CONCLUDING CHAPTER.MISCELLANEOUS.
Superstition of the Hindoos—The Malays—Asiatic superstitions—The Chinese—Miracle of the Blessed Virgin—Stratagem of an architect—Michael Angelo’s Cupid—Statue of Charles I.—Ever-burning sepulchral lamps—Lamp in the tomb of Pallas—The art of mimicry—Superiority of the ancients—Fable of Proteus—Personation of the insane Ajax—Archimimes at funerals—Demetrius the cynic converted—Acting portraits and historical pictures—War dances of the American Indians—The South Sea Bubble—Gay the poet—Law’s Mississippi scheme—Numerous bubbles—Speculations in 1825.
Suchhas been the extent of the credulity of the human mind, that it would require many volumes to enumerate the whole of its singular vagaries. Our object in compiling such a work cannot be accomplished without greatly condensing those accounts which historians and travellers have communicated; we therefore devote the concluding chapter to summary notices of several matters, that to enlarge upon would defeat the intent of this publication.
The religion of India is based upon the grossest superstition; divided into castes, the persons of the Brahmins are sacred; the food of the Hindoos is entirely of vegetables, as it was in the time of Alexander; widows were burned alive to insure their eternal happiness; one hundred and fifty thousand persons assemble yearly at the temple of Juggernaut in honour of a blind deity, precipitating themselves voluntarily before its wheels, where they are crushed to death, thus instantly as they believe, entering a blessed immortality.
More individual cases of absurd and disgusting fanaticism occur in the Hindoo religion than, probably, in all the other religions in the world. The excruciating penances these Indian devotees voluntarily undergo, their number and extent, have struck all travellers. In making a pilgrimage to Hurdwar, one zealous devotee performed a journey of some hundred miles, prostrating himself and measuring every inch of the way with his body as he advanced; some swing themselves on a rope by means of a hook passed through the muscles of the back; some over fires with their heads towards the flame; every variety of personal torture is endured from a mistaken principle of religion conjoined with pride of caste; some have literally burned themselves alive; mutilation to propitiate some goddess is no uncommon occurrence; some years since a Hindoo actually cut out his tongue to propitiate the amiable goddess Kali-Ghat.
The Malays have equally absurd superstitions, and charms are bought at extravagant prices. A volume wouldalone be required to cite the superstitions of Asia, where the human mind remains to this day in a childlike state. The peculiar tenets of the Chinese have been ably set forth by many writers, and by none more successfully than by Davis, in his history of this curious nation. Their priests are taken from the lowest orders, and a Chinaman depends upon their prayers.
But we need not visit China to be convinced of the natural tendency of man to superstition; a story is current of a picture of the immaculate conception, which was in the late college of Jesuits in Valencia, that may challenge competition for absurdity. This picture is the object of general veneration, and by the devout is considered almost equal to the Virgin herself; for tradition reports, that it was painted of Father Alberto, to whom the Blessed Virgin condescended to appear on the eve of the assumption, ordering her portrait in the dress she then wore; he employed Juanes, who, after many trials succeeding, the work was sanctified, and the pencil, like a sword, was blessed and made invincible by the Pope, so that it never missed its stroke. One day Juanes seated on a scaffold at work on the upper part of the picture, the painter being in the act of falling, the holy personage, whose portrait he had finished, stepped suddenly from the canvass, and seizing his hand, preserved him from the fall, when the gracious lady returned to her post!
A very ancient fraud connected with architecture is mentioned by Sandys, in his curious and rare book on the East. One of the Ptolemies caused a tower to be built of a wonderful height, having many lanterns for the use of ships at sea during the night. It was reputed the seventh wonder of the world. Sostratus, of Cnidos, the ambitious architect, was refused by the king the satisfaction of setting his name to the work. This, however, the artist effected by cutting an inscription on a block of marble,which he encrusted over with a fictitious stone, on which was engraved a pompous inscription in honour of the king; when it decayed his own name appeared as the builder.
Michael Angelo, to try how far he could impose upon the curious in sculpture, carved a statue of Cupid. Having broken off the arm, he buried the rest of the figure under a certain ruin, where they were wont to dig in search of marbles. It was soon after discovered, and passed among the learned antiquaries for an invaluable and undoubted piece of ancient sculpture, till Angelo produced the arm previously broken off, which fitted so exactly as to convince them of their too easy credulity, and the vanity of their speculations.
In the year 1678, was erected the animated statue of Charles I., at Charing Cross. The parliament, in Cromwell’s time ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but the brazier who purchased it dug a hole in his garden, and buried it unmutilated, producing to his masters several pieces of brass which he told them were parts of the statue; and in the true spirit of trade, he cast a number of handles of knives and forks, offering them for sale as composed of the brass of the statue; they were eagerly sought for, and purchased by the loyalists, from affection for their murdered monarch. When the second Charles was restored, the statue was brought forth from its place of concealment, and eagerly purchased at a great profit to the brazier.
