DREAMS.
In modern times, dreams have become a gratuitous affair; but in the time of lotteries they possessed the greatest value with the votaries of Blind Fortune. At the French offices, a register was kept of lucky numbers, whose prizes were the result of dreams. Not a day passed but the office keepers were applied to for numbers, the combination of which was foretold by dreams.
However great the weakness of those who put undue faith in such omens, it must be admitted that the wanderings of the mind during sleep have been productive of marvellous results. But just as the slightest opinions of Montaigne are the result of the minutest self-study, a person desirous to ascertain the real importance of a dream ought to consider what was the state of health, disposition, mind and feeling of the dreamers. Many dreams constitute a mere continuation of the occupations of the day.Others arise from our habitual strain of mind. During illness or fever, the mind, and consequently the dreams by which it is perplexed, assume an exalted and unnatural tone.
Authors have been known to compose during their sleep. Voltaire declares that he composed his verses to Monsieur Touron while asleep; and on returning from a ball, what young dancer does not fancy during the night, that the violins of the orchestra are still ringing in his ears? Hippocrates was so persuaded of the analogy of dreams with our physical condition, that he points out specifics against evil dreaming. If the stars turn pale in your dreams, you are to run in a circle; if the moon, you must run in a straight line; if the sun, you must run both in a straight line and a circle to avoid a repetition of the evil omen.
By these prescriptions, he prevailed upon the lazy Athenians to assist their bad digestion by the effect of exercise, so as to procure a calm and gentle sleep.
Pliny, the younger, mentions the following fact: “One of my slaves, who was sleeping with his companions in the place usually allotted to them, dreamed that two men, dressed in white, entered through the window, and having shaven their heads, departed by the way they came. The following morning he was found shaved, and his hairscattered on the ground.” This was probably some waggish trick practised on him by his companions when in a state of intoxication.
Valerius Maximus, on the authority of Cicero, relates a remarkable dream:
“Two fellow-travellers arrived at Megara; the one putting up at an hotel, the other at the house of a friend. Scarcely had the former fallen asleep, when he saw his companion imploring him to come to his aid, as his host was attempting to murder him. The impression was so strong as to wake him; when, finding it a delusion, he went to sleep again. Once more, his friend appeared, announcing the accomplishment of the crime, and that his assassin had concealed his body under the dunghill, to which he begged his companion to repair betimes, before they had time to remove it out of the city. Overawed by so awful a vision, the friend rose forthwith, and proceeding to the scene of the murder, found a carter and his cart about to quit the court. On insisting to examine the load, the carter fled; when the body was extricated from the dung, the whole affair discovered, and the host condemned to death.”
This Greek story is related on the authority of Cicero, who was never at Megara, and consequently knew the fact by hearsay. Had Cicero asserted that he witnessed the affair, the story would have been difficult to believe; as it is, posterity is absolved from the smallest credence.
There lived at Marseilles, a bigoted woman, who passed her days at church, and dreamt every night that she was transformed into a lamp: a dream she chose to verify; for, on the day of her death, a silver lamp was suspended, at her cost, in the choir of the church in which she was wont to follow her devotions.
Dreams are the peculiar province of the poet. Æneas, to justify his abandonment of Dido, cites the commands of his father, who appears to him every night. What more beautiful, except perhaps the dream of Athalia, than the dream of Æneas, in which Hector presents himself to the son of Anchises, pale and ghastly, as after he had become a victim to the vengeance of Achilles? In the Greek plays, and the French tragedies imitated from the Greek, dreams form a prominent feature. The family of Atrides were great dreamers:—Atreus, Agamemnon, Orestes, and Egisthus, the son of Atreus, had all remarkable dreams.
In Lemercier’s tragedy of “Agamemnon,” Egisthus relates that which is evidently the result of a dream;—but he will not admit it to be a dream, declaring that he “did not sleep.”
The impressions of dreams are often so vivid that we confound in our memory real facts with the visions of sleep. Hence, no doubt, the popular expression of “You must have dreamt that!”
The existence of dreams must be coeval with thehuman race. By the ancients, the Gods were thought to preside over them. The dreams of Pharaoh made the fortune of Joseph; and Artemidorus acquired a great reputation under the Antonines, by interpreting dreams. According to him, to dream of being weighed down by a mountain, portended proscription; and to dream of death, meant marriage. To dream that you are deprived of sight, intimates that you are about to lose one of your children. Artemidorus interpreted dreams in the same manner as the celebrated Mademoiselle Lenormand, or as Mrs. Williams, so well-known in London at the commencement of the present century.
OF PREJUDICES ATTACHED TO CERTAIN ANIMALS.
Innumerable are the auguries which the remnants of ancient superstition have attached to certain animals. To meet a flock of sheep, is considered a lucky omen. To overtake one when proceeding to the house of a friend, determines many people to turn back as indicative of an inhospitable reception.
Two magpies are sure forerunners of good news; but a single one is supposed to foreshow tidings of the death of a friend.
Spiders are of evil omen; though the mischief they convey is attributed, in Scotland, solely to the family of Bruce. There is a French proverb which says, “Arraignée du soir—espoir,” as if the hour of the day influenced the nature of the omen. Lalande, the astronomer, is known to have been fond of eating spiders. Yet the insect is an object of repugnance to most people; and is, in some species, venomous.
Of all reptiles, the toad is the most universallydetested; as if gifted with a magnetism of repulsion. The Abbé Rousseau asserts in his Treatise on Natural History, that the sight of a toad has been known to produce convulsions and death. “Having enclosed one of these reptiles,” says he, “in a glass jar, I stood watching it; when the creature rose on its hinder legs, fixing its red and inflamed eyes upon me, till I became so faint and depressed, as to be on the point swooning. A cold dew rose upon my face, such as announces the approach of death.” This was probably the result of fear alone. Two living beings cannot long stare fixedly at each other without one giving way. The power of the visual organ is very great; and the stronger controls the weaker. As the pointer arrests the partridge, the eye of Marius arrested the arm of the Cimber sent to assassinate him; and by fixing his eye upon a troublesome dog, Talma could always prevent its barking. The toad is a disgusting animal, but not a noxious animal. It destroys many insects injurious to the beauty of our flower-gardens, and plumpness of our esculents; while for sobriety, it has no competitor. Toads have been found imbedded in blocks of marble and trunks of trees, deprived of all chance of external air or nutriment.
