In the absence of religious revelation to regu- late the thoughts, what proof of credibility, we may inquire, would be sufficient to make the thinking mind admit the existence of prodigies and marvel- ous events'? The calculation of the probabilities will serve as a guide. It appears to a superficial view much more prob- able that a man should be deceived by appearances more or less specious, or that, having some inter- est to deceive, he should himself endeavor to im- pose, than that there should be perfect agreement in a relation which involves something miraculous. But if, in different times and places, many men should have seen the same thing, and if their re- citals agree among themselves, then the case is al- tered. 44 CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. That which seemed incredible to the wise, and miraculous to the vulgar, becomes a curious but undeniable fact: the vulgar are amused by it; the learned study it, and endeavor to develop its cause. A single question remains then to be resolved in order to form a just estimate of the past. Must we admit that men have imprudently uttered and re- corded falsehoods, and have found other men, in all times, ready to believe absurdities ] Is it not more rational to conclude that those recitals, in ap- pearance marvelous, are founded on reality, par- ticularly when they can be explained sometimes by the human passions, occasionally by the state of science in former times 1 I shall fearlessly cite those witnesses hitherto re- garded with suspicion, although they have narra- ted events that have been reputed impossible. The discredit into which they have fallen makes part of our argument, which goes to show that discredit can not be ]ustly opposed to their narrations. Is it credible, I may ask, that, in the year A.D. 197, a shower of quicksilver could have fallen in the Forum of Augustus at Rome ? Dion Cassius,* who relates the event, did not see it fall, but he observed it immediately after its de- scent : he collected some of the drops, and rubbed them upon a piece of copper in order to give to it the appearance of silver, which he affirms it pre- served for three entire days.f Glycas also speaks * Dion Cassius Cocceianus, the son of Cassius Apronianus, a Roman senator, was bom at Nicaea, in Bithynia, A.D. 155. Al- though he was on his mother's side of Greek descent, and wrote in the language of his native province, yet he was truly a Ro- man, and enjoyed the rank of a senator under Commodus. He also held several important official situations under Alexander Severus. His History of Rome, from the period of Augustus to his own age, is justly esteemed.—Ed. t " Ccdo sereno pluvia rori simillima, colorisque argentei, info- rum Augusti defluxit, quam ego, et si non vidi cum caderet, tamen CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. 45 of a shower of quicksilver, which fell in the reign of Aurelian.* But the authority of this annalist is weak, and there is reason to believe that he has only disfigured the account of Dion by an anach- ronism. The rarity and value of mercury at Rome, in both reigns, set aside the possibility that the quantity necessary to represent rain could have been thrown by any one into the Forum. This story is, indeed, too strange to be believed in the present day. Must it then be absolutely rejected % Any one may say, it is impossible, it never could occur; but to whom does it belong to determine the limits of possibility, those limits which science is extending every day under our own eyes ] Let us examine, let us doubt, but let us not be too hasty in denying the possibility of such an occur- rence.? If a similar prodigy had been related at different times by different writers ; if it had been renewed in our own times, beneath the eyes of experienced observers, it would no longer be regarded as a fable or an illusion, but as a phenomenon which would have a place in those records to which science con- ut ceciderat, invent; eaque, ita ut si esset argentum, oblivi vwnet- am exosre, mansitque is color tres dies; quarto vero die quidquid oblitum fuerat evanuit."—Xiphilinus, in Severo. * " Avreliano imperante argenti guttas decidisse sunt qui tra- dant."—(Glycas., Annal., lib. iii.) Little is known about this au- thor. He wrote a Chronicle of events from the Creation to the year A.D. 1118. it has been valued on account of its Biblical ref- erences.—Ed. t There are many reasons for disbelieving the account of Dion. rn the first place, he did not see the shower fall; he gives no idea of the quantity of the quicksilver precipitated, and he collected only some drops; but, as the metal fell in a shower, and as it would not sink into the ground, nor evaporate like water, the quantity must have been too considerable to require it to be col- lected in drops. In the second place, metallic mercury is rarely found anywhere in large quantity; and it must have been eleva- ted into the atmosphere in the form of vapor, and condensed there, before it could descend in a shower. The story is altogether un- worthy of credit.—Ed. 46 CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. signs facts which she has recognized as certain with- out being able to explain them. We at one time regarded as fables all that the ancients recorded respecting the falling of stones from the sky. In the commencement of the nine- teenth century, the most distinguished of the French philosophers rejected, with some degree of harsh- "'■ ness, the relation of a shower of aerolites; but, a few days afterward, they were forced to acknowj- / edge its truth ; and the narration has been verified by the frequent repetition of this phenomenon.* On the 27th of May, 1819, a violent hail storm devastated the country of Grignoncourt.t The mayor of the place had some of the hailstones col- * Although the fall of tterolites, or meteoric stones, is not now doubted, yet it does not augment the credibility of the shower of quicksilver related by Dion; it only shows us how cautious we ought to be in rejecting the accounts of ancient writers, however inconsistent with our experience. The most authentic account of a fall of aerolites is that which describes the phenomenon as it occurred near L'Aigle, in Normandy, in 1803. About one o'clock in the afternoon, the sky being clear, a ball of fire was observed in the atmosphere, in different parts of Normandy, and at the same time loud explosions were heard in the district of L'Aigle. These lasted for five or six minutes, resembling the discharges of cannon and musketry, followed by a long, rolling noise, like that of many drums. The meteor, whence the noise seemed to pro- ceed, was like a small triangular cloud, which remained station- ary; but vapor seemed to issue from it after each explosion. Throughout the whole district a hissing noise, like that caused by stones thrown from a sling, was heard, and a great number of stones fell to the ground. Above two thousand were collected; they varied in weight from two drachms to seventeen pounds and a half. Aerolites, in whatever part of the world they have fallen, resemble one another in composition, and consist of silica, iron, magnesia, nickel, and sulphur, but in proportions different from those in any stones known on the surface of our globe. Numer- ous conjectures have been advanced respecting the source of these stones, They have been supposed to be projected from the moon, or from volcanoes, or to be formed in the atmosphere. The most probable theory is that proposed by Chladni, namely, that these meteors are either original, small, solid bodies, or fragments separated from larger masses moving in space round the earth in eccentric orbits, and containing, according to Sir H. Davy, com- bustible or elastic matter.—Ed. t Neufchateau, in the department of the Vosges. CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. 47 lected ; they weighed upward of a pound avoirdu- pois ; and when they were dissolved, he found in the center of each a stone of a clear coffee color, from about six to eight tenths of an inch in thick- ness ; flat, round, polished, and with a hole in the center, into which the little finger could be insert- ed.* Such stones had never been observed before in the country; they were seen scattered upon the ground wherever the hail had fallen. I read the account of the phenomenon in a memorial (proces verbal) addressed to the sub-prefect of Neufchateau by the mayor, who, viva voce, related the same de- tails to me, and the clergyman of the parish con- firmed the account. It might be said that the tempest, and violent fall of the hail, had forced up to the surface stones previously buried in the earth. The personal observation of the mayor, however, refutes this hypothesis. Curious to know the truth, I examined the soil at the time where the plow opened it more deeply than the hail could possibly have done, and I could not discover a single stone similar to those that the mayor described in his nar- ration.t Shall we reject a fact attested in so precise a manner] In Russia, in 1825, a fall of hailstones, in which were inclosed meteoric stones, took place. * Upon the banks of the Ognon, a river flowing about ten leagues from Grignoncourt, a great quantity of similar stones was found. Could they also be the product of a hail storm charged with agrolites 1 t It is not likely that he could discover any; for although the •"" fall of agrolites be true, yet the improbability of the stones being such as stated is evident. The story is thus justly criticised in the North British Review, vol. iii., p. 7: " The phenomenon," says the critic,'" was never seen in any other place, and the en- veloped stone was not a substance known to have a separate ex- istence like quicksilver. A great quantity of circular, perforated disks, of a polished and transparent mineral, could only have come from a jeweler's shop in the moon, consigned to another jeweler in the atmosphere, who set them in ice for the benefit of the Mayor of Grignoncourt."—Ed. 48 CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. The stones were sent to the Academy at St. Peters- burgh* On the 4th of July, 1833, in the district of Tobolsk, enormous hailstones were seen to fall simultaneously with cubical aerolites. Macrisius relates that, in the year 723 of the Hegira, an enor- mous hail shower fell, the stones of which weighed from one to thirty rotts.t With what disdain, what ridicule should we treat an ancient author, if he told us that a woman had a breast on her left thigh, with which she nourished her own and several other children ; yet this phe- nomenon has been vouched for by the Academy of Sciences at Paris.| The known correctness of the philosopher who examined it, and the value of the testimonials upon which he rested his veracity, would have been sufficient to have placed the mat- ter beyond a doubt.§ There is still one cause which diminishes and destroys much of the improbability of marvelous events: it is the facility which one finds in strip- ping these events of every thing monstrous, such as at first provoked a challenge. In order to effect this, it is always necessary to allow for that spirit of exaggeration peculiar to 'the human mind. It is ignorance which prepares credulity to receive prodigies and apparent miracles; curiosity excites, * Chemical analysis gave the composition of these stones : 70 per cent, of red oxyd of iron; 7.50 manganese ; 7.50 silex; 6.25 micaceous earth; 3.75 argil; 6 sulphur.—Bulletin Universel des Sciences, 1825, tome iii., p. 117, No. 137; 1826, tome viii., p. 343. t Kitab-at-Solouk, quoted by M. Et. Q.uatremere.—Memoires sur I'Egypte, vol. ii., p. 489-490. \ Seance du 25 Juin, 1827.—See Revue Encyclepidique, tome xxxv., p. 244. § This was one of those sports of Nature which are not unfre- quently seen, and which can not be reasoned upon. As it may be a solitary instance of the kind, there might have been, indeed, and properly, much doubt respecting the credibility of the nar- rative mentioning it, had the phenomenon not been seen, and the nature of it investigated, by those well qualified for the task.—Ed. CREDIBILITY OF THE MARVELOUS. 49 pride interests, the love of the marvelous misleads, anticipation carries us on, fear subdues, and enthu- siasm intoxicates us; while chance, that is to say, a succession of events, the connection of which we do not perceive, and which also permits us to attrib- ute effects to erroneous causes, seconding all these agents of error, sports with human credulity. Apparent miracles have been produced by the science or by the address of able men, who, in or- der to rule the people, have worked upon their credulity; or, the same individuals have made use of those prodigies which strike the eyes of the vul- gar ; of those real or apparent miracles, the exist- ence of which is rooted in their minds. Both cases will enter into our discussions. We will develop, also, the progress of a class of men who, founding their empire upon the marvelous, are anxious that it should be recognized in every thing, and as anx- ious to dupe the stupid multitude, who so easily consent to see the marvelous every where. We shall narrow, also, the domain of the occult sciences within its true limits ; the principal end of our investigations, if we can exactly point out the causes which, with the efforts of Science and the works of Nature, concur in producing apparent miracles; or even in determining the importance, and solving the nature of the prodigies which thau- maturgists employ, prompt to bolster up their real powerlessness by the efforts of their ingenuity. In this discussion we shall not be afraid of multi- plying examples, nor of hearing the reader exclaim, "I know all that!" He, doubtless, may know it; but has he deduced from it the consequences 1 It is not enough to offer a plausible explanation of some solitary facts; we must collect and compare a considerable mass of them, in order to be able to draw the conclusion that, as in each branch of our I. D 50 CAUSES OF HISTORICAL FICl'IO.XS. system, our explanations tend to preserve the foun- dation of truth, and to remove the marvelous from a great number of events, it is extremely probable this system has truth for its foundation, and that there are no facts to which it may not apply. CHAPTER III. Enumeration and Discussion of Causes.—Singular and deceptive Appearances of Nature. — Exaggeration of the Details and Duration of Phenomena.—Improper Terms, ill-conceived and badly explained.—Figurative Expressions.—Poetic Style.— Erroneous Explanations of Emblematic Representations. — Allegories and Fables adopted as real Facts. So great is the charm attached to any thing of an extraordinary nature, that the man whose mind is but little enlightened regrets when his dreams of the marvelous are dispelled by truth, and is vexed when forced to confess that the slightest unusual appearances are, in his eyes, capable of transform- ing the immovable objects of nature into living or moving beings. This charm, and the tendency to exaggeration, which is a consequence of it; the per- manence of those traditions which would recal| events as still existing that have ceased for ages; the singular pride which nations have in transfer- ring into their own history the fabulous and alle- gorical traditions received from some race preced- ing them ; incorrect expressions ; the still more in- accurate translations of ancient narratives ; the en- ergy peculiar to the languages of antiquity, and the figurative style essentially belonging to poetry; that is to say, to the first language in which the knowl- edge of the past was impressed on the memory of the people ; the desire natural to a half-civilized community to explain allegories and emblems, the meaning of which was known only to the learned; TREMIiLIXG MIA.VRETS. 