A superstition now forgotten, was long credited, that sepulchral lamps have burned for several hundred years, and that they would have continued burning, perhaps for ever, had they not been broken by the accidental digging into the tombs by husbandmen and others; few have declared themselves to have beeneye-witnessesof the fact, but many learned and ingenious authors give abundanceof instances on the report of others. The origin of these lamps seems to have been with the Egyptians, who, through a firm belief of the metempsychosis, endeavoured to procure a perpetuity to the body itself, by balsams or embalming, and security to it afterwards, by lodging it in pyramids or catacombs: so also they endeavoured to animate the defunct by perpetual fire, the essence of which answered to the nature of the soul in their opinion: for with them fire was the symbol of an incorruptible, immortal, and divine nature. The soul was to be lighted by its lamp when it wandered according to its option, and thus safely return to its old quarters.
One of the most remarkable of the sepulchral lamps has thus been described as found in the tomb of Pallas. In the year 1501, a countryman, digging deep into the earth, near Rome, discovered a tomb of stone, wherein lay a body, so tall, that being raised erect, it overtopped the walls of the city, and was as entire as if newly buried, having a very large wound on the breast, and a lamp burning at the head, which could neither be extinguished by wind nor water; so that they were obliged to perforate the bottom of the lamp, and by that means put out the flame. This was said to be the body of Pallas, slain by Turnus; the lamp is said to have burned two thousand five hundred and eleven years; and perhaps would have continued to burn to the end of the world, had it not been broken, and the liquid spilt!
At the present day of intellectual advancement, this story of the size of Pallas, and of the lamp whose contumacious flame, well befitting such a giant, exceeds all belief, however gravely stated; yet the time was, when, instead of exciting contemptuous laughter, it was implicitly credited. The lamp in the temple of Jupiter Ammon was reported by the priests to have burned continually, yet it consumed less oil each succeeding year;though burning in the open air, neither wind nor water could extinguish it. A similar lamp also burned in honour of Venus. Trithemius obliges his readers with two long receipts for the artificial manufacture of these lamps, yet seems to doubt their efficacy.
Thepossibilityof such eternal lamps being made in Egypt has been attributed to the existence of the bituminous wells or fountains, from which the learned in those days laid secret canals or pipes to the subterranean caves, where, in a convenient place, they set up a lamp with a wick of asbestos. It seems, indeed, to have been thought a great desideratum in the arts to invent a perpetual lamp for the companion of the dead as a complimentary illumination to the manes of the departed, or from some foolish desire to strike wonder, in after times, in some carnal beholder, unwittingly violating the tomb; the accounts of such appear to have been generally believed authentic up to the end of the seventeenth century; the utilitarian age we live in is content to possess a perpetual locomotive fire for those above ground.
The art of mimicry, in its modern sense though confined to a mere imitation of manners, in former times, by the excellence of its action, imposed on the imaginations of the spectators, and persuaded them into a belief of the reality of what was represented, even as it were against conviction.
The endeavour of one or more individuals to express or relate any story by mere action, was carried to much greater perfection among the ancients than now appears to be possible. According to Lucian, a single dancer or mime was able to express all the incidents and sentiments of a whole tragedy or epic poem by action, accompanied by music, and the fable of Proteus he seemed to think meant no more than that he was an accomplished pantomime. The education of a mime required, he says, his whole life to make himself master of his profession; he must know the past, the present, and what is to come;in short, the spectator mustunderstandthe dancer though dumb, andhearhim though silent.
Lucian mentions a famous mime, who played Ajax the madman so well, and raged in such a way that one would have said he did not counterfeit, but was mad in reality. Timocrates, a tutor in philosophy, and who from conscientious motives had declined being present at such plays, by accident seeing a pantomime, cried out, “What admirable sights have I lost by a philosophical modesty!” and ever afterwards attended them.
This kind of scenic representation was given at funerals, and the actors were called archimimes; they went before the coffin, and imitated the gestures and actions of the deceased; his virtues and vices were depicted. Demetrius the cynic, disdained and railed at the art of the mime, declaring all the success was derived from the music; but a famous mime in Nero’s time, invited him to see him dance, and, having witnessed his performance, then to find fault with him. Having imposed silence on the music, he danced the story of the amours of Mars and Venus, the discovery of them by the sun; in short so well was it done, that Demetrius, transported, cried out aloud, “I hear, my friend, what you act; I not only see the persons you represent, but methinks you speak with your hands.”