The lizard, which is nearly as unseemly to look on as the toad, has long been deemed the friend of man; and the vulgar had formerly a superstitionthat a piece of lizard’s tail worn on the person secured good fortune.
Lizards are sociably disposed, and fond of the human voice. They are said by travellers in Surinam and Cayenne, to awake a sleeping person on the approach of the rattlesnake. Alarmed at the approach of a snake, they have probably been known to cross the face of some man lying asleep; and have thus given rise to a popular fallacy. But if lizards be not the benefactors of the human race, at least they do us no harm; a quality that might be advantageously transferred to many of our own species.
Pliny maintains that oysters grow fat or thin according to the phases of the moon; while most modern oyster-eaters attribute the change to certain months rather than certain weeks of the year. It is an equally erroneous supposition that milk promotes the digestion of oysters; which may be proved by trying to dissolve them in hot or cold milk. The prejudice that they are out of season when no R figures in the name of the month, originated in the difficulty of transferring them fresh from the coast to the capital during the months of May, June, July, and August. By the sea-side, they will be found good at all seasons of the year.
In ancient times, the appearance of an owl in the day-time was esteemed a prodigy; and the Romansused to rush to the temples, offering incense to the Gods! Pliny considers the apparition of an owl an omen of sterility; and an omelet made of owl’s eggs was a sovereign specific against ebriety. Among villagers, the shriek of the owl is still dreaded as a summons to the other world. Yet this bird was favoured by dedication to the Goddess of Wisdom, though ungifted with the powers of divination ascribed by the Greeks to the vulture. According to the ancients, the vulture possessed such olfactory powers, that it could foreshow the death of a person three days previous to his decease.
It may be observed, that all the animals to which particular superstitions are attached, were known to the ancients; whereas those discovered during the latter ages are free from imputation of supernatural power.
The wild beasts of all climates make man their prey; but none kill him by a look, as was said of the basilisk. Among the ancients, Aristotle, Pliny, and Galen, persisted in the foregoing opinion; and among modern propagators of errors, the German Athazen, and the Italian Vitello. If Rome, the superb, crouched before an owl, a basilisk compelled Alexander to raise the siege of an Asiatic city. Taking the besieged under its protection, a basilisk, esconced betwixt two stones on the ramparts, repulsed, without moving, two hundred Macedonianswho were rash enough to attack it. Sir Thomas Brown suggests the possibility, that the poison of the basilisk may be so intense and subtle, as to be darted forth by means of its visual organ.
The venomous bite of the viper has given rise to a variety of popular prejudices. The tooth of St. Amable was once the only specific; to which succeeded a faith in the antidote of Maltese earth. Meanwhile the utmost efforts of the faculty remain fruitless against the bite of the rattle-snake, of the cobra di manilla, and several other of the more venomous species. The quality of their venom is supposed to remain unimpaired by the death of the reptiles; and instances are cited of individuals having died of handling them, even after being preserved in spirits of wine. The venom is deposited in two vesicles on either side the head, above the muscle of the upper jaw, the remainder of its body being completely innocuous; so that, in former days, viper broth was frequently prescribed in pulmonary complaints. The venom of the viper becomes less intense as it advances in age.
It used to be believed, that the saliva of man was fatal to vipers, as their venom to ourselves; an opinion maintained by Aristotle, Galen, Varro, Pliny, and Figuier, the surgeon. The latter asserts that he killed a viper by the effect of his own saliva. The experiments by Redi, the learned physician ofthe Grand Duke of Tuscany, and many others, proved the absurdity of the idea.
Benvenuto Cellini declares, in his Memoirs, that he saw a salamander in the midst of his own fire; probably a lizard, inadvertantly brought from the country among the logs of wood. No one has yet pleaded guilty to having seen a phœnix, though for ages, a popular superstition attached to this fabulous bird. The unicorn also continues to be placed among the apocryphal animals, with the great sea-serpent of the American coast.
The bite of the tarentula spider was long said to produce involuntary dancing; simply because the persons bitten, on applying to the local practitioners of the healing art, were instantly ordered to dance thepizzica, the rapid Sicilian dance of the provinces where the tarentula abounds, in order to promote circulation and neutralize the effects of the poison. Whole villages used to assemble to witness the result, and whenever the patient expired of the bite of the reptile, he was said to have danced himself to death. Such is the origin of the Neapolitan superstition of the tarentula.
CONTENT AND COURTESY.
The first ambition of mankind is to be happy. To the brute creation, and to man in a state of nature, happiness consists in sensual gratification. To this, succeeds the factitious happiness of civilization; whence the origin of a variety of popular errors and prejudices. From the days of Horace to our own, people have been prone to envy those who pursue any career but their own. But if the soldier envy the position of the civilian, andvice versâ, it is clear that the ambition of being what one is not, arises from the fact that every one is acquainted with the drawback on his own profession, and only appreciates the advantages of that to which he does not belong. La Fontaine never imagined anything more true, or more charming, than the fable of the cobbler entreating the financier to restore him his song and peaceful sleep, in exchange for the hundred crowns hehad bestowed upon him. Every one has heard the Persian apologue of the Sophi, to whom, in a fit of acute suffering, the sole remedy prescribed was the shirt of a happy man; a treasure difficult to discover either in Court or city; till at length a ragged wretch was found in the suburbs of Ispahan, who admitted himself to be perfectly happy; but alas! he had not a shirt to his back; and the cure of the Sophi was not more advanced than before.
History has its lessons on this head as well as fiction. The Comte de Ségur relates in his Memoirs, that previous to the Revolution, the Duke de Lauraguais wrote to him as follows:
“Congratulate me, my dear Ségur. Thanks be to Heaven, I am completely ruined! I have nothing left, but am delivered from the importunities of my creditors.”
Towards the termination of his career, this witty nobleman subsided into voluntary habits of simplicity, differing strangely from his past splendours. Never, however, had he been happier!—His peace of mind was from within; superior to all incidents of birth, position, and fortune.
It requires to have inhabited the various stories of the social edifice, to be able to judge man under the various aspects resulting from fortuneand station. Happiness has little to do with either; fortune and misfortune have alike their evil influences. Covetousness is as insatiable as ambition. In proportion as people scale the ladder of opulence, they discover others richer than themselves to excite their envy; and vanity pervades every rank of society, marring the quietude of the human mind. The laurels of Miltiades gave umbrage to Themistocles; and Cæsar declared that he would rather be the first of a village, than second in Rome. A wiser man was the shepherd who said: “Were I a King, I would keep my sheep on horseback.”
