July 27.

Thou who despisest so debased a fateAs in the pride of wisdom thou may’st callThe much submissiveSeurat’s low estate,Look round the world, and see where over allinjurious passions hold mankind in thrall!—Behold the fraudful arts, the covert strife,The jarring interests that engross mankind;The low pursuits, the selfish aims of life;Studies that weary and contract the mind,That bring no joy, and leave no peace behind;—And Death approaching to dissolve the spell!Southey’s Tale of Paraguay.

Southey’s Tale of Paraguay.

Death is not contemplated by Seurat as near to him, and it is even probable that his “last event” is far off. The vital organs have wonderfully conformed themselves to his malformation, and where they are seated, perform their office uninterruptedly. The quantity of solid nutriment for the support of his feeble frame never exceeds four ounces a day. The pulsations of his heart are regular, and it has never palpitated; at the wrist, they are slow and equally regular. He has never been ill, nor taken medicine, except once, and then only a small quantity of manna. His skin is not more dry than the skin of many other living persons who abstain, as he does, from strong vinous or fermented liquors, and drink sparingly; it is not branny, but perfectly smooth; nor is it of a colour unnatural to a being who cannot sustain much exercise, who exists in health with very little, and therefore does not require more. The complexion of his body is that of a light Creole, or perhaps more similar to that of fine old ivory; it must be remembered, that his natural complexion is swarthy. What has been asserted elsewhere is perfectly true, that when dressed in padded clothes, he would not in any position be more remarkable than any other person, except that, among Englishmen, he would be taken for a foreigner. On the day before his public exhibition, he walked from the Gothic-hall in the Haymarket, to the Chinese Saloon in Pall-mall, arm-in-arm with the gentleman who brought him from France, and was wholly unrecognized and unnoticed.

Until ten years of age, Seurat was as healthy as other children, except that his chest was depressed, and he was much weaker; until that year, he used to run about and play, and tumble down from feebleness. From that age his feebleness increased, and he grew rapidly until he was fourteen, when he attained his present stature, with further increase of weakness: he is not weaker now than he was then. His recreation is reading, and he is passionately fond of listening to music. He cannot stoop, but he can lift a weight of twelve pounds from a chair: of course, he displays no feats of any kind, and unless great care is taken, he may be injured by cold, and the fatigue of the exhibition. Of this, however, himself and his father, who is with him, and who is a shrewd, sensible man, seem aware. He remains about ten minutes standing and walking before the company, and then withdraws between the curtains to seat himself, from observation in a blanketed arm-chair, till another company arrives. His limbs are well-proportioned; he is not at all knock-kneed, nor are his legs any way deformed.

Seurat is “shocking” to those who have never reflected on mortality, and think him nearer to the grave than themselves. Perhaps he is only so in appearance. The orderly operation of the vita principle within him for the last thirteen or fourteen years, may continue to the ordinary duration of human life. Every one of his spectators is “encompassed in aghostlyframe,” and exemplifies, as much as Seurat, the scriptural remark, that “in the midst of life we are in death:” it is not further from us for not thinking on it, nor is it nearer to us because it is under our eyes.

Seurat’s Positions when exhibiting himself.

Seurat’s existence is peculiar to himself; he is unlike any being ever heard of, and no other like him may ever live. But if he is alone in the world, and to himself useless, he may not be without his use to others. His condition, and the privations whereby he holds his tenure of existence, are eloquent to a mind reflecting on the few real wants of mankind, and the advantages derivable from abstinent and temperate habits. Had he been born a little higher in society, his mental improvement might have advanced with his corporeal incapacity, and instead of being shown as a phenomenon, he might have flourished as a sage. No man has been great who has not subdued his passions; real greatness has insisted on this as essential to happiness, and artificial greatness shrunk from it. When Paul “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled.” Seurat’s appearance seems an admonition from the grave to “think on these things.”

[218]Morning Herald.[219]The Times.[220]Zoological Anecdotes.[221]Ibid.[222]Ibid.[223]Maitland’s London, edit. 1772, i. 17.[224]Gent. Mag.[225]Patrick’s Devot. of Rom. Church.[226]Times.

[218]Morning Herald.

[219]The Times.

[220]Zoological Anecdotes.

[221]Ibid.

[222]Ibid.

[223]Maitland’s London, edit. 1772, i. 17.

[224]Gent. Mag.

[225]Patrick’s Devot. of Rom. Church.

[226]Times.