51 that interest which leads both noble and base pas- sions to make use of the marvelous in acting upon the credulity of the present and the future : all con- duce to deception, and are the causes which, sepa- rately or collectively, have debased the records of history with an immense number of marvelous fic- tions, although these repositories of knowledge have not required their powerful aid.* In order to disencumber truth from the mantle of the marvelous, it will be found sufficient to place by the side of the pretended wonders a sim- ilar fact not yet employed by Superstition in support of her assertions, and then to separate from the ac- cessories attached to it some one of those causes, the influence of which we have just noticed. The ringing of the bells at Rheims had the ef- fect of shaking one of the pillars in the Church of St. Nicasius,t and giving to that heavy mass a vibra- tion which continued for some minutes. A minaret of brick, near Damietta, also received a very ap- parent movement from the pushing of a single man placed near its summit.| These accidents, which were certainly neither foreseen nor intended by the architects, would, in the hands of a wonder-worker, become the act of some divinity. The Mosque of Jethro, at Hhuleh,§ is renowned for its trembling * One of these fictions, the production, duration, and univer- sality of which belong to the union of these different causes, ap- pears to us worthy of a separate notice.—See Appendix, note A, on Dragons and monstrous Serpents, which have figured in a great number of historical and fabulous recitals. t He was the ninth Bishop of Rheims. He was killed in the sacking of that city by the Vandals, in 407.—[Stilting's Life of St.Viventios).—Ed. } Macrisius, quoted by E. duatremere, Mimoires sur VEgypte, tome i., p. 340. § Hhuleh, or Halleh, a town situated on the Euphrates, in the pashalic of Bagdad. In 1741, the traveler, A'bdoul Kerym (Voyage de Vlnde a la Mekke, Paris, 1757), witnessed this mira- cle. He tried in vain to accomplish it himself, but he had not the secret of the imest. 52 RIVERS OF BLOOD EXPLAINED. minaret. The officiating priest places his hands on the ball at its summit, and invokes Ali; at this sa- cred name the minaret trembles, and the move- ment is so violent as to cause the curious, who are mounted on its summit, to dread being precipitated below. Many of the metamorphoses, and of the wonders consecrated in the history, or embellished by the poetry of the Greeks and Latins, are no more than the historical translations of some particular names of men, nations, or places ;* and they might be easily explained i£ instead of saying that the recol- lection of the miracle had given origin to the name of the town, the man, the people, or the country, we should say, on the contrary, that the name had originated the miracle. We have confirmed this remark in another place, and have, at the same time, pointed out the origin of these significant names. If the adoption of narrations evidently of fabu- lous origin proceeds from a love of the marvelous, how much more readily will this disposition lead us to contemplate with astonishment some of the sports of Nature, such as the appearances of rivers flowing in waves of blood, or the resemblance of rocks to men, animals, or ships % Memnon fell beneath the blows of Achilles ;f the gods collected the drops of his blood, and formed of them that river which flows through the valley of the Ida.$ Upon every anniversary of that fatal day, when the son of Aurora fell a victim to his courage, the waters of that river assume the color of the blood from which their origin was derived. * Essai Historique et Politique sur les Noms d'Hommes, dePeu- pies, et de Lieux, par Eugene Salverte, passim. t Q,. Calaber, Pnztermiss. ab Homer, lib. ii. t Traits de la Deesse de Syrie (CEuvres de Lucien) tome v p. 143. ' RIVERS OF MILK. 53 In this, as in a thousand other instances, the Greek tradition is copied from one still more ancient. From Mount Libanus flows the River Adonis; at the same period of every year it assumes a deep red tint, and rolls in bloody-looking torrents to the sea. It is the blood of Adonis; and the prodigy indicates the period proper for commencing the mourning ceremonies in honor of this demi-god. An inhabitant of Byblos explained the phenomenon by observing, that the soil of Mount Libanus, where it is watered by the Adonis, is composed of a red earth, and that, in a certain period of the year, the wind, drying up the earth, raises clouds of dust, and carries them into the river. The water of a lake at Babylon reddens for several days the color of the earth bathed by it, " which suffices," says Athenius, " to explain the phenomenon." Analogous suppositions account for the change of color which the River Ida regu- larly experiences. During the rainy season, or when the snow is melting, its waters probably reach, and partly dissolve a bank of ochreous earth impreg- nated with sulphate of iron, the presence of which is detected by the unwholesome vapors emitted from the stream. The miraculous appearance is thus reproduced only at a certain period; indeed, on that particular day when the waters of the river acquire their greatest elevation. In Phrygia, where Diana is said to have reward- ed the love of Endymion, is seen from a distance the spot which was the scene of their enjoyment; and we are led to believe that we see a rill of fresh milk, of a dazzling whiteness, flowing near it; but, on approaching the spot, this milky rill disappears, and, at the foot of the mountain, a simple channel* hollowed in the rock is all that is visible ; the prod- * Plin., Hist. Natur., book iv., chap. xii. 54 STONE SHIPS. igy has disappeared. An optical illusion which dispels itself is sufficient, nevertheless, to perpetu- ate the belief in the existence of the lactiferous rill. A rock near the Island of Corfu has the appear- ance of a ship in sail.* Modern observers have confirmed this resemblance, which also struck the ancients, and which is not a solitary instance. In another hemisphere, near the land of the Arsacides, a rock, named Eddystone, rises from the bosom of the waves, and so closely resembles a ship in sail that French and English navigators have been more than once deceived.t In the present day we only note these singular objects. In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, the rock near Corfu was the vessel which, having brought Ulysses back to his country, was changed into a rock by Neptune, indignant that the con- queror of his son, Polyphemus, should again see Ithaca and Penelope. We must here observe, that this story is not founded on a poetic fiction only, but perpetuates a pious custom, practiced by an- cient navigators, of dedicating to the gods a repre- sentation in stone of the vessel which had borne them safely in some perilous voyage. Agamemnon dedicated a vessel of stone to Diana, when this goddess, happily pacified, taught the art of naviga- tion to the warlike ardor of the Greeks. A mer- chant in Corcyra consecrated to Jupiter a similar representation, which some voyagers, nevertheless, believed to be the ship in which Ulysses returned to his native land.J * Observations sur VIsle de Corfu, B'ibliotheque Universelle, vol. ii., p. 195. t Labilladiere, Voyage a la Recherche de la Peyrouse, 4to, Paris, an viit, tome i., p. 215. X Procopius, Histoire M6Ue, chap. xxii. Upon a high hill near the town of Viennardepartmentof the Iser, is a monument called the Boat of Stone. A vaulted cavern is all now remaining of it. Its name, explained by no local appearance or tradition, must STORY OF NIOBE. 55 A rock, which is first descried upon the side of Mount Sipylus, was regarded by the ancients as the unfortunate Niobe, transformed into stone by the anger or the pity of the gods. Q. Calaber no- tices this metamorphosis, at once admitting and ex- plaining it. "Far off," lie exclaims, "is seen the figure of a woman, stifled by sobs and melted in tears; but, on approaching, nothing is visible but a mass of rock detached from the mountain."* " I have seen this Niobe," says Pausanias; " it is a craggy rock, which, when viewed near, bears no resemblance to a woman; but, when seen from a distance, it has the appearance of a female figure, with the head bent down, as if shedding tears."t Endemic diseases have, in figurative language, been termed the arrows of Apollo and Diana, be- cause their origin was referred to the influence of the sun and the moon upon the atmosphere, or, more properly, to those sudden changes from heat to cold, and dryness to dampness, attendant upon the succession of day and night in a mountainous and wooded country. There is nothing more prov- able than that one of these diseases, peculiar to the neighborhood of Mount Sipylus, should have car- ried off the children of a chief before the eyes of their distracted mother. Superstitious man, ever imagining that he sees in misfortune the existence of crime, believed that Niobe, too proud of the prosperity of her numerous family, was justly pujtt- have been preserved by some ancient fable. It most probably supported a boat of stone, dedicated to the gods by voyagers escaped from the perils of the Rhone navigation, and'who placed it on so elevated a spot that all passengers embarked on the river might see it. * a. Calaber, lib. i. t Pausanias, Attic, xxi. On the Calton Hill, at Edinburgh, is a tower erected to the memory of Lord Nelson. The rock on which it stands displays nothing uncommon when viewed near, or at its base ; but at a distance, in some positions, it represents a very accurate profile of the head of the hero.—Et). 56 IMPRESSIONS UPON ROCKS. 7v .ished for having dared to compare her happiness to that of the divinities, whose resentment she ex- perienced ; and in the remembrance of this un- fortunate mother, as well as observing that the rock resembles a female figure in tears, credulity beholds in it the portrait of Niobe; and all this may, with as much probability, have been a real r history, as an allegory intended to show, by a pict- ure of the instability of human prosperity, the folly of presumption. In either case, the priests of Apollo and Diana seconded, if they did not create, the established belief, and delighted to show upon Mount Sipylus this imperishable monument of the vengeance of the gods. On surfaces of rocks, full of inequalities, are al- most always to be found forms which recall to us some familiar object. The eye eager in discover- ing wonders would easily recognize these impres- sions as the production of a supernatural power. I will not cite as an instance the impression of the foot of Budda upon the Peak of Adam, at Ceylon, because an attentive observer* has suspected it to be a work of art; and this, probably, is also the case with the print of the foot of Gaudma, three times reproduced in the Burmese Empire, and which is more a hieroglyphict than a freak of Na- ture. But in Savoy, not far from Geneva, the credulous peasant shows a block of granite upon which the devil and his mule have left evident traces of their footsteps. Traces, not less deep, upon a rock near Agrigentum, mark the passage of the cattle conducted by Hercules.ij: This hero's foot has left, also, near Tyras, in Scythia, an im- * Dr. John Davy, who states this as his opinion in a letter to his brother, Sir Humphrey Davy. t Symes's Travels in Ava, vol. ii., p. 61 and 73; and Atlas, plate viii. \ Diod. Sic, lib. iv., cap. 6. IMPRESSIONS UPON ROCKS. 57 pression of two cubits in length ;* and upon the banks of the Lake Regillus, the form of a horse's foot, imprinted upon a very hard stone, attests the apparition of Dioscurus, who announced in Rome the victory gained by the dictator Posthumust over the Latins in that place. Upon the sides of a grotto, near Medina, the Mus- sulman sees the impression of Mohammed's head; and upon a rock in Palestine that of his camel's foot, as perfectly marked as it could be in the sand.J Mount Carmel is honored by preserving the print of Elijah's foot; and that of the foot of Jonas is re- peated four times near his tomb, in the neighbor- hood of Nazareth. Moses, when hid in a cavern, left the impression of his back and arms upon the rock. Near Nazareth the mark of the Virgin Motfb- "#-, ^er's knee is revered by Christian pilgrims ; also, the impressions of the feet and elbows of our Savior upon a rock rising from the middle of the Brook Cedron, and that of his foot in the identical place "3 from which we are assurfed he quitted earth to as- cend to his heavenly abode. The stone upon which the body of St. Catharine was laid is said to have softened, and retains the impression of her back.§ Not far from Manfredonia, our admiration is ex- cited by the face of St. Francis|| in relief, upon the rock of a grotto. Near the dolmen of MavauX, the villagers exhibit a stone which the mare of St. Jouin struck, and left the impression of her foot, one day when the pious abbe was tormented by the devil.ff Another dolmen, in the commune of * Herodot., lib. iv., cap. 82. . t Cicer., De Nat. Deor., lib. iii., cap. 5. + Thevenot, Voyage au Levant, p. 300 et 320. ft Idem, p. 319, 320, 368, 369, 370, 425, and 426. | Swinburne's Travels, vol. ii., p. 137. IT Mtmoires de la Sociite des Anliquaires de France, tome viii., p. 454. 58 IMPRESSIONS UPON ROCKS. Villemaur,* bears the print of St. Flavy's ten fin- gers. Numerous as these instances are (we might re- late many more), they fatigue neither faith nor piety; they are adopted and revered ; and, notwith- standing the falsehood of the stories, they are be- lieved in most countries.! At a little distance from Cairo, the impression of Mohammed's feet is exposed to the veneration of the faithful.! The Mountain of the Hand, on the eastern bank of the Nile, is so named from being supposed to bear the impression of the hand of Christ.§ At the north of the town of Kano, in Soudan, there is a rock which presents to the zeal- ous Mussulman a gigantic impression of the camel's foot upon which Mohammed ascended to heaven.|| In the Church of St. Radegonde, in Poitiers, is a stone upon which our Savior is said to have im- pressed the form of his foot ;fl and upon a rock near Vienna the inhabitants of the department of La Charente still recognize the print of St. Madelaine's right foot.** Near La Deviniere, a place to which the meni-. I $ry of Rabelais has given a very different kind or celebrity, is to be seen the impression of a foot re- sembling that of St. Radegonde :tt so natural is it * Mimoires de la SociiU d' Agriculture du Dipartement de VAube. 1 er trimestre. t How lamentable is it to reflect that such pretended prodi- gies, the inventions of bigotry and misdirected enthusiasm, should be regarded as in any degree essential for propagating and sup- porting a faith which requires nothing but its innate purity to prove its divine origin and to sustain its truth.