The ceremonies of politeness, when carried to excess, are a source of public inconvenience. The custom of addressing a lady bare-headed, as was the case in France a century ago, when Louis XIV., even in a shower, refused to put on his hat in the presence of females, was the cause of many a serious indisposition. The custom of appearing bare-headed in church is also dangerous to many; and, so far unreasonable, that men are unable to appear in hats, while it would be accounted singular for a woman to appear there without a bonnet. Can any reasonable motive be assigned for such a distinction?
Again, what is the origin of the ridicule attachedto a person who is left-handed? It is clear that some are born with an instinctive facility in the use of the right hand—some of the left. Yet mothers punish their children for using the left hand, as an act of awkwardness. The preference given to the use of the right hand, though existing from the times of antiquity, is not the less ridiculous.
In Holy Writ, the right hand is made an instrument of benediction; which probably conferred a superiority over the left. Theologians also contend that the Son of God sat on the right of the heavenly throne. The Romans conceded such superiority to the right hand, that when at table, they lay on the left side that the right hand might be free. Aristotle maintained that the pre-eminence of the right hand proceeded from the same conformation by which the cray-fish have the right claw larger than the left. Politeness in these days requires we should place the person we wish to distinguish, on the right. The indiscriminate use of both hands is the best lesson to teach a child:—indifference to the distinction bestowed by the assignment of a place on either, the best lesson to be practised by adolescence.
Parisians consider it a lesson of politeness to their young children to kiss their right hand before receiving any thing presented to them. The left hand is, however, devoted to the wedding-ring. This is not a Christian custom; but prevailed amongthe Assyrians, Medes, Egyptians, Babylonians, and most of the people of antiquity.
Many people object to uttering the word farewell in parting from a friend, influenced by a prejudice that a fatality attaches to the word. Whence the French mode of taking leave with “sans adieu!”
The compliments formerly paid to a person sneezing are now happily abandoned; having arisen in those early days of civilization when epidemics were so far more frequent and fatal than now. It was the custom, in most European countries, to say “God bless you,” to the person who sneezed, lest it should be symptomatic of the commencement of an illness.
Sneezing has been the object of a variety of ridiculous prejudices. Aristotle pronounces sneezing to be a gift from the Gods, and to be honoured as a thing of holiness, and a sign of good health. Hippocrates agrees with Aristotle, and pronounces it a great relief to parturient women. The Rabbins assert that Adam sneezed after his fall; and that in the primitive times, sneezing was a sure prognostic of death; and remained so till the patriarch Jacob obtained from God that it should no longer be the forerunner of dissolution. It is fortunate this change took place previous to the use of snuff; or the snuffbox would have been accounted fatal as that of Pandora.
THE DIVINING ROD.
The superstition of the divining rod prevailed only a century and a half ago. The following story concerning it, is too curious to be omitted. In the year 1692, a vintner of Lyons and his wife were murdered in their cellar, their assassins making away with their money. All attempts to discover the culprits were vain, till a simple Dauphinese peasant, named Jacques Aymar, boasted that, with the aid of a simple hazel twig, he could discern the assassins. Having visited the scene of the murder, rod in hand, it became agitated; and on following its indications till he reached the right bank of the Rhone, Aymar entered the house of a gardener, where three bottles stood on the table; when, lo! the rod instantly intimated that the bottles had been emptied by the assassins! Two children of the house owned that three ill-looking men had been there; on which Aymar began toobtain some credit. Traces of three men were found imprinted on the sand by the river-side; and, persuaded that they had embarked, Aymar followed them, inquiring as he proceeded, and detecting the spots where they had halted, to the astonishment of those who accompanied him.
At the Sablon, the rod becoming agitated, Aymar announced that the assassins were evidently in the camp; and his divining rod led him as far as the gate of the prison of Beaucaire; which being opened, twelve of the fifteen prisoners confined were brought before him. But the divining rod was motionless till the approach of a certain humpbacked prisoner, who declared his utter ignorance of the crime committed at Lyons. On the indications of the rod, however, the hunchback being conducted to the gardener’s house was recognised as having been one of the party. At length he confessed his guilt; protesting, however, that he was an involuntary spectator, and did not participate in the murder. Having furnished Aymar with information concerning the direction the assassins had taken, he traced their steps to an inn at Toulon, where they had dined the previous evening. On finding that the culprits had put to sea, he also embarked and followed the course of their boat to its landing-place. But on reaching the frontier, all further trace of them was lost.
This wonderful story afforded a topic of discussionto the whole kingdom. So many persons bore testimony to the truth of the story, that it was impossible to doubt it; the more so, that Aymar followed it up with exploits equally wonderful. He detected several thieves, as well as the places where they had concealed their booty; and as a test of his powers, the lady of the chief officer of police possessed herself, by stealth, of the purse of one of her friends, and begged him to come to her and detect the thief. Aymar instantly declared that they were amusing themselves at his expense.
The Prince de Condé, who, far from being superstitious, had greater faith in his Field-Marshal’s baton than the divining rod, could not resist his curiosity to witness the feats of Aymar, and sent for him to Paris. As soon as he recovered the fatigues of his journey, he was conducted to a bureau, from which something of considerable value had disappeared; but whether or not the magnificence of the place annihilated the power of the divining rod, the charm was gone! Holes were dug in various parts of the garden, in which were deposited gold, copper, stones, and other substances. But the rod failed to point out the hidden treasure. In the interim, a pair of silver candlesticks having been stolen from Mademoiselle de Condé, Aymar’s rod pointed out a goldsmith’s shop, the master of which being accused, was highly indignant.Thirty-six livres were forwarded, however, the following morning as the price of the objects; and it was supposed that Aymar had resorted to this expedient, with the view of re-establishing his reputation. But it was all in vain! The divining rod had lost its reputation, and Jacques Aymar was pronounced to be an impostor.
At his own request, however, he accompanied the King’s advocate to a street in which a murder had been committed; and the result being unsatisfactory, Aymar was considered either a mountebank, or a man following, with new pretensions, the old trade of recovering for reward the stolen goods, in the abstraction of which he had participated.