St. Pantaleon,A. D.303.Sts. Maximian,Malchus,Martinian,Dionysius,John,Serapion, andConstantine, the Seven Sleepers,A. D.250.St. Congail,St. Luica.

These saints, according to Alban Butler, were Ephesians, who for their faith, under Decius, in 250, were walled up together in a cave, wherein they had hid themselves, till they were found in 479; andhence, he says, “somemodernshave imagined that they only lay asleep till they were found.” He designates them in his title, however, as having been “commonlycalled the seven sleepers;” and we shall see presently who his “moderns” are. He adds, that “the cave wherein their bodies were found, became famous for devout pilgrimages, and is still shown to travellers, as James Spon testifies.”

The miraculous story of the seven sleepers relates, that they remained in the cave till the heresy that “denyed the resurreccyon of deed bodyes” under Theodotian, when a “burges” of Ephesus causing a stable to be made in the mountain, the masons opened the cave, “and then these holy sayntes that were within awoke and were reysed,” and they saluted each other, and they “supposed veryley that they had slepte but one nyght onely,” instead of two hundred and twenty-nine years. Being hungry, Malchus, one of themselves, was deputed to go to Ephesus and buy bread for the rest; “and then Malchus toke V shillynges, and yssued out of the cave.” He marvelled when he saw the mason’s work outside, and when he came to one of the gates of Ephesus he was “all doubtous,” for he saw the sign of the cross on the gate; then he went to another gate, and found another cross; and he found crosses on all the gates; and he supposed himself in a dream; but he comforted himself, and at last he entered the city, and found the city also was “garnysshed” with the cross. Then he went to the “sellers of breed,” and when he showed his money, they were surprised, and said one to another, that “thisyongeman” had found some old treasure; and when Malchus saw them talk together, he was afraid lest they should take him before the emperor, and prayed them to let him go, and keep both the money and the bread; but they asked who he was, for they were sure he had found a treasure of the “olde emperours,” and they told him if he would inform them they would divide it, “and kepe it secret.” But Malchus was so terrified he could not speak; then they tied a cord round his neck, and drove him through the middle of the city; and it was told that he had found an ancient treasure, and “all the cite assembled aboute hym;” and he denied the charge, and when he beheld the people he knew no man there; and he supposed they were carrying him before the emperor Decius, but they carried him to the church before St. Martin and Antipater, the consul; and the bishop looked at the money, and marvelled at it, and demanded where he had found the hidden treasure; and he answered, that he had not found it, that it was his own, and that he had it of his kinsmen. Then the judge said his kinsmen must come and answer for him; and he named them, but none knew them; and they deemed that he had told them untruly, and the judge said, how can we believe that thou hadst this money of thy friends, when we read “that it is more than CCC.lxxii. yere syth it was made,” in the time of Decius, the emperor, how can it have come to thee, who art so young, from kinsmen so long ago; thou wouldst deceive the wise men of Ephesus: I demand, therefore, that thou confess whence thou hadst this money. Then Malchus kneeled down, and demanded where was Decius, the emperor; and they told him there was no such emperor then in the world whereat Malchus said he was greatly confused that no man believed he spoke the truth, yet true it was that he and his fellows saw him yesterday in that city of Ephesus. Then the bishop told the judge that this young man was in a heavenly vision, and commanded Malchus to follow him, and to show him his companions. And they went forth, and a great multitude of the city with them towards the cave; and Malchus entered first into the cave, and the bishop next, “and there founde they amonge the stones the lettres sealed with two seales of syluer,” and then the bishop read them before all the people; and they all marvelled, “and they sawe the sayntes syttynge in the caue, and theyr visages lyke unto roses flouryng.” And the bishop sent for the emperor to come and see the marvels. And the emperor came from Constantinople to Ephesus, and ascended the mountain; and as soon as the saints saw the emperor come, “their vysages shone like to the sonne,” and the emperor embraced them. And they demanded of the emperor that he would believe the resurrection of the body, for to that end had they been raised; and then they gave up the ghost, and the emperor arose and fell on them weeping, “and embraced them, and kyssed them debonayrly.” And he commanded precious sepulchres of gold and silver to bury their bodies therein. But the same nightthey appeared to the emperor, and demanded of him to let their bodies lie on the earth, as they had lain before, till the general resurrection; and the emperor obeyed, and caused the place to be adorned with precious stones. And all the bishops that believed in the resurrection were absolved.[227]