—Ed. X J. J- Mared, Contes du Chegh et Mohdy, tome iii., p. 133. JKhalil Dakery, cited by E: duatremere, Mimoires sur gypte. || Travels in Africa,by Denham, Clapperton, and Oudeney, vol. iii., p. 7, 8, 1832'. If Mem. de la Sociiti des Antiquaires de France, tome vii., p. 42, 43. ** Ibid. tt Eloi Johanneau, Commentaire sur les CEuvres de Rabelais, PRETENDED PRODIGIES EXPLAINED. 59 for man to attribute some remarkable prodigy to places which his national vanity, or his religious faith, renders dear to him. In proof of the opinion that there is a desire to convert natural objects into prodigies, Bethlehem formerly offered a striking example. According to Gregory of Tours, when a person reposed upon the brink of a well, with the head covered up in linen, the star which guided the three Magi was seen to pass from one side of the well to the other, brushing the surface of the water. " But," adds the historian, " it was visible to those pilgrims only who were by their faith worthy of such a favor; that is to say, to men whose minds were so preoc- - cupied by the truth of the tradition as not to per- t. v., p. 12. Mankind do not always connect religious notions with the extraordinary ideas they adopt when endeavoring to ' explain some unusual appearance in nature. At the foot of a pre- cipitous rock, near Saverne, are four impressions, well marked, upon the red freestone (freestone of the Vosges). According to a tradition some three or four centuries old, a nobleman pursuing a stag, or pursued himself by victorious enemies, was thrown from the summit of the rock without being hurt, the horse only leaving the print of his feet upon the stone. We must here observe, that ' after the appearance of these prints of the horse's feet, other im- pressions less in size being discovered, the workmen, it is said, amused themselves by enlarging the latter and deepening the A former. If it had not been for this last circumstance, the phenol- ^"^ ^ a enon would naturally, in the present day, have attracted the at- '• tention of the learned. According to M. Humboldt and other naf- tA- p -fcralists, the impressions observed upon the freestone of Hildburg^" hausen must have been made by footsteps of antediluvian animals, either quadrupeds or quadrumani, before the stone had complete- ly hardened. Mr. Hitchcock has discovered upon the red free- stone of Massachusetts an immense number of the impressions of the feet of birds of a species no longer existing; but M. de Blainville "thinks it possible that these may be only the impres- sion of vegetables, similar to those which the red freestone fre- quently presents. To this sensible note the editor would add, that impressions of the feet of animals have frequently been found by geologists in secondary rocks. An American geologist even asserts that the prints of human feet are to be seen in the secondary limestone of the Mississippi, near St. Louis.—American Journal of Science, vol. xxxiii., p. 76. 60 PRETENDED PRODIGIES EXPLAINED. ceive in what they beheld only a sunbeam reflect- ed in the water."* Secondly. In reducing to truth those histories in appearance fabulous, it will be often found suffi- cient to reduce to natural proportions details evi- dently exaggerated, or to regard as a weak and passing phenomenon that which is presented as a continued and active miracle. The diamond and the ruby, carried suddenly into darkness after a long exposure to the light of the sun, emit for some time an apparent phosphorescent light; a circum- stance which, in the energetic style of the Oriental writers, has produced accounts of diamonds and carbuncles illumining all night, by the fires they emit, the depths of a dark wood and the vast sa- loons of a palace. Under the name of Roukli, or Roc, the same nar- rators have described a monstrous bird, whose strength exceeds all probability. In reducing this exaggeration to the measure of positive fact, Buffon was enabled to recognize in this Roc an eagle, whose strength and dimensions nearly resembled those of the American Condor, or the Lammer Geyer of the Alps.t As far as we can judge, the * Greg. Turon., Miracul. Lib., § 1. t Gypaetus barbatus, Bearded Griffon of the Alps of ornithol- ogists, which Buffon confounded with the condor, Surcoramphus ' Gryphus, Great Vulture of the Andes. No better instance of the effect of exaggeration, in reference to natural objects imperfectly known, could be advanced, than the early accounts of the condor. Setting aside writers of romance, we find Desmarchius, a natural- ist, stating that the extended wings of the bird measure eighteen feet; that it can carry off a stag, and will attack a man ; and Linnaeus, misled by the narrators of the wild and wonderful, says, " that in nearing the earth, the rushing of its wings renders men as if planet-struck, and almost deafens them !" The most authen- tic account of the largest condor ever seen gives the measure- ment of the extended wings under fourteen feet; and Humboldt saw none that exceeded nine feet. The utmost length of the male bird, from the tip of the beak to the extremity of the tail, is rather more than three feet; and his height, when perched, two TRADITION OF SCILLA EXPLAINED. 61 Roc differs in little from the Burkout,* a very strong black eagle, frequenting the mountains of Turkis- tan, of whom the inhabitants relate the most extra- ordinary stories, and have even declared it to be as large as a camel. Although we may disbelieve all that has been re- lated respecting the immense Kraken of the North, and may accuse Pliny and /Elian of having exag- gerated the dimensions of the two polypi of the sea, which were, nevertheless, seen by many who ob- served them, nearly at the same time when these authors wrote, yet it will be sufficient to admit, with Aristotle, that the arms of these polypi grew some- times to six feet seven inches in length; and, with the authors of the new Dictionary of Natural His- tory, we may believe that they were able to de- stroy a man in an open boat.t What becomes, then, of the tradition of Scylla, that monster, the scourge of the strongest fish that passed within its reach, and which, raising its six heads from beneath the water, drew in upon its long necks six of Ulysses's rowers ?£ If we substitute for the poet- ical exaggeration the possible reality, this monster would be no more than an overgrown polypus of feet nine inches. The head of the male bird carries a comb, and, like other vultures, the head and neck are bare of feathers. The plumage is black, except the wing coverts, which are white ; the claws are less powerful than those of the eagle. The condor inhabits the Andes at an elevation of 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the level of the sea: it usually hunts in pairs, and the couple will- attack large quadrupeds ; but Humboldt affirms that he nef- ^ er heard of men, nor even children, having been carried off by them. From these facts the reader may form some idea of the reliance to be placed on extraordinary stories.—Ed. * In Russian, Berkout; in Chinese, Kar-tchaa Hiao. Guin- kowski, Voyage a Pekin, tome i., p. 415. t See Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. ix., cap. 30. YElian, De Nat. Anim., lib. xiii., cap. 6. Aristot., Hist. Animal., lib. iv., cap. 1, et le Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelte, 8vo, 1819, tome xxx., p. 462. j: Homer, Odyss., lib. xii., vers. 90, 100, et 215, 269. 62 PLANTS EMITTING LIGHT. great size, fastened to the rock toward which these inexperienced navigators, fearing the whirlpool of Charybdis, directed their frail vessel. How many other fables in Homer are merely natural facts ag- grandized by the poetical conception of the narra- tor] In enumerating plants endowed with magical properties, Pliny names three, which, according to Pythagoras, had the power of freezing water* In another place, without reference to magic, Pliny bestows a similar property on the hemp. Ac- cording to him, the juice of this plant, thrown into water, thickens it suddenly to the consistence of jelly.t Many mucilaginous vegetables produce the same phenomenon in different degrees; and,, among others, the Althaea cannabina of Linnaeus, and the rose-colored vervain, Verbena aubletia. " We have observed," says Valmont de Bomasi, in speaking of this latter plant, " that three or four leaves bruised, and put into an ounce of water, will give to it in a few moments the consistence of ap- ple jelly."| Althaea cannabina produces the same effect to a certain degree; and it may also be ob- tained from every vegetable containing much mu- cilaginous matter: the fact before stated has been, therefore, merely exaggerated. The plant named by ^Elian Cynospastos and * Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. xxiv., cap. 12 et 13. t Idem, lib. xx., cap. 23. X Dictionnaire d'Hist, art. Obletia. The common vervain, Verbena officinalis, indigenous in England and many parts of Eu- rope, had formerly the reputation of possessing wonderful magic- al powers. It was termed Hiera Botane, "Holy Herb," by I)i- Cn oscorides, and it entered into the composition of various charms and love-filters. Among the common people, it has still the reputation of securing affection from those who take it to those who administer it. It was held in great esteem by the Romans and the Druids, and the latter gathered it with religious ceremo- nies. These pretensions of the vervain were first set aside bv the good sense of our countryman, John Ray, the botanist.__Ed? PARTICULAR FACTS GENERALIZED. 63 AglaophotLS, and Barras by the historian Josephus, bears a flame-colored flower, which toward evening flashes like a kind of lightning* It has been stat- ed that a similar effulgence might be perceived upon the flower of the nasturtium at the moment of its fertilization; and, above all, in the evening after a very hot day. Experience has not confirm- ed this fact; nevertheless, we must not utterly re- ject the possibility of other vegetables, such as the Agaric of the Olive-tree, and the Euphorbia phos- phorea, emitting such a light under particular cir- cumstances. The error of Josephus and ./Elian consists in supposing a casual phenomenon to be constant.t " In the valleys bordering on the Dead Sea," says the traveler Hasselquist, " the fruit of the So- lanum melongena (Linn.)J is attacked by an in- sect (a tenthredo), which converts the whole of the interior into dust, leaving the skin only entire, without destroying its form or color." It is in the same district that Josephus places the Apple of Sodom, which, he relates, deceives the eye by its color, and crumbles in the hand into ashes evolving smoke, a phenomenon intended to commemorate, by a permanent miracle, a punishment as just as it was terrible. This particular incident, observed by the modern naturalist, has been generalized by * Fl. Joseph., De Bello Judaico, lib. viii., cap. 25. JEHan, De Nat. Animal., lib. iv., cap. 27. This plant is the Atropa bella- donna. t Comptes rendus des Siances de VAcadimie des Sciences, 2 vols., 1837. X Hasselquist, Voyage dans le Levant, tome ii., p. 90. The traveler Broucchi not having found the Solanum melongena on the borders of the Dead Sea, or near Jerusalem, thinks that Has- selquist had been deceived, and that the Apple of Sodom is mere- ly a gall-nut, formed by the incision of an insect upon the Pista- cia tcrcbirdhus.—Bulletin de la Societi de Giographie, tome vi., p. 3. 04 LAKE OF A VERM'S. the ancient historian, who has also added to it the divine malediction. An American naturalist* affirms that, at the ap- proach of any danger, the young of the rattlesnake take refuge in the mouth of their mother. A sim- ilar instance may have induced the ancients to sup- pose that some animals produce their young by the mouth, thus drawing a most absurd and hasty con- clusion from a real fact. In some cases the duration of a phenomenon has been exaggerated, and in others that which has long ceased to exist has been described as still ex- isting. " The Lake Avernus," say the ancient writ- ers, " received its name from the fact that birds could not fly over it without falling down dead, suf- focated by the vapors exhaled from it." We know that, in the present day, birds fly with impunity near to its surface. Is the tradition thus cited then utterly false ] Some reasons induce me to doubt: " For," says a traveler.t " the marshes of Carolina are in places so insalubrious, and so completely surrounded by great woods, that, during the heat of the day, birds as well as aquatic animals die in attempting to cross them." Full of sulphureous springs,^ and, like the marshes of Carolina, sur- rounded by thick forests, the Lake Avernus§ for- merly exhaled most pestilential vapors; but, Au- gustus having had these woods thinned, this insalu- brity was succeeded by an agreeable, wholesome atmosphere. The prodigy has ceased to exist, but the tradition has been obstinately preserved; and the imagination, struck with a religious terror, look- * De Witt Clinton, Preface to the Transactions of the Philo- sophical Society of New York, 1825. Bibliotheque Universale Sciences, tome ii., p. 263. t M. Bosc, Bibliotheque Universale Sciences, tome v. 'Mai 1817), p. 24. f Servius, in AZneid, lib. iii., vers. 441. ' $ Aristot., De Mirab. Auscult. ILL-CONCEIVED EXPRESSIONS. 65 ed for a long time upon this lake as one of the en- trances to the Valley of Death.* Thirdly. Improper or ill-conceived expressions, not less than exaggeration, tinge a real fact with a marvelous, false, or ridiculous coloring. A popular error, the origin of which has been traced to the instructions of Pythagoras, had for a long time established some mysterious connection between particular plants and the diseases which men suffer at the period of their blossoming; and, although the disease might be perfectly cured, yet, when these plants flowered again, the individuals always re-experiencedt some faint return of the disease. This is a fact incorrectly stated, in order to deceive the multitude, who can scarcely distin- guish the different periods of the year, except by the phenomena of vegetation : the fact has no con- nection with the plants, but strictly belongs to the revolutions of the seasons. The spring, for in- stance, frequently brings with it periodical returns of gout, rheumatism, and even diseases of the brain.J * A real valley of death exists in Java. It is termed the Val- ley of Poison, and is filled to a considerable height with carbonic acid gas, which is exhaled from crevices in the ground. If a man, or any animal, enter it, he can not return; and he is not sen- sible of his danger until he feels himself sinking under the poison- ous influence of the atmosphere which surrounds him, the carbon- ic acid of which it chiefly consists rising to the height of eight- een feet from the bottom of the valley. Birds which fly into this atmosphere drop down dead; and a living fowl, thrown into it, dies before it reaches the bottom, which is strewed with the car- casses of various animals that have perished in the deleterious gas.—Ed. t Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. xxiv., cap. 17. t Although the above explanation is true in part, yet it is also true that various odors, such, for instance, as that of ipecacuanha and of the Pelargonium, or African geranium, cause, in some in- dividuals, an attack of spasmodic catarrh ; in others the odor of sweet vernal grass, Anthoxanthum odoratv.m, brings on a fit of asthma, attended with fever; hence the term hay-asthma; and such persons always suffer at hay-making time, for, as the grass dries, the odor is most powerfully exhaled.