Science becomes dangerous in the hands of empirics, as weapons in the hands of children. About forty years ago, a German doctor revived the marvels of the divining rod, grounding his system upon the phenomena of galvanism. But the philosophy of Volta disdained such an association. Pleasantly exposed to ridicule in the admirable pages of the antiquary, it is now estimated as on a par with the charm once supposed to be inherent in the rope by which a human being had suffered the sentence of the law. It is still proverbial with the vulgar, that any singularly lucky person “carries a bit of hangman’s rope in his pocket.”
Uninquiring incredulity is as great a proof ofweakness as over credulousness. The following instance of that incomprehensible foresight which flashes upon the brain of certain individuals, under the name of presentiment, passed under the notice of Gratien de Sémur.
Madame de Saulce, the wife of a rich planter of St. Domingo, was residing in France about the time of the Revolution. Her husband occasionally visited his native country, leaving his lady at Paris, who was a woman of sense and piety, by no means of a nervous temperament. During the last voyage of her husband, being engaged at cards at an evening party, she suddenly uttered a shriek, and sunk on her chair, exclaiming, “Monsieur Saulce is dead!” Her friends crowding about her, attempted to tranquillize her by their remonstrances, till by degrees she recovered her reason. So powerful, however, had been the sensation or presentiment, that she had no peace till she obtained news of her husband.
A favourable letter arrived; but, alas! the date was anterior to that of her vision. And soon afterwards, one of the friends present at the scene of Madame de Saulce’s ejaculation, received a communication from a stranger in St. Domingo, requesting him to communicate to that lady the distressing news of her husband’s decease. Monsieur de Saulce had been assassinated by his negroes, on the very day and hour of her fatal presentiment. The eventoccurred in the presence of at least twenty persons; and till the day of her death, the widow remained a prey to sorrow mingled with awe and consternation.
In the Memoirs of the great Sully will be found the record of the presentiments of assassination, which oppressed the mind of Henry IV. “The King,” says he, “had the strongest presentiment of his dreadful destiny. As the moment of his coronation approached, his alarm and consternation increased; and in answer to my remonstrance, he exclaimed: ‘In spite of all you can urge, this ceremony is most distasteful to me. My heart assures me that some misfortune will be the result.’ After uttering these desponding words, he sank back, overcome by gloomy anticipations; and remained tapping the case of his spectacles, absorbed in gloomy reverie.”
The presentiment of Henri IV. of his approaching assassination, is confirmed by the testimony of L’Etoile and Bassompierre, who, in their Memoirs, relate the same particulars; and the fact is as historically established as the evil dream of Calphurnia, and the denunciation of the soothsayer to Julius Cæsar, on a parallel occasion.
BEES AND ANTS.
Dull must be the blockhead, who could reproach La Fontaine with ignorance of Natural History, and pronounce the fable of the “Ant and the Grasshopper” bad, because the fabulist has not shown himself a rigid naturalist. The great fault charged against La Fontaine, by the critics, is having made the grasshopper sing. Its cry is considered by most people far from melodious.
The bee possesses a thousand poetical associations derived from our early conversancy with the Georgics. From the remotest periods of antiquity, bees have been recognised as attached to monarchical government, though not to the Salique law. A hive has been compared to the palace of a Czarina of Muscovy.
The queen bee reigns over hundreds of male subjects with the despotism of a Sultan; with the additional privilege of peopling her own dominions. When thequeen is on the point of increasing her numerous subjects, the females invade the seraglio of their sovereign, and with their stings exterminate all the male admirers of her majesty. The fecundity of a queen is such, that she can produce sixty thousand of her species annually. The males are easily recognized, being the sleekest and best formed of the hive; and all its labours are carried on by them. To gather honey, and bring back every day to the common exchequer the fruits of the plunder, separate the honey from the wax, and with the latter construct their cell, distil the honey, and die, constitute the duties of the bee.
It has been asserted that the queen bee has no sting, which is an error. Another error prevails, that after a bee has stung, it dies, leaving its sting in the wound. Some one probably crushed a bee, and found the sting in his finger, from which isolated fact a general conclusion has been made.
Réaumur applied himself to the study of bees; not, however, so devoutly as the philosopher, Aristomachus, who consecrated fifty-eight years to it; or the philosopher, Hytiscus, who conceived so great a passion for bees, that he retired into the Desart, the better to observe them. He simply cleared the way of errors, and discountenanced old traditions; but all was conjecture with regard to bees, till the invention of glass hives; when thegovernment of those interesting insects became no longer a secret. The devotion of the working bees to their queen is now well-known. When in danger, or the hive is attacked, they rush to her aid; and even form a mass to conceal her, and die in her defence.
Réaumur relates the following anecdote of which he was a witness. A queen bee, and some of her attendants were apparently drowned in a brook. He took them out of the water, and found that neither the queen bee, nor her attendants were quite dead. Réaumur exposed them to a gentle heat, by which they were revived. The plebeian bees recovered first. The moment they saw signs of animation in their queen, they approached her, and bestowed upon her all the care in their power, licking and rubbing her; and when the queen had acquired sufficient force to move, they hummed aloud, as if in triumph!
It has been thought that bees were prejudicial to the fructification of plants, by robbing them of their pollen. This is not only an error, but naturalists worthy of faith, are of opinion that their movement in a blossom tends to sprinkle the pollen, and promote fecundity.
Bees are of twofold service to the human race, by furnishing us with the most refined means of lighting our houses, and of brightening ourfurniture; to say nothing of their aromatic honey, surpassing the sweetness of sugar.
Little is known of the republics or monarchies of ants; or indeed of their precise form of government. From the most remote period, however, it has been the custom to represent the ant as the symbol of industry.
The industrious habits of the ant cannot be questioned; but their much vaunted foresight, as described by Boileau, and Addison’s Spectator, is now recognized as fabulous.
According to naturalists, the ant is not without a certain analogy with the bee; seeing that they have not one queen to each swarm, but a certain number of queens for the reproduction of the species; there being productive and unproductive ants. The working class is of a neutral sex. The female ant deposits an egg, whence proceeds a worm, which becomes the ant. As architects, also, to ants must be assigned the precedence over bees; their cellular formations resulting from instinct, and not from calculation. In the stupendous ant-hills so frequently seen in forests, what a series of galleries, dormitories, corridors, and magazines is contained; so that the numerous occupants find ample means of circulation. But the ant cannot pretend to the gratitude of man in the same degree as the bee.