In the breviary of the church of Salisbury, there is a prayer for the 27th of July, beseeching the benefit of the resurrection through the prayers of the seven sleepers, who proclaimed the eternal resurrection. Bishop Patrick,[228]who gives us the prayer, says, “To show the reader in what great care the heads of the Romish church had in those days of men’s souls, how well they instructed them, and by what fine stories their devotions were then conducted, I cannot but translate the history of these seven sleepers, as I find it in the Salisbury breviary; which, if it had been designed to entertain youth as the history of theSeven Champions, might have deserved a less severe censure; but this was read in the church to the people, as chapters are out of the bible, and divided into so many lessons.” He then gives the story of the seven sleepers as it stands in the breviary, and adds, that there was no heresy about the resurrection in the days of Theodotian, and that if any had a mind to see the ground of their prayer in the breviary, and the “stuff” of the legend of the seven sleepers, they might consult “Baronius’s notes upon the Roman Martyrology, July 27.”

It appears then, that the ecclesiastics of the church of Salisbury were among the “moderns” of Alban Butler, “who imagined” of the seven sleepers as related in the legend, and so imagining, taught the “stuff,” as bishop Patrick calls it, to their flocks. Yet Alban Butler weeps over the Reformation, which swept the “imaginations” of his “moderns” away, and he would fain bring us back to the religion of the imaginers.

Purple Loosestrife.Lythrum Salicaria.Dedicated toSt. Pantaleon.

[227]Golden Legend.[228]In his “Reflections on the Devotions of the Romish Church.”

[227]Golden Legend.

[228]In his “Reflections on the Devotions of the Romish Church.”

Sts. NazariusandCelsus,A. D.68.St. Victor, Pope,A. D.201.St. InnocentI. Pope,A. D.417.St. Sampson,A. D.564.

There is at present in Berlin, a boy, between four and five years old, who has manifested an extraordinary precocity of musical talent. Carl Anton Florian Eckert, the son of a sergeant in the second regiment of Fencible Guards, was born on the 7th of December, 1820. While in the cradle, the predilection of this remarkable child for music was striking, and passages in a minor key affected him so much as to make tears come in his eyes. When about a year and a quarter old, he listened to his father playing the air “Schone Minka” with one hand, on an old harpsichord: he immediately played it with both hands, employing the knuckles in aid of his short and feeble fingers. He continued afterwards to play every thing by the ear. He retains whatever he hears in the memory, and can tell at once whether an instrument is too high or too low for concert pitch. It was soon observed that his ear was sufficiently delicate to enable him to name any note or chord which might be struck without his seeing it. He also transposes with the greatest facility into any key he pleases, and executes pieces of fancyextempore. A subscription has been opened to buy him a pianoforte, as he has got tired of the old harpsichord, and two able musicians have undertaken to instruct him.[229]

Eckert was pre-rivalled in England by the late Mr. Charles Wesley, the son of the rev. Charles Wesley, and nephew to the late rev. John Wesley, the founder of the religious body denominated methodists. The musical genius of Charles Wesley was observed when he was not quite three years old; he then surprised his father by playing a tune on the harpsichord readily, and in just time. Soon afterwards he played several others. Whatever his mother sang, or whatever he heard in the streets, he could, without difficulty, make out upon this instrument. Almost from his birth his mother used to quiet and amuse him with the harpsichord. On these occasions, he would not suffer her to play only with one hand, but, even before he could speak, would seize hold of the other, andput it upon the keys. When he played by himself, she used to tie him by his back-string to the chair, in order to prevent his falling. Even at this age, he always put a true bass to every tune he played. From the beginning he played without study or hesitation. Whenever, as was frequently the case, he was asked to play before a stranger, he would invariably inquire in a phrase of his own, “Is he a musiker?” and if he was answered in the affirmative, he always did with the greatest readiness. His style on all occasions wascon spirito; and there was something in his manner so much beyond what could be expected from a child, that his hearers, learned or unlearned, were invariably astonished and delighted.