—Ed. I. E 66 ILL-CONCEIVED EXPRESSIONS. The appearance of falsehood and prodigy, joined to impropriety of expression, is more striking when ancient authors repeat what has been related to them respecting foreign countries in any other lan- guage than their own; or when modern writers translate without fully understanding the originals, and then accuse them of error. " In the vicinity of the Red Sea," says Plutarch, " are seen creeping from the bodies of some dis- eased people little snakes, which, on any attempt to seize them, re-enter the body, and cause insup- portable suffering to the wretched beings."* This statement has been regarded as an absurd story, and yet it is an exact description of a disease call- ed " the Guinea worm," known not only in those regions, but on the coasts of Guinea and Hindos- tan.t Herodotus relates, that in India " ants larger than foxes, when digging their holes in the sand, discover the gold which is mixed with it."J An- other edition of this marvelous narration, evidently compiled from the accounts of the ancients, de- scribes animals existing in an island near the Mal- dives, which are larger than tigers, but in form re- sembling ants.§ In the sandy mountains contain- * Plutarch, Symposiac., lib. viii. t The " Guinea worm" disease prevails in the marshy districts of Africa, and among negroes in the West Indies, where it is en- demic in the months of November, December, and January, and in the same months at Bombay. The worm is the Filaria dra- cunculus; it is white, of great length, varying from eight inches to three feet, and the thickness of a violin cord throughout its en- tire length, except at the tail, which is thin and curved. It is supposed to have an external origin, and its eggs to be taken into the habit with water used as drink; but this opinion requires confirmation. It appears under the skin, and when it is about to issue, a small pustule rises, on the bursting of which the head of the worm is obtruded. It is removed by winding it round a piece of stick, desisting when it can not be freely drawn forth, and con- tinuing, the winding until the whole is obtained.—Ed. X Herod., lib. iii., cap. 102. § Les Mille et un Jours, Jour cv., cvi. ./Elian. FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. 67 ing gold dust, near Grangue, some English travel- ers have seen animals whose forms and habits in some measure explain these accounts of Eastern and Greek historians.* Pliny and Virgil describe the Seres as gathering silk from the tree which bears it, and which the poet likens to a cotton plant.t This too literal translation of a correct expression makes it appear as if the silk were the produce of the tree, upon which insects deposit it, and from which men gath- er it. Ctesias speaks of " a fountain in India which was filled every year with liquid gold. Every year the gold was dragged up in a hundred earthen am- phora, at the bottom of which, when broken, the gold was found hardened, of the value of a talent."| Larcher turns this account into ridicule, and par- ticularly insists on the disproportion of the produce to the capacity of the fountain, which could not contain less than a cubic fathom of this liquid.§ Ctesias's account is correct, but not his expres- sions ; instead of saying liquid gold, he should have said gold suspended in water. In other places he is careful to explain that it was the water, and not gold, which they drew up. In the marshes of Libya (to which Achilles Tatius compares the above-men- tioned spot) gold was obtaiiied by plunging poles plastered with pitch into the mud|| of a fountain which was the basin of a gold washing; such as exists wherever rivers or soils containing aurifer- ous earth are to be found, and of which some very important ones exist in Brazil. * Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, tome i., p. 311, 312. .. t Pliny, Hist. Nat, lib. vi., cap. 17. Virgil, Georg., lib. n., v. 120, 121; but Servius, in his Commentaries, assigns silk to its true origin. X Ctesias, in Ind. apud Photium. 6 Larcher, Traduction d'H6rodote, 2e edition, tome vi., p. 243. \\ Achill. Tat., De Clitoph. et Leucipp. Amor., lib. ii. 68 FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. For extracting the gold the method used in the present day was that employed ; namely, evapora- ting the water until the gold was precipitated to the bottom, and upon the sides of the vessels con- taining it, which were then broken, and the frag- ments, no doubt, washed or scraped. (. 1tesias adds that iron was found at the bottom of tie fountain, and this statement confirms the truth of his account. To disengage the gold from the oxyd of iron is one of the greatest labors of the gold washers of Brazil.* The gold of Bambouk, which is also col- lected by washing, is so mingled with iron and emery powder as to require great care in sepa- rating the base from the precious metal.t From time immemorial the Hindoos have had a custom of placing a perfumed pastille in the mouth before addressing any person of superior rank. This substance, were it described in any other than the Hindostanee, would be looked upon as a talis- man, the possession of which was requisite to ob- tain a favorable reception to its possessor from the powerful ones of the earth. The Halliatoris,^ we are told, was used in Per- sia to enliven a feast, or to assist in procuring places nearest the king; these are figurative ex- pressions, the meaning of which it is easy to deci- pher. They are merely intended to show that cer- tain favor and pre-eminence was shown to him who, among a people addicted to wine and the pleasures of the table, was at the same time the gayest and the most capable of bearing much wine. The Per- sians, and even the Greeks, exulted in being able to drink much without suffering intoxication, and * Mawe, Travels in the Interior of Brazil, vol. i., p. 135, 330. t Mollien. Voyage en Afrique, tome i. p. 334 et 335. X Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. xxiv. cap. 17, different editions of Pliny's work. FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. 69 sought out all kinds of specifics to counteract the effects of wn'ne. For this reason, they ate the seeds of the cabbage* and boiled cabbage. Bitter al- monds were used for the same purpose, and, it ap- pears, with some success.t All this favors the con- jecture that the halliatoris was endowed with the same property, to such an extent that drunkenness had neither power to confuse the intellect, nor to pass beyond the bounds of gayety. And what, it may be asked, was the plant Latace, which the kings of Persia gave to their envoys, and in virtue of which their expenses were defrayed wherever they went 1\ It was a peculiar sign, a rod of a particular form, or a flower embroidered upon their garments, or on their banners, announc- ing the titles and prerogatives which were borne by them. Instead of the water, which the fugitive Sisera, exhausted with fatigue and thirst, had supplicated, Jael, with the intention of making him sleep,§ gave him milk. What reason have we, who call an emulsion of almonds milk, for doubting that, in the original Hebrew, this word signified a somnifer- * Atheneeus, Deipnos., lib. i., cap. 30. t The bitter almond contains the constituents of Prussic acid and a peculiar volatile oil, resembling the peach-blossom in its odor; both are developed when the almond is bruised and brought into contact with water. When the bitter almond, therefore, is masticated and receives moisture in the mouth and stomach, the Prussic acid then formed operates as a powerful sedative upon the nervous system, and renders the body less susceptible of the influence of excitants, consequently of wine.. It forms, as it were, the balance in the opposite scale, and preserves the equilibrium between the sinking which would result from its use were no wine taken and the intoxication which would follow an excess of wine were the bitter almonds not eaten. Plutarch informs us that the sons of the physician of the Emperor Tiberius knew this fact, and, although most intrepid topers, yet they kept themselves sober by eating bitter almonds.—Ed. X Plutarch, Symposiac, lib. i., quest. 6. Athena;., Deipnos., lib. ii cap 12. § Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. xxvi., cap. 4. 70 FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. ous drink, deriving its name from its color and taste.* When Samaria was besieged, the town was a prey to all the horrors of famine; hunger was so extreme that five pieces of silver was the price given for a small measure (fourth part of a cab) of dove's dung.t This seems, at first sight, ridiculous. But Bochart maintains, very plausibly, that this name was then, and is still, given by the Arabs to a species of vetch (pois chiches). The Chinese historians affirm that wine in which the feathers of the Tchin are macerated becomes a deadly poison; and history contains numerous instances of poisonings achieved in this manner.| We are not acquainted with any bird endowed with so fatal a property ; but the fact may be explained by supposing that the poison was, in order to pre- serve it, inserted into the quill of a feather; and thus, we are told, Demosthenes caused his own death by sucking a pen. * Book of Judges, cap. iv., vers. 17-24. It is surprising that our author should have attempted an explanation of an event which re- quires none. The following is the passage in the Book of Judges : " Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heberthe Kenite ; for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me, fear not. And when he had turned in unto her, into the tent, she covered him with a mantle. And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty. And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him. Then Jael, He- ber's wife, took a nail, a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened him to the ground (for he was fast asleep and weary). So he died." Every incident is natural; his sleep arose from fatigue, as stated, and not from a narcotic.—Ed. t 2 Kings, vi., 25. X J. Klaproth, Lettre a M. Humboldt sur VInvention de la Bous- sole, p. 89. The tchin, according to the Chinese writers, resem- bled a vulture, and fed upon poisonous serpents. In reference to its name, a word has been formed which signifies to poison. (I owe this note to M. Stanislas Jullien, a member of the Institute pf France.) FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. 71 Midas, king ofThrygia,* Tanyoxartes, brother of Cambyses,t and Psammenites, king of Egypt,| died, it is said, in consequence of drinking bull's blood, and the death of Themistocles has been at- tributed to the same cause. Near the ancient town of Argos, in Achaia, was a temple of Terra: the moral purity of its priestesses was tried by making them drink the blood of the bull.§ Experience has proved that the blood of bulls does not contain any deleterious property. But, in the East and in some of the Grecian temples, they possessed the secret of composing a beverage which could procure a speedy and easy death, and which, from its dark red color, had received the name of bull's blood, a name, unfortunately, expressed in the literal sense by the Greek historians. Such is my conjecture, and, I trust, a plausible one. We shall also, by and by, see how the name, blood of Nes- sus, which was given to a pretended love philter, was taken in a literal sense by some mythologists, who might have been set right by the very accounts of it which they copied.|| The blood of the hydra of Lerna, in which Hercules's arrows being dipped rendered the wounds they inflicted mortal, seems to us to signify nothing more than that it was one of those poisons which archers in every age have been accustomed to make use of in order to ren- der the wounds of their arrows more deadly. And, again, we have a modern instance of the same equivocation. Near Basle is cultivated a wine which has received the name of blood of the Swiss, not only from its deep color, but from the circum- * Strabo, lib. i. t Ctesias, in Persic, apud Photium. X Herodotus, lib. iii., cap. 13. § Pausanias, Achate, cap. xxv. Whatever was the nature of the poison termed Bull's blood, Dioscorides (lib. v., 130) informs us that the antidote was a mixture of nitre and benzoin.—En. || See chap, xxv 72 FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. stance of its being grown on a field of battle, the scene of Helvetian valor. Who knows but that, in a future day, some literal translator may convert those patriots, who every year indulge in ample libations of the blood of the Swiss at their civic feasts, into anthropophagi.* To confirm this remark, we have only to seek in history for proofs of the means by which a simple fact has been transformed into a prodigy, owing to the expressions employed to describe it being less correct than forcible. Assailed by the Crusaders, and scared by the looks which these warriors, completely clothed in metal, darted upon them through their visors, the trembling Greeks described them as " men of brass, whose eyes flashed fire."t The Russians, in Kamtschatka, are still called briclitains, men of fire, an appellation which the in- habitants gave them, from their imagining, when they saw them use fire-arms for the first time, that the fire issued from their mouths.^ Near the burning mountains, north of the Mis- souri and the River of St. Peter, dwell a people who appear to have emigrated from Mexico and the ad- jacent countries at the time of the Spanish inva- sion. According to their traditions, they had hid- den themselves in the inland country, at a time when the sea-coast was continually infested by enormous monsters, vomiting lightning and thunder and from whose bodies came men who, with un- known instruments, and by magical power, killed the defenseless Indians at immense distances.§ They observed that these monsters could not reach * W. Coxe, Letters upon Switzerland, letter xliii. t Nicetas, Annul. Man. Comn., lib. i., cap. 4. % Kracheninnikof, Hist.of Kamtschatka.p&rt i., chap 1 $ Carver, Travels in North America, fyc, p. 8o' 81 FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. 