The following is a curious and well-attested fact. After the death of the illustrious Lagrange, Parseval Deschênes, his coadjutor in his scientific pursuits, who announced the coming of Pallas ten years previous to the discovery of that planet—renounced his mathematical researches; and from long habits of study acquired fresh occupation for his mind.
While spending the summer with his friend, M. d’Aubusson de la Feuillade, in the course of one of his rambles in the woods, he found an immense ant-hill, and immediately resolved to make ants his study. He went every day early enough to the ant-hill to see the first ant issue forth; and followed it from the moment of its departure to that of its return.
“About four o’clock in the afternoon,” says he, “I saw my own particular ant arrive heavily laden at the foot of the diminutive mountain; and, finding it impossible to carry its burthen up the hill, deposit it and look around for a confederate. None being at hand, it set forth again; and about fifteen steps on its progress I saw my ant meet another equally loaded. Both halted, and seemed to hold council; after which, they proceeded together to the foot of the ant-hill. Then began the most interesting scene I ever witnessed. The second ant disembarrasseditself of its burthen; and, having provided themselves with a blade of grass, they slipped it under the overweighted load, and, by their united efforts, conveyed it over the hillock, and entered their respective cells!
“After abandoning the study of mathematics as too abstruse,” observes Parseval, “I found the lever of Archimedes in use in an ant-hill.”
PREPOSSESSIONS AND ANTIPATHIES.
Undue prepossession against or in favour of some object, is as much to be guarded against as any other irrational prejudices.
It is not uncommon to hear people reply when some particular dish is offered to them: “Thank you, I have never eaten any, and nothing could persuade me to touch it.” Such a prepossession scarcely would be pardonable in women or children.
An anecdote is related in the life of Talma, which has lately formed the subject of a drama.
A poor strolling player, universally rejected, arrived, at his wits’ end, in a city where the illustrious actor was expected. A bright idea flashed across his mind to personate Talma; as whom he accordingly announced himself. The authorities of the town hastened to offer him their homage. The theatre was crowded, and all the world enrapturedwith his performance. In the midst of his popularity, the real Talma arrived; but foreseeing that a prepossession once established in favour of the imitator was not likely to be easily reversed, departed without making himself known. The chances were that he might have been hissed.
It is difficult to comprehend the use of the flatteries of painters to Princes and Princesses about to be married by proxy. The portraits being exchanged, the betrothed receive a first strong impression, and form their opinions accordingly. A favourable prepossession is conceived; and in place of an agreeable and expressive countenance, a frightful reality is often rendered more frightful by disappointment.
With regard to literary predilections, the works of an unknown author, however meritorious, often lie mildewed on the shelf, while some trash, protected by a favourite name, becomes popular. The admirable leading articles of Benjamin Constant produced no effect till he signed them with his well-known name, when their merit was instantly recognised. When Michael Angelo first exhibited the productions of his chisel, they were treated as far inferior to the sculptures of the ancient world. In the seclusion of his studio, and unknown to any one, he accordingly set to work on a statue of Cupid; of which he broke off the arm, and concealed the mutilated statue in the midst ofthe excavations making by the Pope. When the statue was discovered, all Rome fell into ecstasies; pronouncing it to be the work of Phidias or Praxiteles. Michael Angelo immediately produced the mutilated arm, and his former critics became rebuked into silence.
At the time when the rage for Italian music excluded every other composition from the stage, and the great French composers had fallen in public estimation, Méhul avenged himself much in the manner of Michael Angelo. Zealous in the cause of French music, he composed the opera of the Irato, the words by the ingenious Hoffmann; who, to render the illusion complete, made the libretto as incomprehensible as possible. The opera was rehearsed in secret, though fifty persons were engaged in it; and it was circulated in the world, that the forthcoming opera was a mere pasticcio, borrowed from the operas recently in vogue in Italy.
When the curtain rose, the overture was enthusiastically applauded. Still more so, the different airs executed by Ellevion, Martin, and the excellent company of the Comic Opera. The theatre was crowded with enthusiastic admirers of Italian music, whose applause was vehement; one person declaring that the music was by Fioravanti, and that he had heard it at Naples; another, that it was by Cimarosa. At the end of the opera, it was announced to be byMéhul, when the amateurs of the Italian school were confounded.
Teniers also exposed the unjust prejudices of his countrymen; who, underrating his paintings, they sold far short of their value. Having previously published a report of his death and burial, he instructed his wife to assume widow’s weeds; and, after a certain time, to announce the sale of the paintings of her deceased husband. The stratagem succeeded, his very detractors enhancing the value of his works. Teniers afterwards returned to his native country, and resumed his labours, which were never afterwards disparaged.
When a History of France by Pigault Le Brun was announced, it was pronounced to be detestable long before it appeared; solely because Pigault Lebrun was the author of a variety of amusing novels. The famous physician Portal turned to good account the prejudice that prevails in Paris in favour of fashion. Established in the capital, he was some time without obtaining practice. At length, he devoted all his means to the purchase of a beautiful equipage, and sent it every day to stand before the doors of illustrious patients. Of course the numerous inquirers after the invalid, could not fail to remark the beautiful equipage of the physician in every quarter of the town; and the Marchioness immediately determined to try the physician of the Duchess, andvice versâ;till in a short time, Portal received applications from all quarters, calling in his advice to the noblest sufferers of the capital. Endowed with a distinguished appearance, elegant manners, and considerable powers of conversation, he became the indispensable attendant of all fashionable invalids; and thus, founded a reputation to which he subsequently proved himself entitled.
THE INFLUENCE OF BELLS UPON THUNDER STORMS.
Science has long demonstrated the folly of ringing church bells during a storm. The vibration of the air, produced by the movement of a bell, was formerly supposed to disperse the fluid; which, on the contrary, it attracts. For these fifty years past, the civic authorities have compelled the bell-ringers to be silent during a storm. In former ages, when the priests caused the bells to be rung during a storm, it was an act of piety and not a physical experiment. Scientific men, on the contrary, have been justified in declaring the vibration caused by the sound of a church bell upon a cloud charged with electricity to be injurious, from the fact that ringers have been struck dead by the electric fluid during the discharge of their functions. But though bells are no longer rung during a storm, the fluid falls just as often upon church steeples. It is, however, as well to forbid the ringing of bells during a storm, for the simple reasonthat to ring the bells, the ringer must be in the tower, where he is in greater danger than elsewhere. Steeples are often surmounted by an iron cross, or weathercock, which attracts the fluid.