There is less to be said of this art in its present state, though pantomime, considered distinct from harlequinade, now receives great attention in Italy. The acting of portraits and historical pictures, exhibited with the greatest fidelity of costume and attitude in Florence, and which amusement is now common in well-bred circles at home, is another species of ingenious deception, which is almost perfect. The war-dance among the American Indians is most striking, representing a campaign. The departure of the warriors from their village, their march into the enemy’s country, the caution with which they encamp, the address with which they station some oftheir company in ambuscade, the manner of surprising their enemy, the noise and ferocity of the combat, the scalping of those who are slain, the seizing of the prisoners, the triumphant return of the conquerors, and the torture of the victims, are successively and ably exhibited with the tact of actors. The performers enter with such enthusiastic ardour into their several parts; their gestures, their countenance, their voice, are so wild, and so well adapted to their various situations, that Europeans can hardly believe it to be a mimic scene, or view it without emotions of horror.
Public credulity, founded on the inordinate desire of gain, was perhaps never exhibited in a stronger point of view than by the fatal belief in the South Sea scheme, which to the credulous believer, like that of Law’s Mississippi bubble, was made to appear a royal road to El Dorado. It was patronised by persons of both sexes in the highest ranks of society, and even by royalty itself and men of letters; Gay, the poet, had a present of some of the stock, and at one time believed himself worth twenty thousand pounds, but like others lost all; Chandler, the learned non-conformist divine, lost his whole fortune, and turned bookseller for subsistence.
The scheme originated in the reign of Queen Anne, in the year 1711, a fund being formed on the chimerical notion that the English would be allowed to trade to the coast of Peru. Sir John Blunt, who was bred a scriviner, devised the scheme, and communicated it to Aislabie, the chancellor of the exchequer. The pretence of this scheme was to discharge the national debt by reducing all the funds into one stock. The Bank of England and the South Sea Company vied with each other, and the latter ultimately offered such high terms that the proposal of the Bank was rejected, and the Company’s stock rose considerably. It produced a kind of national delirium. Sir John Blunt took this hint from Law’s scheme, which was that a royal bank be erected by subscription,and, having a fund in hand to answer bills on demand, the scheme began to take, and established its credit by its punctual discharge, till it increased to such extraordinary magnitude as to pay bills for one million and a quarter sterling a day.
In this project of Law, however, there was something substantial; an exclusive trade to Louisiana promised advantage, though the design was defeated by the frantic eagerness of the people. Law himself had become the dupe of the regent, who transferred the burden of fifteen hundred million of francs of the king’s debt to the shoulders of the people, while the projector was sacrificed as the scape-goat of political iniquity.
The South Sea scheme promised no commercial advantage of any consequence; it was buoyed by nothing but the folly and rapacity of individuals, who became so blinded with the prospect of gain as to become easy dupes.
When the projector found that the South Sea stock did not rise to his expectation, he circulated reports that Gibraltar and Port Mahon would be exchanged for some places in Peru, by which the South Sea trade would be protected and enlarged. This report acted like a contagion; persons of all ranks crowded to subscribe; the Exchange Alley was filled with a strange concourse of statesmen, clergymen, dissenters, whigs, tories, physicians, lawyers, &c. &c., and even females. All other professions and employments were neglected. Other companies without foundation were got up to deceive, and all found favour with the mad public. There were actually some shares of a fictitious company, called Globe Permits, each of which came at last to be currently sold for sixty guineas and upwards, and yet were only square bits of card, on which were the impression of a seal in wax, having the sign of the Globe tavern. A burlesque upon this reigning folly appeared in an advertisement for a company with a capital of two millions for meltingdown sawdust and chips, and casting them into clean deal boards without knots.
The public infatuation lasted till the 8th of September, when the stock began to fall and soon reached the point of being worthless. Public credit received a severe shock; the cunning ones devised a scheme for relief from the Bank of England, and sold out for what they could realize; some of the ministry were implicated. Knight, the Treasurer, fled the kingdom; the Committee of the House of Commons to investigate discovered a train of the deepest villany; the directors were seized, and it appeared that large sums had been given to persons in the administration and House of Commons for promoting the passing of the act, and a fictitious stock of five hundred and seventy-four thousand pounds had been disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing of the bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was committed to the Tower and convicted of peculation; the estates of the most guilty directors were confiscated for the benefit of the sufferers.
In 1825 the general feeling for bubbles was again led captive by the unreasonable hopes of speculation. In January of that year there existed in London no less than one hundred and twenty speculating schemes, carried on by companies, often consisting of only the projector and his clerk, causing great misery and frequent ruin.
THE END.