73 the land, and, in order to escape from their blows, they took refuge in distant mountains. We see here that the vanquished at first doubted whether these advantages were not more to be attributed to better arms than to the power of magic. It is probable that, deceived by appearances, they en- dowed with life the ships which seemed to move of themselves, and transformed them into monsters; and this prodigy has either from that day been firm- ly rooted in their minds, or, on the contrary, it was merely a bold metaphor invented to depict and to perpetuate so novel an event. But this instance leads us to the consideration of one of the most fertile causes of the marvelous; namely, the use of a figurative style. Fourthly. That style which, contrary to the in- tention of the narrator, clothes facts in a supernat- ural coloring, is not confined to the art, or, rather, the habit, common to lively imaginations, of em- ploying poetical expressions and bold images in the recital of those deep feelings, or those facts which they desire to fix upon the memory. Man is every where inclined to borrow from the figura- tive style the name which he gives to any new ob- ject, with the aspect of which he has been struck. For instance, a parasol was imported to the center of Africa, and the inhabitants called it the " cloud ;"* a picturesque designation which, some day or oth- er, may become the foundation of a marvelous Btory. Our passions, in short, which speak more frequently than our reason, have introduced ex- pressions eminently figurative into every language, which no longer appear to be such, so completely has their literal sense been lost in the habit of dif- ferently applying them. To be boiling with anger; * Travels in Africa, by Denham, Clapperton, and Oudeney, vol. iii. 74 FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. to bite the ground ; swift as the wind ; to cast one's eyes, are expressions which, if a foreigner, knowing the words, but not the idiom of the language, were to translate literally, would appear nonsense; and what fables might result! Such, indeed, has been already done: for instance, we are seriously told that Democritus, who devoted his life to observing nature, had put out his eyes, that he might medi- tate without distraction of mind* It has been told, also, that stags are enemies to snakes, and can make them fly ;t an assertion depending on the fact that the smell of burned hartshorn is disa- greeable to serpents, and causes them to turn away. The bites of the boa are not venomous, but the serpent squeezes its victim to death by twining round it; and from this fact was derived the fable of the dragon, whose tail was said to be armed with an envenomed barb. When pressed by hunger, such is the swiftness of the boa, that its prey rarely escapes it: poets have compared its course to a flight, and vulgar superstition immediately bestow- ed real wings upon the dragon. The names of basilisk and asp were employed to designate rep- tiles so agile that it is difficult to escape their attack at the moment they are perceived; the asp and basilisk were, therefore, supposed to cause death by their breath, or only by their look. Of all these figurative expressions, the foundation of so many physical errors, none was bolder than the expres- sion applied by the Mexicans to describe the rapid- ity of the rattlesnake : they called it the wind.\ A church threatened to give way, St. Germain * According to Tertullian (Apologet., cap. xlvi.), he blinded him- self that he might be placed beyond the influence of love, as he could not see any woman without loving her. This tradition is also founded on the literal interpretation of a figurative expression. 1 iElian, De Nat. Animal., lib. ii., cap. 9. X Lacepede, Hist. Nat. des Serpents, art. Boiquira. FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. 75 at Auxerre,* and St. Francis of Assisi^t at Rome, sustained the edifice, which, from that moment, re- mained immovable on its foundations. Credulity believes this to have been a miracle; but the real meaning of the allegory is, that the bishop and the founder of the order were, by the influence of their doctrine and works, the support of a tottering Church. In prayer and in religious contemplation the fer- vent man is, as it were, ravished into ecstasy; he seems no longer to belong to earth, but is raised to heaven. The enthusiastic disciples of Iamblichus affirmed, in spite of their master's assertions to the contrary, that when he prayed he was raised to the height of ten cubits from the ground ;| and dupes to the same metaphor, although Christians, have had the simplicity to attribute a similar miracle to St. Clare,§ and St. Francis of Assisi. * Robineau Desvoidy's Description des Cryptes de VAbbaye St. Germain a Auxerre (an unpublished work), liber conformitatum, S. Francisi, &c. St. Germain was born at Auxerre, of noble parents, and died at Ravenna. He was originally a lawyer. He married, and was created a duke by the Emperor Honorius ; but through the means of St. Amater he took the tonsure, lived with his wife merely as a sister, and at the death of Amater was cho- sen Bishop of Auxerre. He is reported to have given sight to the blind, raised the dead, and performed numerous miracles! —Ed. t St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the order of Franciscans, was born in 1132. He was baptized by the name of John, but was afterward called Francis, from the facility with which he ac- quired the French language. His supernatural visions and mira- cles would fill a volume. He died in 1226, and two years after- ward he was canonized at Assisi by Gregory IX.*—Ed. X Eunap. in Iamblich. j St. Clare, the daughter of Paverino Sciffo, a noble knight, was born at Assisi, in Italy, in 1193. At a very early age she dis- played a strong bias for devout observances ; and at the age of eighteen received the penitential habit from St. Francis, who placed her in the nunnery of St. Paul, in Assisi, whence her rela- tions endeavored in vain to remove her. She afterward, by the * Butler's Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Saints, vol. i., p. 137. Ibid., vol. ii., p. 569. 76 FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. This transformation of an allegory into a phys- ical fact may be traced to a remote period, if we can rely on a learned individual of the fifteenth century, but one who, like most of his cotempora- ries, too seldom indicates the source from which he derived his information. Ccelius Rhodiginus re- lates that, according to the Chaldeans, the luminous rays emanating from the soul do sometimes divinely penetrate the body, which is then of itself raised above the earth. This, he says, occurred to Zoro- aster; and he attempts to explain, in the same man- ner, the translation of Elijah into heaven, and the trance of St. Paul.* In the kingdom of Fez is a little hill which re- quires to be crossed either by dancing or with a great deal of action, in order to avoid an endemic fever prevalent there.t The relation of this popu- lar custom, which has existed and been obeyed for more than a hundred years, has been treated with scorn by some enlightened men. What, indeed, at first sight, could have a more ridiculous effect ] Nevertheless, what is the advice given to all trav- elers in the Campagna of Rome, and in the vicinity of the Eternal City 1 They are told to struggle against the drowsiness that will insensibly steal over them, by forced and violent movements; as yield- aid of St. Francis, founded the order which bears her name. Hef humility, austerity, prayers, and her contempt for the persecutions which she suffered, were remarkable even in the period in which she lived. She died in 1253. The order was brought into England in 1293, by Blanche, queen of Navarre, and had a house without Aldgate : the nuns were called Minoresses, as the Franciscans were called Minors, a name imposed by their founder on account of their humility. From them the Minories received its name. —Ed. * Arbitrabantur Chaldaorum scientissimi ab rationali anima id . . . efficiquandoqueut radiorumsplendore, ab ipsamanantium, illuslratum diviniore modo corpus etiam surrigat in sublime &c. &c.—Ccelius Rhodig., Lection. Antiq., lib. ii., cap. 6. t Boulet, Description de VEmpire des Cherifs, p. 112. FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS. 77 ing to it only for a moment would expose them to an attack of fever, always dangerous, often fatal. In Hai-nan, and in almost the whole province of Canton, the inhabitants rear a species of partridge, which they call tchu-ki. They say that the instant one of these birds is introduced into a house the white ants quit it; doubtless, because this bird de- stroys a quantity of them for food. The Chinese, however, poetically assert that the cry of the tchu- ki changes the white ants into dust:* it would be converting a ridiculous saying into a prodigy, if we literally believed this emphatic expression. We are told, also, that every spring time, in those deserts which separate China from Tartary, yellow rats are transformed into yellow quails; and that in Ireland and in Hindostan the leaves and fruit of a tree, planted near the water, become first shell- fish, and then aquatic birds.t In both narrations, * Jules Klaproth, Description de I'Tie de Hai-nan (Nouvelles Annates des Voyages), deuxieme serie, tome vi., p. 156. t The aquatic bird noticed in the above passage is the Barna- cle goose, and it is scarcely possible to adduce a more striking in- stance of the credulity of even those regarded, in their period, as the learned and philosophic, than their belief that the barnacle, Pentalasmis antifera (Leach), is the origin of that bird. The bar- nacle is a marine, testaceous animal, covered with a nearly trian- gular shell, composed of five distinct pieces. The animal itself is compressed, enveloped in a thin mantle, and furnished with curled tentacula. It attaches itself by a long, fleshy peduncle to rocks, to the bottoms of ships, and even to the branches of trees that grow upon the margin of the sea and dip into the waters. Many of the old writers described these animals, when they ap- peared on trees, as the fruit, in which, say they, is to be found the lineaments of a fowl, and from which, when ripe and dropped into the sea, the fowl comes forth and takes wing. Even so late as 1636, Gerard, the celebrated author of the Herbal, a man of learn- ing, observation, and in many points of acknowledged accuracy, impresses upon his readers the truth of this absurd fable. He thus describes the coming forth of the bird: "Next came the legs of the bird hanging out; and as it (the bird) groweth greater it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill; in short space after it commeth to full maturitie, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowle bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a 78 r-OETIC FICTIONS AND METAPHORS. if we substitute the idea of the metamorphose for that of a successive appearance, the absurdity van- ishes and the truth appears* The amethyst is a precious stone, which is col- ored and sparkles like wine. Instead of this de- scription, so coldly exact, figurative language has substituted an expressive image in its name, A^e- dvoroe, amethystos, not intoxicating, or wine that does not inebriate ; and it is from this name having been literally translated in Greece, that the ame- thyst was supposed to possess the miraculous pow- er of preserving from drunkenness the man who was adorned with it. Is this, we may ask, the only poetical flight, the only metaphor which has been transformed into a history 1 Bacchus,t with the thyrsus which he car- goose." He adds : " If any doubt, may it please them to repaire to me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonie of good witnesses.'1 The absurdity of this delusion requires no comment.—Ed. * Eloge de Moukdem, p. 32 and 164. t Bacchus was the Roman name for the Grecian god Diony sus, whom the Greeks, both in Asia and Europe, universally worshiped. In the whole history of polytheism, we find no rites more extravagant, sensual, and savage than those of the Dionysia or Bacchic festivals. The men present at them took the disguise of satyrs, and the women acted the parts of bacchae, nymphs, and other inferior deities, and committed the greatest excesses. At an early period these festivals were often solemnized with hu- man sacrifices ; and pieces of the raw flesh, cut from the bodies of the victims, were distributed among the bacchae. (From the Attic Dionysia, nevertheless, both tragedy and comedy de- rived their origin.) In Italy, the bacchanalia were scenes of the coarsest excesses and the most unnatural vices. They were latterly carried on at night, and often stained with poisonings, as- sassinations, and every crime. Although conducted in Rome, and although the number of the initiated was said to be seven thousand, yet the existence of these meetings appears to have been unknown to the Senate until A.D. 186, when they were put down, after a report on them had been made to that august as- sembly, by the consuls Spurius Postumus Albinus and duintus Marius Philippus. The delinquents were arrested and tried; many of the men were imprisoned, others were put to death ; and the women were delivered to their parents and husbands to be privately punished.—Livy, lib. xxxix., 14.—Ed. POETIC FICTIONS AND METAPHORS. 79 ried in his hand, having pointed out a spring of water to the troop who followed his steps,* " the god," it was reported, " caused a spring to rise by striking the ground with his thyrsus;" and, with a slight alteration of the fable, we read also that At- alanta struck her lance against a rock, from which instantly gushed a spring of fresh water.t It is in this manner that poetry explains and describes, in some brilliant allegory, the prodigy that credulity has laid hold of, but v/hich, in reality, is only the consequence of its figurative style. Similar errors may be laid to the charge of his- tory, and even of natural history. If Rhesus, at the head of a considerable army, had been able to unite his forces with the defenders of Troy, the Greeks, exhausted by a ten years' struggle, would have de- spaired of victory. A declaration of what was so easily foreseen was poetically expressed, and be- came one of the fatalities of this famous siege. The Fates, it was said, would not permit Troy to be taken, if the horses of Rhesus were once per- mitted to taste the grass which grew on the borders of the Xanthus, or to quench their thirst in its waters. On the celebration of the day of some saint re- vered in Ireland,^ the fish, if we could believe a writer of the twelfth century, raise themselves from the bosom of the sea, pass in procession before his * Pausanias, lib. iv., cap. 36. t Pausanias, Laconic., cap. 24. X Saint Patrick, the titular saint of Ireland. He was a Scotch Roman, and was born in 372, in the Roman village Benaven Ta- berniae, now the town of Killpatrick, at the mouth of the Clyde, between Glasgow and Dumbarton. His family name was Cali- phurnia. At an early age he was carried captive into Ireland, where he was forced to keep cattle, and suffered many hardships, during which time he is said to have been admonished in a dream to undertake his mission. Many miracles, equally absurd as the prodigy noticed in the text, are related as having been performed by St. Patrick.—Ed. 80 POETIC FICTIONS AND METAPHORS. altar, and disappear after having rendered him hom- age.* The saint's day most probably fell in that period of the spring when, on the coast where his church was built, might be seen periodical shoals of herrings, mackerel, or tunnies. Nonnosus, who was sent by the Emperor Justin- ian on a mission to the Saracens of Phoenicia and Mount Taurus, heard that while the religious as- semblies of these people lasted, they lived in peace among themselves and with strangers, " that even beasts of prey respected their universal peace, and observed it toward mankind and their fellows."t Photius regards the traveler on this occasion as a narrator of fables. Nonnosus, however, only re- peated what he had heard, but mistook for a fact a poetic expression, or mode of speech, frequently used in the East, and also to be found in one of the most eloquent of the Hebrew writers ;| a mode of speech employed by the Greeks and Romans, also, in their pictures of the Golden Age, and which Virgil less happily made use of in his admirable de- scription of an epizootic (a disease among cattle), which desolated the north of Africa and the south of Europe.