It is only lately we have made any proficiency in electrical science. Franklin, who at the same moment brought fire from heaven and wrested the sceptre from the potentates of the earth, was the inventor of the conductor, which has probably preserved many monuments from destruction. In the reign of Louis XIV, sailors were in the habit of affixing a pointed sword to the summit of the mast, most likely acting under the experience and impression which produced the conductor. A learned priest, the Abbé Thiers, who died in 1703, in enumerating the superstitious practices of his time, mentions the custom of affixing a pointed sword to a mast during storms. The good old priest saw in it only a kind of superstition; while the discovery of Franklin commanded the admiration of the world. It is not unlikely that from the bosom of vulgar superstitions, science might extract many a valuable discovery.
In a late number of the Almanack of the Board of Longitude, Monsieur Arago published a curious theory upon thunder, citing many interesting facts; the only means of conferring popularity on knowledge, which, in its severer garb, is too often banished to the lecture-room. The influence of storms uponanimate as well as inanimate bodies, is incontestable; for which of us has not felt or witnessed the effects? Previous to the approach of the storm, the depression of the air is perceptible upon our limbs and spirits; and on beholding the dejected, languid, and uneasy demeanour of the animal species, it might be supposed that so powerful a sensation would be more oppressive to ourselves, were it not restrained by reason. A similar sensation is experienced in a far higher degree, previous to the shock of an earthquake.
With the first drops of rain of a thunder storm, however, we experience relief. Both animal and vegetable substances become decomposed during a storm. Objects formed of goat or sheep-skin give out a nauseous smell. White paper and other substances have been known to become covered with spots of various hues. Oxen killed by lightning are unfit for use, so nauseous and black is the flesh. Dairy-maids place a nail under the vessels containing the milk, to prevent it turning, as well as under a hen which is sitting. Remote approaches towards the conductor!
Of the phenomena which signalize storms, nothing is more remarkable than the repugnance of the electric fluid for silk. The steel ornaments of a purse have been known to become twisted by the fluid, while the silk remained uninjured. A covering ofsilk is accordingly the surest preservative. But it is a curious fact that to none of the insect species is a thunder-storm more fatal than to the silk-worm; as the silk-growers know to their cost.
The protective power of the laurel is now known to be fabulous; the laurel tree being as much a conductor as any other.
SMALL POX AND VACCINATION.
If any thing could excuse the exercise of arbitrary power on the part of a Government, it would surely be in the act of compelling parents to vaccinate their children; but the aversion to vaccination being still only too common among certain classes of the people. Yet surely the law which punishes parents for ill-usage of their children, might be extended to punish their leaving these helpless creatures exposed to the infection of pain and disfigurement? Jenner is decidedly one of the greatest benefactors of the human race; for the vast increase of population in the different countries of Europe is ascribed, by many political economists, to the safeguard of vaccination, which has preserved more lives since its introduction, than the terrible wars of the present century have destroyed.
In England, this admirable discovery was far more readily adopted than in France; where, howeverversatile in fashions and governments, any improvement tending to benefit the human race is slowly and cautiously accepted. In the reign of Louis XIV, the introduction of yeast in the making of bread met with general opposition; and it required the interference of the legislature to secure its adoption. The introduction of bark and emetics was also attended with violent opposition; and inoculation introduced from Turkey into Western Europe by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, found great difficulty in establishing itself in France.
It was not, however, surprising that parents should hesitate about giving their children a loathsome disease; before it became certified by long experience that the virulence of the disorder was considerably lessened by preparation; so as to secure a mother against the terrible self-reproaches arising from the loss of a child under the inoculated malady.
In England, more particularly in the county of Gloucester, from time immemorial cows were subject to a contagious disease, which infected the hands of the milkmaids, who were observed never to suffer from the small-pox. This surmise being confirmed by experiment, Dr. Jenner established himself in the county of Gloucester; where, by inoculating people with vaccine matter, he secured them against the small-pox.
So far from turning his discovery to pecuniaryaccount, as most others would have done, Jenner nobly proclaimed it to mankind, calling upon all philantrophists to share his triumph.
The Duke de Rochefauld-Liancourt having witnessed the effects of vaccination in England, introduced it into France, and did more for its propagation than the slow deliberations of the Parisian Schools of Medicine. Dr. Pinel, however, tried experiments at the Hospital of the Salpétrière, with perfect success; while Dr. Aubert was despatched by Government to England to report upon the subject. The result was favourable. Matter was imported from England in the month of May, 1800, when thirty-eight children were vaccinated at the Hospital of La Pitié; and commissions were instantly instituted throughout France. Jenner had, however, his opponents. In London, it was denounced from the pulpit, as an infringement on the dispensation of Providence; and in France, Doctors Vaume, Chapon and others pronounced vaccination to be injurious to the human constitution, and capable of reducing man to the condition of a brute, by the introduction of animal virus into the blood. As if we resembled a calf or sheep the more for having swallowed a mutton chop or veal cutlet.
With a few rare exceptions, vaccination has proved a security against the small-pox, and the practice ought consequently to become universal. But oldwomen are still to be found with instances of children who have died of convulsions after vaccination; as if that were the origin of their illness and death.
Among the lower orders, a prejudice prevails that an inferior kind of vaccine matter is provided for them; and whenever their children exhibit symptoms of disease or deformity, they comfort their self-love by attributing it to the influence of vaccination. “Such maladies were unknown in their families, till the madness of introducing matter from the body of a stranger into that of their child conveyed also the germs of disease.”
PRECOCIOUS AND CLEVER CHILDREN.
It is a common observation respecting children, “that such or such a child is too clever to live;” and though abundance of precocious children have grown up, and into very ordinary men, it stands to reason that the premature development of any particular quality in an extraordinary degree, must exhaust the subject upon whom it operates. Gardeners thin the superfluous shoots on trees, that those remaining may attain their perfect growth. It would be difficult, perhaps, to pursue this system with children who manifest supernaturally precocious capacities. But when such cases present themselves, the vanity of parents often serves to forward an evil result. The parents of children of genius usually stimulate instead of checking the impulses requiring restraint; thus increasing the already existing exhaustion. Proud of their infantine prodigy, which, in humble life, becomes the objectof some abominable speculation, nothing can be more lamentable than the exhibition of these interesting little beings, carried about from place to place, obtaining a notoriety of the most injurious nature, and often let out for hire to some able speculator. The exhibitionist, bent upon realising the largest profit in the shortest time, and, reckless as to the source, having attained his end, cares not whether the child perish in misery; and the laws, so severe upon the poor hucksters in our streets, unprovided with a licence, sanction these homicidal speculations!