When he was four years old, Mr. Wesley took him to London; and Beard, who was the first musical man who heard him there, was so much pleased with his abilities, that he kindly offered his interest with Dr. Boyce to get him admitted among the king’s boys. This, however, his father declined, as he then had no thoughts of bringing him up to the profession of music. He was also introduced among others to Stanley and Worgan. The latter in particular, was extremely kind to him, and would frequently entertain him by playing on the harpsichord. The child was greatly struck by his bold and full manner of playing, and seemed even then to catch a spark of his fire. Mr. Wesley soon afterwards returned with him to Bristol; and when he was about six years old, he was put under the tuition of Rooke, a very good-natured man, but of no great eminence, who allowed him to run onad libitum, whilst he sat by apparently more to observe than to control him. Rogers, at that time the oldest organist in Bristol, was one of his first friends. He would often sit him on his knee, and make the boy play to him, declaring, that he was more delighted in hearing him then himself. For some years his study and practice were almost entirely confined to the works of Corelli, Scarlatti, and Handel; and so rapid was his progress, that, at the age of twelve or thirteen, it was thought that no person was able to excel him in performing the compositions of these masters. He was instructed on the harpsichord by Kelway, and in the rules of composition by Dr. Boyce. His first work, “A Set of Six Concertos for the Organ or Harpsichord,” published under the immediate inspection of that master, as a first attempt, was a wonderful production; it contained fugues which would have done credit to a professor of the greatest experience and the first eminence. His performance on the organ, and particularly his extempore playing on that sublime instrument, was the admiration and delight of all his auditors.

The present Mr. Samuel Wesley, brother of the preceding, and born in 1766, also gave a very early indication of musical genius. When only three years of age, he could play on the organ; and, when eight years old, attempted to compose an oratorio. Some of the airs which he wrote for the organ were shown to Dr. Boyce, and occasioned the doctor to say, “This boy unites, by nature, as true a bass as I can do by rule and study.” Mr. Wesley’s compositions are in the highest degree masterly and grand; and his extempore performance of fugues on the organ astonishing. He produces from that solemn instrument all the grand and serious graces of which it is capable. His melodies, though struck out on the instant, are sweet and varied, and never common-place; his harmony is appropriate, and follows them with all the exactness and discrimination of the most studious master; his execution, which is very great, is always sacrificed to the superior charms of expression.[230]

To this be it added, that the intellectual endowments of Mr. Samuel Wesley equal his musical talents, and that the amiable and benevolent qualities of his nature add lustre to his acquirements. He is a man of genius without pretension, and a good man without guile.

Mountain Groundsel.Senecio montanus.Dedicated toSt. Innocent.

[229]TheParthenon, a new musical work typolithographied, notices this precocious musician on the authority of the German papers.[230]These anecdotes of the present Mr. Samuel Wesley and his deceased brother, Charles, are from the “Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,” a work before quoted, and praised as a most pleasant book.

[229]TheParthenon, a new musical work typolithographied, notices this precocious musician on the authority of the German papers.

[230]These anecdotes of the present Mr. Samuel Wesley and his deceased brother, Charles, are from the “Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,” a work before quoted, and praised as a most pleasant book.

St. MarthaV.Sts. SimpliciusandFaustinus, brothers, andBeatrice, their sister,A. D.303.St. William, Bp.A. D.1234.St. Olaus, orOlave, king of Norway,A. D.1030.St. Olaus, king of Sweden.

fountain

By the process of boring, springs may be reached more expeditiously and economically than by the old method of well digging. The expense of boring from one to two hundred feet deep is little more than one-fourth of digging, seventy feet is less than a fourth, thirty feet is less than a fifth, and from ten to twenty feet it is not so much as a sixth. In 1821, the water for the fountain at Tottenham High Cross, represented in theengraving, was obtained by boring to a depth of one hundred and five feet, at the expense of the parish, for public accommodation. The water rises six feet above the surface, and flowing over a vase at the top of the column into a basin, as represented in theengraving, it pours from beneath. The boring for this spring and the fountain were suggested by Mr. Mathew, who first obtained water in Tottenham, by that method, and introduced the practice there. The pillar was designed by Messrs. Mathew and Chaplin, and executed by Mr. Turner of Dorset-street, Fleet-street, the well known manufacturer of the cast iron pumps; and not to withhold from him any of “his blushing honours,” be it noted that he was till lately a common-councilman of the ward of Farringdon Without, where he still maintains his reputation as a “cunning workman in iron,” and his good name as a good pump-maker, and as a worthy and respectable man. Public spirit should rise to the height of giving him, and others of the worshipful company of pump-makers, more orders. Many places are sadly deficient of pumps for raising spring-water where it is most wanted. Every body cries out for it in hot weather, but in cool weather they all forget their former want; and hot weather comes again and they call out for it again in vain, and again forget to put up a public pump. At Pentonville, a place abounding in springs, and formerly abounding in conduits, all the conduits are destroyed, and the pumps there, in the midst of that healthy and largely growing suburb, during the hot days of July, 1825, were not equal to supply a tenth of the demand for water; they were mostly dry and chained up during the half of each day without notice, and persons who came perhaps a mile, went back with empty vessels. So it was in other neighbourhoods. Well may we account for ill. Mischievous liquors sold, in large quantities, at some places, for soda water and ginger beer were drank to the great comfort of the unprincipled manufacturers, the great discomfort of the consumers’ bowels, and the great gain of the apothecary.