§ It is a well-known fact that a sudden and striking alarm often arrests speech ; such, for instance, as a person experiences who finds himself unexpected- ly before a wild beast. But it has been said that a man loses his power of utterance when he is seen by a wolf, although the animal is unobserved by him. This figurative expression has been even taken literally, and it has furnished a proverb, which is not only found in Theocritus and Virgil,|| but in * Gervais de Tilbery, Otia Imper., cap. 8. Hist. Litt. de la France, tome xvii... p. 87. t Photius, Biblioth., cod. iii. X Isaiah, cap. xi., verses 6, 7, 8. Virgil, Georg., lib. iii. See, also, Eclog., viii., v. 27 Theocrit., Idyll, xiv., v. 22. Virgil, Eclog., ix., v. 51. EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS 81 Solinus and Pliny, who have also adopted it. The former very seriously speaks of " a particular spe- cies of wolf in Italy which affects any man it sees with dumbness; its victim, in endeavoring to cry, finds that his voice is lost."* Varro, Columella, Pliny, and Solinust relate that the mares of Lusitania conceive by the breath of the wind; but Pompeius TrogusJ understood this expression as merely metaphorical of the rap- id multiplication of these animals, and their swift- ness in the course. Fifthly. What emblems are to the sight, a figura- tive style is to the mind. Their influence has pro- duced many extraordinary narrations, and in every age of antiquity they were employed to illustrate any thing of importance, in dogmas, in recollec- tions, in morals, and in history. Their meaning, perfectly understood in the cornmencement, often became gradually less so, and after some length of time was completely lost to the ignorant and unre- flecting. The emblem, nevertheless, remained, and when seen by the people, at once commanded their belief and veneration; henceforth the representa- tion, however absurd and monstrous, naturally took * Solinus, cap. viii. Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. viii., cap. 22. Solinus was a Roman author, who borrowed freely from Pliny. The ef- fect which he describes has been attributed to a supernatural cause by modern superstition. A woman, in the night, saw four thieves enter her apartment through the window ; she attempted to cry, but could not. They took her keys, opened her coffers, possessed themselves of her money, and escaped by the same window. The woman then recovered her voice, and called for assistance. The impossibility of her calling out when the thieves were in her chamber was said to be the effect of sorcery. Fro- mann, Tractatus de Fascinatione, p. 558, 559. t Varro, De Re Rustica, lib. ii. Columell., lib. vi., cap. 27. Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. viii., cap. 42. Solinus, cap. 26. X Justin, lib. xliv., cap. 3. Pompeius Trogus was a Roman his- torian in the time of Augustus. His great work, " Historwe Phil- ippias et Totius Mundi Origines," is known only in the abridgment by Justinus; but Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., 3, mentions a work by Trogus on animals.—Ed. 82 EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS. its place in the common belief as the real object it was originally intended to commemorate. From a symbol representing religion and laws, emanating from the supreme Intelligence, sprung the fable that a falcon had borne to the priests of Thebes a book containing religious rites and laws * Certain isl- ands of the Nile were, according to Diodorus,1 de- fended by serpents with dogs' heads, and other mon- sters. These monsters and serpents were proba- bly emblems intended to point out that these isl- ands were consecrated to the gods, and were con- sequently inaccessible to profane mortals. How many fables and prodigies in the records of Egypt, how many in the records of India and of Greece, have an analogous origin ! It has been related, and the story is still repeat- ed without reflecting that the thing is absurd, that such was the strength of Milo of Croton, that, when he stood on a narrow quoit, no one could displace or tear from him a pomegranate, which he held in his hand, but which, nevertheless, he did not press violently enough to crush ; nor could they separate from one another the fingers of his right hand, which he held extended. Milo, says a man learned in re- ligious rites and emblems, was, in his own country, high-priest of Juno : his statue placed in Olympia represented him, according to the sacred rite, stand- ing upon a little round buckler, and holding a pome- granate, the fruit of the tree dedicated to the god- dess. The fingers of his right hand were extended and joined together, in the manner the ancient sculptors always represented them.|: Thus was an imperfection of art made the foundation of a miraculous story. It is not necessary to dive deep into antiquity for * Diod. Sic, lib. i.. par. ii., § 32. t Idem, lib. i., par. i., § 19. f Apollonius de Tyanus, Vit. Apollon., lib. iv., cap. 9. EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS. 83 similar facts. In the Middle Ages, figured almanacs were used as the only means of instructing those who could not read. To explain to them that a martyred saint had perished by decapitation, they painted him as standing and holding between his hands the head which had been separated from his body.* This emblem was doubtless the more ea- sily adopted, as it had for some length of time fixed the attention, and consequently the reverence, of the multitude in the hieroglyphic calendar of a more ancient religion.t From the calendars the emblems naturally pass- ed to the statues and various representations of the martyrs. I have seen St. Clara in a church in Nor- mandy; St. Mitrius at Aries ;$ and in Switzerland all the soldiers of the Thebean legion represented with their heads in their hands. St. Valery, also, is painted with his head in his hands, upon the doors and other parts of the Ca- thedral at Limoges.§ St. Felix, St. Regula, and St. Exuperantius|| are presented in the same attitude upon the great seal of the Canton of Zurich. This, no doubt, was the origin of the pious fable they re- late of these martyrs, of St. I)enis,fl and many others : such as St. Maurice of Agen ;** St. Prin- * See Menagiana, tome iv., p. 103. Some of the illustrated calendars are probably still existing, and may be found in the cabinets of the antiquary. t Spheera Persica, Capricornus Decanus, iii., "Dimidiumfigu- res sine capite quia caput ejus in manu ejus est." X St. Mitrius is the patron saint of Aix in Provence, where ho suffered martyrdom under Dioclesian.—Ed. § C. N. Allou, Description of the Monuments of 'the Department of Upper Vienne, p. 143. jl St. Exuperantius is not found upon any seals before 1240.: IT " Se cadaver mox erexit,. Truncus truncum caput vexit, duo ferentem hoc direxit Angelorum legio." Sung in the offices of St. Denis, until the year. 1789 ** Mimoires de la SociUe des Antiquatres de France, tome iii., p. 268, 269. 84 EMBLEMS AND METAPHORS. cipius at Souvigny, in Bourbonnais; St. Nicasiu3, the first bishop of Rouen ; St. Lucian, the apostle of Beauvais; St. Lucain, bishop of Paris ;* St. Balsemus at Arcy-sur-Aube: and St. Savinian at Troyes.t The year 275 furnished no less than three more headless saints to the diocese of Troyes in Champagne.^ The origin of the above legend may be traced first of all to some cotemporary hagiog- rapher having employed a strong figure of speech, still used among us, who, in attempting to describe all the obstacles and dangers which attended the faithful eager to render the last services to the mar- tyrs, probably called the forcible carrying away, and burying of the sacred remains, a real miracle. The attitude in which the saints were offered to the public veneration explained the nature of this mir- acle, and gave some kind of authority for saying that, although beheaded, the martyrs had walked from the place of their decapitation to that of their sepulture. Sixthly. To what lengths will not a credulous curiosity extend, when from various explanations it selects the most marvelous ? The veil of an al- legory, or a fable, however transparent it may be, arrests attention. The crowing of the cock makes the lion fly, is an old remark, believed in its literal sense by the ignorant: the better informed know that at the dawn of day, which is announced by the crowing of the cock, carnivorous animals voluntarily return to their dens. * J. A. Dulaure, Histoire Physique, Civile et Morale, de Paris, tome i., p. 142. t Promptuarium Sacrum Antiquitatum Trecassinee Diacesis, v. 335 et 390. X L. P. Deguerrois, La Sainte" et Chrttienne, fol. 33, 34, 38, 39, 48. In a life of St. Par, one of these three martyrs, printed at Nogentsur-Seine in 1821, this marvelous narration is repeated. ALLEGORIES. 85 Moral proverbs clothed in equally transparent garbs have, nevertheless, passed as axioms of nat- ural science. Love vanquishes all things, even the most formidable : the ferocity of a lion is appeased, we are told, at the sight of a woman unveiled. In spite of the facility of proving the contrary, iElian relates that, from the vernal to the autum- nal equinox, the ram sleeps lying upon his right side, and upon his left from the autumnal equinox to the vernal.* In natural history this is a ridicu- lous tale, but it is an evident truth in the allegoric- al language of ancient astronomy. It is related that in the army which Xerxes led against the Greeks a man gave birth to a hare; a prodigy which presaged the issue of that gigantic enterprise :t it was nothing more than the fable of the mountain bringing forth a mouse, improved, perhaps, by lessening the distance between the physical relations, and by a sarcastic allusion, through the hare, to an army of fugitives. Was it intended that we should understand and believe, as a miracle, the story that innumerable rats, by gnawing the bow-strings and the straps of the bucklers of Sennacherib's soldiers, effected the de- liverance of the King of Egypt, besieged by that leader 1\ Assuredly not: it was an expression used to designate an army incapable, from want of discipline and from negligence, of resisting the sud- den attack of the Ethiopians, who arrived to the assistance of the King of Egypt, and which con- sequently fell almost entirely beneath their con- quering sword. The priests, to whose caste the Egyptian king belonged, willingly favored a lit- eral interpretation of the allegory, and the belief in * Julian, DeNat. Anim., lib. x., cap. 18. t Valer. Maxim., lib. i., cap. 6, § 10. X Herodot, lib. ii., cap. 141. 86 ALLEGORIES. it as a miracle, which they ascribed to their tutelar divinity, and which saved the national pride from the humiliation of acknowledging that the victory was due to the delivering allies. The tradition of this miraculous deliverance extended further than the fable which had given it birth ; Berosus, quot- ed by Josephus,* says that the Assyrian army was the victim of a scourge, a plague sent by Heaven, which at once struck down one hundred and eighty- five thousand men. Thus the Chaldean vanity cov- ered with an unavoidable misfortune the oppro- brium of a merited defeat. In the same manner, fictions which are purely moral, and unconnected with any fact, become historical traditions. I might quote the touching parable of the Samaritan assist- ing the wounded man, when neglected by the priest and the Levite. In the present day, in Palestine, it is looked upon not as a parable, but as an histor- ical fact, and the scene of it was shown by the monks to the traveler Hasselquist.t There is, after all, in this nothing extraordinary nor repugnant to reason ; and the heart, being interested, is tempted to be- lieve in its reality. Less mindful of probabilities, a sage, wishing to perpetuate in a fable the maxim, "that it is not enough to sacrifice for the good of one's country riches, luxury, and pleasure, but more is necessary; and, although held back by the dearest affections, life itself should be devoted to it," he related that a frightful gulf, which nothing could fill up, suddenly opened in the middle of a city; the gods, when consulted, declared that it would only close on the most precious possessions of mankind being thrown into it. Gold, silver, and precious stones were instantly but vainly precipita- ted into it. At length a generous man, tearing * Fl. Josephus, Ant. J>id., lib. i., cap. 2. t Hasselquist, Voyage dans le Levant, tome i., p. 184. ALLEGORIES. 87 himself from a father and a wife, voluntarily plunged into it, and the abyss closed forever over him. In spite of the evident improbability of the re- sult, this fable, invented in Phrygia, or borrowed from a still more ancient civilization, has passed into history. The name of the hero was Anchurus, son of Midas,* one of the kings of the heroic times. But such is the charm attached to the marvelous, that Rome, some centuries afterward, appropriated to herself this fable, which, in place of a general precept, displays only an individual example. It was not because the Sabine chief, Metius Curtius,! who, when almost overcome in the midst of Rome, left his name to the marsh famed as the scene of his vigorous defense against the efforts of Romulus ; it was not because a consul,! directed by the Sen- ate, inclosed with a wall this marsh upon which the thunderbolt fell; but it was to perpetuate to the veneration of the people a patrician, on whom the name of Curtius was bestowed, as having no- bly, in the same place, thrown himself, completely armed, into a gulf, which had miraculously opened, and not less miraculously closed, that Rome bor- rowed from Phrygia this fable of Anchurus, and in- troduced it into her own history.§ * Parallels between Grecian and Roman Histories, § 10. This work, falsely attributed to Plutarch, merits in general but little confidence, but its testimony, it seems to me, may be admitted when its object is to take from history those facts evidently fabu- lous, regarding which the ancient annalists of Rome do not agree. Callisthenes, quoted by Stobaeus (Sermo xlviii.), also relates the devotion of theJson of Midas, whom he calls iEgystheos. t Such is the real origin of the name of the Lacus Curtius, ac- cording to the historian L. Calpurnius Piso, quoted by Varro {De Lingua Latina, lib. iv., cap. 32). See, also, Titus Liv., lib. i., cap. 12, 13. X This was also the opinion of C. ^Elius and of &. Lutatius. (Varro, loc. cit.) $ Varro (loc. cit.) also relates this tradition, but with the air of a man who hardly believes it, since he terms the hero who precipitated himself into the gulf a certain Curtius, " quemdam Cnrtium." 88 ALLEGORIES.