Baillet mentions one hundred and sixty-three children endowed with extraordinary talents, among whom few arrived at an advanced age. The two sons of Quintilian, so vaunted by their father, did not reach their tenth year. Hermogenes, who at the age of fifteen, taught rhetoric to Marcus Aurelius, who triumphed over the most celebrated rhetoricians of Greece, did not die, but at twenty-four, lost his faculties and forgot all he had previously acquired. Pica di Mirandola died at thirty-two; Johannes Secundus at twenty-five; having at the age of fifteen composed admirable Greek and Latin verses, and become profoundly versed in jurisprudence and letters. Pascal, whose genius developed itself at ten years old, did not attain the third of a century.
In 1791, a child was born at Lubeck, namedHenri Heinekem, whose precocity was miraculous. At ten months of age, he spoke distinctly; at twelve, learnt the Pentateuch by rote, and at fourteen months, was perfectly acquainted with the Old and New Testaments. At two years of age, he was as familiar with Ancient History as the most erudite authors of antiquity. Sanson and Danville only could compete with him in geographical knowledge; Cicero would have thought him an “alter ego,” on hearing him converse in Latin; and in modern languages, he was equally proficient. This wonderful child was unfortunately carried off in his fourth year. According to a popular proverb—“the sword wore out the sheath.”
The American family of the Davisons, whose Memoirs have been recently before the public, afford two melancholy instances in point. Nevertheless, the duty of every created being is to give the most ample development to the predispositions conferred on him by his Creator; and this is certainly to be accomplished without injury to the human frame. The mission of woman is the perpetuation of the human race; and the statistical table of all countries demonstrate that fruitful women have been remarkable for their longevity. On the other hand, the tables of Blair and others prove that unmarried women, whether spinsters or nuns, are shorter lived than matrons. As regards the influence of anexcessive exercise of the intellect on the life of man, we can quote many instances of longevity among the most eminent of ancient or modern times.
Hippocrates, the greatest physician the world has ever seen, died at the age of one hundred and nine, in the island of Cos, his native country. Galen, the most illustrious of his successors, reached the age of one hundred and four. The three sages of Greece, Solon, Thales, and Pittacus, lived for a century. The gay Democritus outlived them by two years. Zeno wanted only two years of a century when he died. Diogenes ten years more; and Plato died at the age of ninety-four, when the eagle of Jupiter is said to have borne his soul to Heaven. Xenophon, the illustrious warrior and historian, lived ninety years. Polemon and Epicharmus ninety-seven; Lycurgus eighty-five; Sophocles more than a hundred. Gorgias entered his hundred and eighth year; and Asclepiades, the physician, lived a century and a half. Juvenal lived a hundred years; Pacuvius and Varro but one year less. Carneades died at ninety; Galileo at sixty-eight; Cassini at ninety-eight; and Newton at eighty-five. In the last century, Fontenelle expired in his ninety-ninth year; Buffon in his eighty-first; Voltaire in his eighty-fourth. In the present century, Prince Talleyrand, Goethe, Rogers, and Niemcewicz are remarkable instances. The Cardinal du Belloy livednearly a century; and Marshal Moncey lately terminated a glorious career at eighty-five.
Voltaire, though not a juvenile prodigy, was still young when he achieved his brilliant reputation. At seventeen, he wrote the poem of La Ligue, which afterwards became the Henriade; and at nineteen, produced the tragedy of Œdipus. His constitution was then far from strong; and his correspondence attests his frequent sufferings. No man, perhaps, ever made a larger demand on his faculties. Yet his head may be said to have survived the other members of his body, the extremities of which were long insensible; his body reduced to a skeleton, his stomach rejecting all sustenance, while to the last moment, his spirit gave proofs of wit and genius. Among the precocious children who survived to maturity, though of weakly health, were Alexander Pope and Dr. Johnson, both of whom may be said to have “lisped in numbers.”
Liceti, the son of a Genoese physician, came into the world only a few inches long, and it was thought impossible he could live. His father, however, gave him the name of Fortunio, a singular selection, considering the circumstances of the event, and placed him in an oven of even temperature, under the care of an attentive nurse; and in the course of a few months, Fortunio Liceti differed in nothing from children born in the usual manner.The early years of this child passed much as that of others, except that he evinced signs of superior intelligence. At nineteen, he wrote a “Treatise on the Soul;” and in the course of a life of seventy-nine years, embellished the literature of his country with eighty works, bearing the stamp of great erudition.
Marshal Richelieu was a child of untimely birth; and so delicate in frame, as to be considered impossible to rear, though carefully wrapped in cotton. Yet he lived to the age of eighty-five! Without intending to set up Richelieu as a first-rate man, or defend his licentiousness, we cannot deny him a prominent place among the distinguished Frenchmen of the last century; being as much the representative of the tone and manners of the great world, as Voltaire of the wit, or Mirabeau of the eloquence of the country.
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
Neither the illustrious preceptor of Alexander, nor the amiable preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy, nor all the professors of the universities of England and France, ever effected so much in the way of education, as that unrecognised president of all universities and public schools—Example!—From the hour of their birth, children begin to imitate. Their first words are mimicries of what they hear pronounced before them. Hence the origin of different idioms and enunciations. Montaigne made Latin the mother tongue of his son, by surrounding him with persons who spoke no other language, and even a nurse who spoke Latin.
The intellect of children expands long before they have the power of expressing their ideas. Physicians have affirmed that children have been known to die of jealousy, before they were old enough toexpress their sensations. Excessive notice of another child, or seeming neglect of themselves, has been found to induce a state of languor, and hasten their end. Young children suffer doubly in illness, from the incapability of expressing their pain.
Their language being formed upon our own, and their conduct framed upon our own, the duty of placing desirable examples before them is sufficiently evident; yet we frequently punish them for faults of which the first lesson was given by ourselves. In many conditions of life, however, parents are forced to delegate to other hands the care of their progeny. The labouring poor, for instance, cannot constantly watch over them. While the rich wantonly confide their infants to the care of menial hands, the poor trust them to any which God is pleased to send to their aid. It is even more essential to avoid giving bad examples to children than to offer them good. Yet how often are family dissensions and recriminations exposed to their observation! A man and wife living ill together, who so far forget themselves as to quarrel before their children, create a preference and partizanship which must diminish the respect equally due to both parents. In humbler life, abusive language often ends with blows; and what must be the effect of such scenes on the tender mind of infancy?