Were the doings in the New River during summer, or one half of the wholesale nuisances permitted in the Thames described, the inhabitants of London would give up their tea-kettles. Health requires that these practices should be abated, and, above all, a good supply of spring-water. The water from pumps and fountains would not only adorn our public streets and squares, but cool the heated atmosphere, by the surplus water being diverted into the gutters and open channels. Besides, if we are to have dogs, and a beast-market in the heart of the metropolis, the poor overheated animals might by such means slake their thirst from pure and refreshing streams. The condition wherein sheep and cattle are driven formany miles before they reach the metropolis, is a disgrace to the appellation assumed by men who see the cruelty, and have power to remedy it; “a merciful man is merciful to his beast,” and he is not a really merciful man who is not merciful to his neighbours’ beasts.

May these wants be quickly supplied. Give us spring water in summer; and no more let

“Maids with bottles cry aloud forpumps.”

London has but one fountain; it is in the Temple: you pass it on the way from Essex-street, or “the Grecian” to Garden-court. It is in the space at the bottom of the first flight of stone steps, within the railings enclosing a small, and sometimes “smooth shaven green,” the middle whereof it adorns, surrounded, not too thickly, by goodly trees and pleasant shrubs. The jet proceeds from a copper pipe in the middle of a stone-edged basin, and rises to its full height of at least nine feet, if water from the cock by the hall with which it communicates is not drawing; when that process is going on the jet droops, and seems dying away till the drawing ceases, and then the “Temple Fountain” goes up again “famously.”

Therewasa fountain in the great square of Lincolns Inn, but it had ceased to play “in my time.” I only remember the column itself standing there

“For ornament,notuse,”

with its four boys blowing through shells.

In the Kent-road, on the left hand from the Elephant and Castle towards the Bricklayers Arms, there is a fountain in a piece of water opposite a recently built terrace. A kneeling figure, the size of life, blows water through a shell; it is well conceived, and would be a good ornament were it kept clean and relieved by trees.

A “professional” gentleman who to the “delightful task” of improving country residences by laying out grounds in beautiful forms, has added the less “cheerful labour” of embodying others’ theories and practice in an “Encyclopædia of Gardening,” views a fountain as an essential decoration where the “ancient” style of landscape is introduced in any degree of perfection.[231]As the first requisite, he directs attention to the obtaining a sufficiently elevated source or reservoir of supply for the jets, or projected spouts, or threads of water. Some are contrived to throw the water in the form of sheaves, fans, and showers, or to support balls; others to throw it horizontally or in curved lines, but the most usual form is a simple opening to throw the jet or spout upright. Mr. L. judiciously rejects a jet from a naked tube falling from the middle of a basin or canal on a smooth surface as unnatural, without being artificially grand. Grandeur was the aim of the “ancient” gardener, and hence he made a garden “after nature,” look as a garden of nature never did look. Mr. L. suggests that “the grandest jet of any is a perpendicular column, issuing from a rocky base on which the water falling produces a double effect both of sound and visual display.”

In the “Century of Inventions of the Marquis of Worcester,” explained and illustrated by Mr. Partington, there is mention by the marquis of “an artificial fountain, to be turned like an hour glass by a child, in the twinkling of an eye, it yet holding great quantities of water, and of force sufficient to make snow, ice, and thunder, with the chirping and singing of birds, and showing of several shapes and effects usual to fountains of pleasure.” Mr. Partington observes on this, that “how a fountain of water can produce snow, ice, thunder, and the singing of birds, is not easy to comprehend.”