--NATURAL PHENOMENA. The desire of increasing the reputation of a coun- try has favored such plagiarisms. It is one object of our task to show how often imposture, assisting the vanity of a nation or a family in effacing a stain or adding an ornament, has given birth to the his- tory of prodigies. From an immense number of instances, we shall select but one. It was con- stantly repeated that from the amours of the God of War sprung the founders of a city which was des- tined to be raised to the highest pitch of power by the favor of that god; and this story was credited, notwithstanding the tradition preserved by two grave historians, that the ferocious Aurelius violated his niece, Rea Silvia, who became the mother of Romulus and Remus.* CHAPTER IV. Real but rare Phenomena successfully held up as Prodigies pro- ceeding from the intervention of a Divine Power, and believed because Men were ignorant that a Phenomenon could be local and periodical ; because they had forgotten some natural Fact, which would at once have removed all Idea of the Marvelous ; and, finally, because it was often dangerous to disabuse a de- ceived Multitude.—As the ancient Authors have adhered to Truth in this respect, they may be, also, depended upon in what they relate of magical Operations. Although a great number of the wonders men- tioned in the writings of t'he ancients may have de- rived importance from enthusiasm, ignorance, and credulity only, yet others, on the contrary, such as the fall of aerolites, have been recognized as real phenomena, and have not been rejected by enlight- ened physical science, although it has not always been able to explain them in a satisfactory manner. The natural history of our species details many ex- * C. Licinius Macer et M. Octavius, quoted by Marcus Aure- lius Victor, De Origine Gentis Romance, cap. 19. NATURAL PHENOMENA. 89 traordinary events, the existence of which has been confirmed, but which some observers, whose ob- servations have been circumscribed within their own narrow horizon, have regarded as chimerical. Some of the most ancient Greek writers, such as Isigonus and Aristeus of Proconesus, have spoken of pigmies two feet and a half in height; of people constituting whole nations whose eyes were in their shoulders ; of anthropophagi existing among the northern Scythians; and of a country, named Albania, in which were born men whose hair was white in childhood, and whose sight was exceed- ingly weak during the day, but became very strong in the night. Aulus Gellius* treats these narrations as incredi- ble fables ; nevertheless, in the descriptions of the first two people, we recognize the Laplanders and the Samoyedes, although the diminutiveness of the one, and the manner in which the heads of the other are sunk between their shoulders, has been greatly exaggerated.! Marco Polo asserts that * A. Gell., Noct. Attic., lib. ix., cap. 4. Solinus, also (cap. 55), doubtless copying the authors whose testimony Aulus Gellius re- jected, speaks of a nation the men of which had their eyes in their shoulders. t Sir W. Raleigh in 1595, and Keymis in 1596, received from the inhabitants of Guiana the most positive assurances of the ex- istence of a race of men whose eyes were placed upon their shoulders, and their mouths in their chests (The Discovery of Gui- ana, by Sir W. Raleigh), that is to say, as the French translator has reasonably suggested, that the necks of these men were ex- tremely short, and their shoulders very high. P. Lafiteau [The Manners and Customs of the American Savages, &c, vol. i., p. 58, 62) observes, that the belief in the existence of such a race oi men is equally entertained in different parts of America, and among the Tartars in the countries bordering on China. Like the Samoyedes in Asia, the Esquimaux and people observed by Weddel at Cape Horn, and in Terra del Fuego and the adjacent islands, have been the origin of this error respecting the natives of the North and South of America.—A Voyage to the South Pole, performed in the Years 1822-1824. Geographical Journal. The natives of Bukaw, in Central Afnca, are of so diminutive 8 stature as to accord completely with the ancient accounts of 90 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. some tribes of Tartars eat the corpses of men con- demned to death.* In the inhabitants of Albania we can not fail to recognize the Albinos. The name of their supposed country is nothing more than the translation of the appellation bestowed on these singular beings from the whiteness of their hair and the fairness of their skin. Ctesias has frequently been accused of falsehood upon the au- thority of the Greeks, whose opinions and preten- sions were somewhat inconsistent with his narra- tions. The pigmies that this author describes as living in the center of Asia, and having their bodies covered with long hair, recall to our recollection the Ainos of the Kourila Islands, who are four feet high, and covered with very long hair. Turner also saw, in Boutan, an individual of an exceed- ingly small race. The Cynocephali of Ctesias (iElian, De Nat. Anim., lib. iv., cap. 46) may pos- sibly have been the Oceanic negroes, Alphourians, or Haraforas of Borneo and the Malay Islands, and the monkeys against which, according to the sacred books of the Hindoos, Rama made war in the Island of Ceylon.t pigmies. The Bushmen in Southern Africa, also, may be regard- ed as a race of pigmies, very few male adults rising five feet in height, and the females not so much. The latter are delicately formed, and with remarkably small hands and feet.—Ed. * Peregrinatio Marci Pauli, lib. i., cap. 64. Mtmoires de la Socifti de Geographic, tome i., p. 361. The New Zealanders arc confirmed and avowed cannibals; so much so, that, like the Massagetas, described by Herodotus (lib. i., 216, they would eat their own parents. Dr. Martius informs us, that among the an- cient Tupis of Brazil, when the chief (Paje) despaired of a sick man's recovery, he ordered the poor wretch to be killed and eat- en.— (Lond. Geol. Journ., ii., 199.) The Battas of Sumatra are also undoubted cannibals.—Ed. t Malte-Brun, Mdmoire sur I'Inde septentrionale d'HVrodote et de Ctesias, &c. Nouvelles Annates des Voyages, tome ii., p. 335- 357. In El Rami, an island near to Serendib (Ceylon), are to be seeD men who are but a metre in height, and who speak an un- intelligible language.—Gtographie d'Edrisi, trad, fr., tome i p. 75. EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. 91 In the Argippeans, or " Bald Heads," of Herod- otus, we recognize the Mongols, or Kalmucs, a nation, among whom the monks, or Ghelongs, have their heads closely shaved. When among this na- tion, Herodotus was told of a still more northern people, who slept six months of the year. He re- fused to believe this assertion, which was, after all, nothing more than an allusion to the day and night of the Polar regions.* The ancients supposed that pigmies existed in Africa. A French traveler found some of them in the Tenda Maia, on the banks of the Rio Grande. " There," said he, "dwells a race of people re- markable for the diminutiveness of their figures and the weakness of their limbs."t If we descend from generalities to details, we still find that facts of an extraordinary nature, the recollection of which antiquity has preserved with so religious a fidelity, have been too often depreciated. " To suppose," says Larcher, " that Roxana should have had a child without a head, is an absurdity alone sufficient to throw discredit on Ctesias."J Every medical dictionary, however, would have shown Larcher that the birth of a headless, or acephalous child, is not so impossible.! The respect to which the genius of Hippocrates is entitled has been, I suppose, the only reason why he has not been taxed with falsehood when he speaks of a disease prevalent among the Scythians which changed them into women.|| M. Jules Kla- proth has seen men among the Nogais Tartars who, losing their beards, and their skin becoming wrin- * Malte-Brun, Memoire, fyc, p. 372, 373. Herodotus. t Mollien, Voyage dans I'lnterieur de VAfrique, fyc. (Paris, 1840), tome ii., p. 210. X Traduction d'Hirodote, 2& edit., tome vi., p. 266, note 35. § Diet, des Sciences Medicates, art. Acephale. II Hippocrat., De Acre, Aquis, et Locis. 92 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. kled, have all the appearance of old women; and such, among the ancient Scythians, were considered as old women, and no longer treated as men.* The history of animals, such as the ancients have transmitted to us, is filled with details apparently chimerical, but which are sometimes only the con- sequence of a defective nomenclature. The name Onocentaur, which seems to designate a monster uniting the forms of a man and an ass, was given to a quadrumanus which runs sometimes on four paws, but at other times uses its fore paws only as Iiands, merely an immense monkey covered with gray hair, particularly on the lower part of the body.t It is only very recently that we have rec- ognized the Jerboa in the description of those Lib- yan rats which walked upon their hind legs ;\ and detected in the Erkoom, or Abbagumba of Bruce, that African bird which bears a horn upon its fore- * Jules Klaproth, Voyage au Mont Caucase et en G6orgie, en 1807, 1808. Bibl. Univ. Littirature, tome vi., p. 40. t iElian, De Nat. Animal., lib. xvii. This description accords well with that of the chimpanzee, which, in much of its organiza- tion, bears a close resemblance to man, but differs from him in many important points. In the first place, the chimpanzee, like all the troglodyte ape tribe, is a quadrumanus, or four-handed animal; the jaws are much more developed than in the lowest tribes of the human species; the nasal bones are consolidated into ones the lumbar vertebras are only four instead of five; and the length of the upper and the shortness of the lower extremities is a marked distinction. The circumstance, however, of the chim- panzee walking often erect, arming itself with weapons, and living in huts ; the form of the head; the long, erect ears ; and the hairy body, might easily have afforded the idea of the onocentaur de- scribed by Julian.—Ed. X Jerboa, Dipus JEgypticus, belongs to the muridce, or mouse tribe, an extensive section of the rodentia, or gnawers. They have the head and body of a mouse, and a long tail, bushy at the end. Their fore legs are remarkably short, the hind proportion- ably longer than in any other known quadruped. Theophrastus adds, correctly, " they do not walk upon their fore feet, but use them as hands; and when they flee, they leap." It is found in India as well as in Egypt, and is eaten by one of the Hindoo tribes, called Kunjers.—Ed. EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. 93 head * But what was the Catopleba,\ that animal of the wild sheep or bull species, said to be en- dowed, like the asp or basilisk, with a breath and glance of a deadly nature ] It was the Gnoo de- scribed by JElian; and the fact is placed beyond all doubt by the examination of the form of the head of one of those animals that killed Marius's soldiers.| The head of the gnoo is always de- clined ; its eyes are small, but quick, and seem al- most covered by the thick mane which grows upon its forehead. It is scarcely possible, unless it is very nearly approached, to perceive its glance, or to feel its breath; near enough, in fact, to hazard being struck by this timid, yet savage animal.§ The proverbial expression of danger to which one would, therefore, be exposed, has, by the love of the marvelous, been transformed into a physical phenomenon. Cuvier|| has pointed out this resemblance; and, in discussing the ancient accounts of animals re- garded as fabulous, has expressed his opinion, that what we have found so incredible in them is only the result of incorrect descriptions. These de- scriptions may have been exact at first, but after- ward vitiated by details imperfectly preserved by traditions, or badly translated in memoirs written * N. Mouraviev, Voyage dans la Turcomanie et a Khiva, p. 224, 225. t Le Constitutionnel du 7 Septembre, 1821. X Catoblepus Gorgon, the brindled gnoo, an inhabitant of Southern Africa, in the country near the Orange River, where it is found in vast herds. The eyes, which are said to have so deadly a glance, are small, black, piercing, wild, and sinister, and placed very high in the forehead. In his general aspect, the ani- mal is singularly grotesque, having the head of a bull, the neck and mane of a horse, and the slender, muscular legs of the ante- lope. "His snort," says Captain Harris, "resembling the roar of the lion, is repeated with energy and effect."—Wild Sports of Southern Africa, p. 27, plate iv.—Ed. 6 Athenaeus, Deip. JElian, De Nat. Anim., loc. cit. I) Analyse des'Travaux de la Classe des Sciences de I'Institut de Franceen 1815. MagasinEncyclop., annee 1816, tome i., p. 44. 94 EXTRAORDINARY STORIE3 CREDIBLE. in a foreign language, and probably abounding in figurative expressions. They may have been cor- rupted, also, by the inclination which the ancients indulged in for drawing men and animals closer together, and for connecting physical facts with causes of a moral nature. Geoffroy St. Hilaire saw the little ring plover, or dottrel,* free the crocodile from the insect suckers which attach themselves to the interior of its mouth exactly as the ancient Egyptians have described it. The moderns con- sidered their recital as a Fable, because it was sup- posed that there existed between the two animals a compact of mutual obligation, which could not be believed. It does not appear that the bird is ever imprudent enough to enter the mouth of the am- phibious animal. After these observations, may we not respectfully recommend to the learned the examination of those prodigies formerly exhibited to princes and people as omens of the future, as signs of the will of the gods, and undoubted tokens of their favor or their indignation 1 Natural history might thence be en- riched by some interesting suggestions, and physi- ology find many rare instances which, by this ex- amination, would become less problematical, and more easily connected with the general scheme of Nature. I shall, first of all, quote from the collec- tion of Julius Obsequens. This author seems to have confined himself to the task of extracting from the registers to which the Roman pontiffs annually consigned the prodigies declared to them. In the unfortunately short fragment of his work which re- mains to us, we find, besides the mention of fre- quent showers of stones, the assertion, four times repeated, that the sterility of mules is not an im- mutable law of nature ; also, the account of a spon- * Revue Encyclop., Mai, 1828, p. 300, 301. EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. 95 taheous human combustion, which, it was thought, might have been caused by the reflection of a burn- ing-glass ; and two examples of an extra-natural accouchement, the possibility of which has been dis- cussed and undeniably proved in the present day.* Above all, we may mention the observations made upon an animal presenting a similar phenomenon to that of the young boy of Verneuil (Amedee Bis- sieux) in 1814.t In 1826, a young Chinese, with- out being much inconvenienced, had a headless fetus| attached to his chest and breast bone. In * Servio Flacco, Q.Calpurnio, Coss.Romce puer solidusposte- rior natures parte genitus. Sergio Galba, M. Scauro, Coss. Idem (puer) posteriore naturd solidus natus, qui, voce missa, ex- piravit.—Julius Obsequens, De Prodigiis. t C. Valerio, M. Herennio, Coss. Maris Vituli cum exta deme- rentur, gemini vitelli in alvo ejus inventi.