The presence of children on such occasions, whenproved before the magistracy, ought to be considered an aggravation of the offence against the law. Fathers and mothers by upbraiding each other in presence of their children, often beget impressions which all their future representations are unable to eradicate; and of what avail to the comfort of parents the brilliant accomplishments and attractive manners of their children, if a son have been taught to disparage his father, or a daughter to think ill of her mother! Often do children so young as to appear deficient in observation, receive vague but indelible impressions, afterwards recalled by a retrospective view; when the past appears clear and free from the vapours which veiled it from our earlier comprehension.
Among the lower orders, if a poor man be laborious, his son is usually the same. But the son of a father who ill-uses the mother, is pretty sure to turn out an idler and a dunce in childhood, and, in riper years, a ruffian.
PREJUDICES OF THE FRENCH.
The prevailing weakness of the French, collectively and individually, is to esteem themselves the type and model of perfection; the standard by which the universe ought to be regulated. An Italian author once asserted that the face of man was not made after that of God; but that the face of the Creator was to be imagined after that of man. The French consider all that resembles them, right: all that differs from them, wrong. This prejudice entitles foreigners to laugh at them, whether justly or not. The word “fat” appears to have been exclusively invented for the nation. Vain, presumptuous, haughty, disdainful men are to be found in all countries; butfatuitéis the peculiar attribute of Frenchmen; nor does any other language possess an equivalent term.
The French, unhesitatingly, pronounce themselves the most polished nation of the universe; and Paris, thecapital of the civilized world,—the city of arts, sciences, elegance of manners, and refinement. In Paris only, does genius receive due homage,—merit, encouragement,—or the mind its full development. But the temple they have erected to their national vanity, has begun to totter upon its flimsy foundation.
Notwithstanding their assumed pre-eminence, no nation is more prone to imitate the customs, usages, fashions, and forms of government of others. Just as the Romans placed the Gods of their defeated enemies in their Pantheon, the French, under Napoleon, brought back the customs of foreign nations.
For twelve centuries, the French possessed a system of government of their own; but they decided, at length, to adopt that of the English. A Revolution having occurred in England, and a King been beheaded in London, an analogous event appeared indispensable; and a King of France, consequently, ended his reign on the scaffold. In early times, one legislative chamber was considered sufficient; but as there existed two in England, their national vanity could not rest till gratified by a similar number. In all this, there is little to support the vaunted superiority of the French.
Till the close of the last century, the French wore what is still termed, on the continent, the French costume, orhabit Français, with bags and swords, which in England we call a court-dress. But theEnglish having laid aside these inconvenient appendages in favour of hunting and riding coats, the latter were quickly adopted by the Parisians under the name ofredingotte.
The Lord Cadogan of Marlborough’s time, having found it convenient to double up his queue, and bind it with a bow of black ribbon, the whole French army adopted the fashion; and his Lordship’s name became immortalized in France by “les perruques à la Cadogan.”
The strong horses of Normandy required an easy but somewhat solid kind of saddle, the form of which had prevailed from the time of Louis XIV. But the English using a lighter and smaller kind, it was adopted in preference; and certain moral philosophers who proceeded to England to study the laws, manners, and system of government, having remarked in addition that the English treated their horses as Alcibiades did his dog, the horses on the other side the channel were forthwith anglicised by the abbreviation of their tails.
On the arrival of the Bourbons and the English in France, in 1814, the long waists and cottage-bonnets of the ladies were made the ground-work of innumerable caricatures. Yet a few years afterwards, generally they were adopted! This Anglomania has been as much a matter of reproach to the French for centuries past; as, in England, the preference of theEnglish ladies for French goods and manufactures. A serious source of discussion between Napoleon and Josephine was her rage for English fashions.
In the early part of the Revolution, the Duke of Orleans made frequent excursions to England; in one of which he purchased a sword hilt of steel, the execution of which was admirable. On his return to Paris, he exhibited it to a celebrated steel worker, challenging him to produce its equal; on which, taking up the hilt, the man pointed out his own name to the Prince, as the manufacturer of the article, which had been exported to London.
During the brilliant campaigns of Field-Marshal Suwarow, the form of his hat and boots was copied by the military men of France; and when Bolivar and Murillo were ascertained to wear hats of different dimensions, the French partizans of the two chiefs assumed on one part, broad-brimmed Spanish hats, on the other, a narrower shape.
When the Russians came to Paris at the Restoration, another change took place. Instead of the boots worn to protect the legs from the mud, the wide trowsers of the Russians made to cover their boots, in consideration of the bitterness of their climate, were instantly adopted by the nation which pronounces itself the arbiter of Europe in matters of taste. The padded chests of the Russian uniforms, also worn as a defence against the weather,were imitated in defiance of climate and common sense.
Previous to the arrival of the Russians in Paris, smoking was limited to the operative classes, and soldiers who had fought in the German campaign. But from the moment the Russians began to smoke in the open street, the capital so famed for elegance, became polluted with the smell of tobacco. A modern man of fashion can no more dispense with his cigar-case than Bayard with his sword; and in imitation of the Spanish women, the fashionable Parisian ladies, known by the name oflionnes, have taken to smoking.
In order to mark their estimation of the Swedes, when they elected to be their Prince, Bernadotte, who is a Frenchman, they thought to do them the highest honour by calling them the French of the north. Two noblemen, the one an aide-de-camp of Napoleon, the other of the Emperor Alexander, having made acquaintance at Tilsit, the former observed, with the intention of paying a compliment: “You might really be taken for a Frenchman!” to which the Russian, indignant at his rudeness, replied: “Depend upon it you could never pass for a Russian!”
It is a favourite vaunt of the braggarts of France, that their children are born soldiers. “Stamp upon the soil of France, and myriads of warriors will start up!” says one of their popular writers.
In answer to this boast, observe the results of the drawing for the conscription, when the most trifling bodily defects are put forth to secure exemption from military service!—Nothing can exceed the despair of those who draw what is called “a bad number;” though a military career presents nearly the same advantages to a working man as any other to which he may devote himself.
The self-sufficiency of the nation stands perpetually self-convicted; and it is now proverbial in Europe to “be as great a boaster as a Frenchman.”