—Julius Obsequens, De Prodigiis. X Stance de VAcadimie de Paris, 28 'Aout, 1826. These mal- formations and deviations from ordinary nature are still regarded as the result of supernatural agency, or as prodigies by the igno- rant ; but the researches of physiology have demonstrated that they are merely arrestments, or perversions of the ordinary pro- cess of development. In these cases, some organs may be either altogether absent, or defective in parts; or they may be- redun- dant both in number and in parts. In all such cases, the individ- uals are termed monsters. The varieties of monstrosities are very numerous ; but a few only require to be here noticed, in ad- dition to those mentioned in the text. Thus, individuals have been born without arms, while the head and trunk are natural; others, in whom both hands and feet have been produced, without arms and legs, and the hands inserted upon the trunk, causing such a similitude to the seal as to give the- name oiphocomeles to such unfortunate beings. A man, aged sixty-two, of this forma- tion, was exhibited in Paris in 1800. In other cases, both legs or both arms have been, as it were, sodered together, so as to form one member, giving the name symoles or siren to the person. In some instances, the eyes approach and unite, so as to give the appearance of a single eye only: hence the name cyclopia; but these and the symoles seldom live many hours after birth. Children have been born, and have lived for years, with two heads, and in one case the accessory head was planted on the summit of the natural head.* Many instances have occurred in which otherwise perfect individuals are born united together by * This child was born at Bengal in 1753, lived four years, and died from the bite of a serpent.—Phil. Trans., vol. lxxx., p. 296. Hume's Comp. Anat. 96 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. the body of a stag, captured by Otto Henri in the sixteenth century, there was found, if we may be- lieve the physician, Jean Lange, a well-formed fetus. Did the frequency of these heteradelphic monsters (the expression used by M. Geoffroy de St. Hilaire to designate the union of two beings, one of which is not completely developed) formerly originate the belief in hermaphroditism, or the al- ternate change of sex in the hare and hyena? We may believe it, since a single observation of this kind, made upon the Mus caspium (probably the marten), has been also converted into a general fact.* It would not be uninteresting to ascertain whether martens, hyenas, and hares present this singularity more frequently than other animals. In the fabulous times of Greece, Iphis and Caenis were both seen suddenly to change their sex by the beneficence of a divinity. The ancients have related similar metamorphoses in less uncertain pe- riods. Pliny quotes four instances, and relates one as having been confirmed by himself.t Accurate observations have proved to the moderns, that in some part of their bodies, but free in all the others. Two remark- able cases of this description are well known. One was of two sisters, who were born united in Hungary, in 1701. They were christened Helen and Judith, and lived to the age of twenty-two, when Helen was attacked with disease of the lungs ; soon after which, Judith, who was in perfect health, also became ill; and both expired at the same instant. The second case was that of the Siamese twins, who were exhibited in London in 1829-30. They were fine-looking boys of twelve years of age, but united by a production of the navel of each. The writer of this note saw them, and found them intelligent boys. He is uncertain whether they are alive. In all such cases, the formation of twins was the intention of nature, had not disturbing causes interfered with the development. In no instance has the monstrosity been of such a description as to place the being out of the natural series to which it belongs ; and in every instance, however great the de- viation, the species to which the individual belonged has been readily recognized.—Ed. * iElian, De Nat. Anim., lib. xviii., cap. 18. t Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. vii., cap. 4. EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. 97 some human beings the development of the sexual organs is so tardy as to offer the appearance of such a transformation. M. Geoffroy de St. Hilaire has described a poly- dactyle horse as having fingers separated by mem- branes ;* yet, when ancient authors have spoken of horses, the feet of which bore some resemblance to the hands and feet of a man, they have been ac- cused of imposture. The history of inanimate bod- ies is not less rich in singular facts, which the an- cients considered as prodigies, and which the mod- erns long regarded as fables. Upon Mount Eryx, in Sicily, the altar of Venus was situated in the open air,t and upon it burned, night and day, an unextinguishable flame, without wood, coal, or cinders, and in defiance of the cold, the rain, and the dew. Bayle,| one of those phi- losophers who has rendered the greatest service to the human intellect, regards this as a fable. He would not have received with more indulgence the account which Philostratus§ gives of a cavern observed by Apollonius near Paraca, in India, whence continually issued a sacred flame of a lead- en color, emitting neither odor nor smoke. Nev- ertheless, nature has kindled similar fires in other places. The fires of Pietramala, in Tuscany, are, according to Sir Humphrey Davy, owing to an es- cape of carbureted hydrogen gas.|| The perpet- ual fires admired at the Atisch-gah (place of fire), near Bakhou, in Georgia,^! are fed by the naphtha with which the soil is impregnated. These are * Seance de VAcademie de Paris, 13 Aout, 1807. t jElian, Var. Hist., lib. x., cap. 50. X Bayle, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, art. Egnatia, note D. § Philostrat., Vit. Apollon., lib. iii., cap. 3. || Journal de Pharmacie, annee 1815, p. 520. II N. Mouraviev, Voyage dans la Turcomanie et a Khiva, p. 224 225. I. G 98 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. sacred fires, and the penitent Hindoos have sur- rounded theirs with an inclosure of cells, similar to those raised round the fire of Mount Eryx, the temple of Venus. In Hungary, in the salt-mine of Szalina, in the circle of Marmarosch,* a strong current of air, rushing from a gallery, ignites spon- taneously. It is carbureted hydrogen gas, similar to that employed in the present day for lighting our streets. For this purpose, it has been profita- bly applied, and with a success which apparently will prove durable, since the gaseous effusion is no less uniform than abundant. In the province of Xen-si, in China, several wells emit volumes of car- bureted hydrogen, which is applied by the inhab- itants to the common uses of life.t Phenomena, similar to those we have described, would, at the disposal of thaumaturges, become powerful auxil- iaries to superstition. The ignorant have been led to believe that water was metamorphosed into blood ; that the heavens rained blood ; and that the snow lost its natural color, and appeared stained with blood ; and even that flour bread has offered a blood-imbued nourishment to man, from which severe diseases arose. These are the facts we find in ancient history, and even in some modern writ- ings, almost of our own times. In the spring of the year 1825, the waters of the Lake of Morat presented an appearance, in many places, of being colored with blood, and popular attention was directed toward this strange appear- ance. M. de Candolle,t however, proved that the phenomenon was caused by the development of myriads of those creatures which are called Oscel- * Le Constitutional du 7 Septembre, 1826. t Extract from tlve Account of Vankoorn and Van Kampen, 1670. Seance de I'Academie des Sciences, 5 Dicembre, 1836. X Professor de Candolle, the most distinguished botanist of the present period.—Ed. EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. 99 latoria rubescens (purple conferva of Fuller), and which form the link in the chain between animal and vegetable beings* The phenomenon occurs every spring, and the fishermen then say the lake is in flower.t M. Ehrenberg, when sailing on the Red Sea, discovered that the color of the water is occasioned by a similar circumstance.! It would not, therefore, be impossible for a naturalist, were he to study the mode of reproduction of the oscel- latoria, to convert the waters of a pond, or a portion of a river or running stream, into apparent blood. We are acquainted with many natural causes which explain those stains observed on stones and the walls of buildings, which might easily be im- agined to be caused by a shower of blood. The phenomenon of red snow, less often remarked, al- though as common as the other apparent blood stains, yet results from many natural causes. Nat- uralists have attributed it sometimes to the pollen powder of a species of pine; sometimes to small insects, or minute plants, which attach themselves also to the surface of certain marbles,§ and to those calcareous pebbles which are found on the sea- shore. || * Revue Encyclopidique, tome xxxiii., p. 676. t The phenomenon, on the occasion referred to, continued for several months. In the advanced period of the day, the lake ap- peared covered at a little distance from its banks with long, par- allel, red lines, which were driven by the wind into the small bays, and, being collected round the weeds, formed a spume of a beautiful color, varying from greenish black to lively red. A pu- trid odor exhaled from the shallow places. The flesh of the pike and the perch became as red as if they had been fed on madder, . and the small fish died.—Ed X Revue Encyclopidique, tome xxxiii., p. 783; and Nouvelles Annates des Voyages, 2d edit., tome vi., p. 383. § See, on this subject, the interesting memoir of M.le Professeur Agardh, Bulletin de la Society de Geographic, vol. vi., p. 209-219 ; and the Memoire de M. Turpin, on the red substance which is found on the surface of white marbles, Acadimie des Sciences, st- ance du 12 Decembre, 1836. II The account of the red snow which Captain Hoss observed 100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. In the environs of Padua, in 1819, the polenta prepared with the flour of maize appeared covered with numerous little red spots, which were soon considered, in the eyes of the superstitious, as drops of blood. The phenomenon appeared many suc- cessive days, although pious terror sought, by fasts, prayers, masses, and even exorcisms, to bring it to a termination. Those feelings, excited to an al- most dangerous degree, were at length calmed by a naturalist * who proved that the red spots were but the results of a mold, until then unobserved.! in the Arctic region, and the specimen of the substance which that officer brought home, excited in no ordinary degree the atten- tion of the naturalists, botanists, and chemists of Europe, and many theories were formed to explain its nature. The most sat- isfactory opinion was given by Professor Agardh, in a memoir published in the twelfth volume of the Nov a Acta Naturee Curi- osorum, p. 737. The professor first notices a shower resembling sulphur that fell near Lund, and which was found to be the farina of the fir; and two showers of apparent blood; more especially one which fell at Shonen in 1711, occasioned by insects, but which the Bishop of Swedberg pronounced to be a miraculous interven- tion of the Divinity, and not a natural event. He then mentions most of the parts of Europe where red snow has been observed, and also the opinions of botanists respecting it; especially that of Baron Wrangel, that it was a species of lichen, which he termed Lepraria kermesina; but Dr. Agardh regarded it to be one of the alget, and named it Protococcus nivalis, or kermesinus. He examined it under the microscope, and found that it consisted of minute, blood-red, opaque particles, perfectly round and ses- sile ; they were both aggregated, forming little clusters, and sol- itary. He considers that there is a great affinity between it and the infusory animals, beings which seem to be the link between the animal and the vegetable kingdom, and which pass into each other, and for the existence of which the agency of fight and heat is essential. The protococcus has never been seen except on white bodies. It has been asserted by naturalists that it is precipitated from the atmosphere; but this opinion has not been made out. Agardh supposes that the melting of the snow, and the vivifying power of its light, contribute to the production of this plant; but I may remark, that although these powers may call the plant into existence when its spawn or germs are present, yet we are still in the dark as to whence it is derived. An ex- cellent figure and account of the plant is contained in Dr. Gre- ville's Scottish Cryptogamic Flora, vol. iv., p. 231.—Ed. * Revue Encyclopidique, p. 144, 145. t Blood spots, as these were termed, were first observed during EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE. 101 The grain of the bearded darnel (Lolium temu- lentum), mixed with wheat, gives a reddish tinge to bread baked on the ashes; and if this food be eaten, it occasions violent giddiness. Thus, in all the examples quoted, the natural effect being sat- isfactorily made out, the marvelous disappears, and with it falls the accusation of imposture or ridicu- lous credulity with which ancient authors are so frequently accused. On the surface of the hot mineral springs of Ba- den, in Germany, and on the waters of lschia, an island in the kingdom of Naples, the zoogene is gathered, a singular substance, resembling human flesh and skin ; and which, after undergoing the process of distillation, produces the same results as animal matter. M. Gimbernat* has seen rocks covered with this substance near the Castle of Le- pomena, and in the valleys of Sinigaglia and Ne- the great general plague in the sixth century, and again during the plague of the years 786 and 959. " The same spots, also, in the years 1500 to 1503, threw the faithful into great consternation, because, as on the former occasions, they fancied they recognized in them the form of the cross." Crusius, a writer of that period, even gives the names of many on whose clothes crosses were vis- ible. In the vicinity of Biberach, on the Rhine, a miller's lad, who ventured to make rude sport of those supposed markings of the cross, was seized and burned.* These spots, on the last-mention- ed occasion, spread through Germany and France. They were principally red, but they varied in color. They appeared on the roofs of houses, on clothes (whence the name Lepra vestuum), on the veils and neckerchiefs of women, on household utensils, and even on meat in larders. George Agricola, a naturalist who lived at the time, recognized them as lichens, and regarded their appearance as an indication of extensive disease.t At so late a period as 1819, a red coloring mold appeared on vegetable and animal substances in the province of Padua, which excited super- stitious apprehensions among the people.}:—Ed * Journal de Pharmacie, 1821, p. 196. * Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, trans. 1844, p. 205. f Agricola, De Peste, 1554, lib. i., p. 45. t Viucenzo Sette, SuW Arrosimenio Straordinario,