Sir Henry Wotton discoursing on architecture remarks thus:—“Fountains are figured, or only plain watered works; of either of which I will describe a matchless pattern. The first, done by the famous hand of Michael Angelo da Buonaroti, is the figure of a sturdy woman, washing and winding linen clothes; in which act she wrings out the water that made the fountain; which was a graceful and natural conceit in the artificer, implying this rule, that all designs of this kind should be proper.[232]The other doth merit some larger expression: there went a long, straight, mossie walk of competent breadth, green and soft under foot, listed on both sides with an aqueduct of white stone, breast-high, which had a hollow channel on the top, where ran a pretty trickling stream; on the edge whereof were couched very thick, all along, certain small pipes of lead,in little holes; so neatly, that they could not be well perceived, till by the turning of a cock, they did sprout over interchangeably, from side to side, above man’s height, in forms of arches, without any intersection or meeting aloft, because the pipes were not exactly opposite; so as the beholder, besides that which was fluent in the aqueduct on both hands in his view, did walk as it were under a continual bower and hemisphere of water, without any drop falling on him; an invention for refreshment, surely far excelling all the Alexandrian delicacies, and pnuematicks of Hero.”[233]An invention of greater solace could not have been desired in the canicular days, by those who sought shelter from the heat; nor more coveted by any than by him, who is constrained to supply the “every-day” demand of “warm” friends for this little work—no “cool” task!

Red Chironia.Chironia Centaureum.Dedicated toSt. Martha.

[231]Mr. Loudon’s “Encyclopædia of Gardening,” a book of practical and curious facts, with hundreds of interesting engravings, is a most useful volume to any one who has a garden, or wishes to form one.[232]Any one possessing a figure of this fountain designed by Michael Angelo, and probably seen by Wotton during his travels in Italy, will much oblige the editor by lending it to him for the purpose of being copied and inserted in theEvery-Day Book.[233]Reliq. Wotton.

[232]Any one possessing a figure of this fountain designed by Michael Angelo, and probably seen by Wotton during his travels in Italy, will much oblige the editor by lending it to him for the purpose of being copied and inserted in theEvery-Day Book.

[233]Reliq. Wotton.

Sts. AbdenandSennen,A. D.250.St. Julitta,A. D.303.

On Tuesday, the 30th of July, 1751, Thomas Colley, William Humbles, and Charles Young, otherwise Lee, otherwise Red Beard, were tried at Hertford for the murder of Ruth Osborne, by drowning her in a pond at Marlston-green, in the parish of Tring. The trial is exceedingly curious. It appeared that William Dell, the town crier of Hamel-Hempstead, on the 18th of April preceding, was desired by one Nichols, who gave him a piece of paper and fourpence, to cry the words at the market-place that were wrote thereon, which he accordingly did. The paper was as follows:—“This is to give notice, that on Monday next, a man and woman are to be publicly ducked at Tring, in this county, for their wicked crimes.”

Matthew Barton, the overseer of Tring, on hearing that this had been cried at Winslow, Leighton-Buzzard, and Hamel-Hempstead, in order to prevent the outrage, and believing them to be very honest people, sent them into the workhouse. On the Monday, a large mob of 5,000 people and more, assembled at Tring; but Jonathan Tomkins, master of the workhouse, in the middle of the night, had removed them into the vestry-room adjoining the church. The mob rushed in and ransacked the workhouse, and all the closets, boxes, and trunks; they pulled down a wall, and also pulled out the windows and window-frames. Some of the mob perceiving straw near at hand said, let us get the straw, and set fire to the house, and burn it down. Some cried out and swore, that they would not only burn the workhouse down, but the whole town of Tring to ashes. Tomkins being apprehensive that they would do so told them where the two unhappy people were, they immediately went to the vestry-room, broke it open, and took the two people away in great triumph.

John Holmes deposed, that the man and woman were separately tied up in a cloth or sheet; that a rope was tied under the arm-pits of the deceased, and two men dragged her into the pond; that the men were one on one side of the pond, and the other on the other; and they dragged her sheer through the pond several times; and that Colley, having a stick in his hand, went into the pond, and turned the deceased up and down several times.

John Humphries deposed, that Colley turned her over and over several times with the stick; that after the mob had ducked her several times, they brought her to the shore, and set her by the pond side, and then dragged the old man in and ducked him; that after they had brought him to shore, and set him by the pond side, they dragged the deceased in a second time; and that Colley went again into the pond, and turned and pushed the deceased about with his stick as before; that then she being brought to shore again, the man was also a second time dragged in, and underwent the same discipline as he had before; and being brought to shore, the deceased was a third time dragged into the pond; that Colley went into the pond again, and took hold of the cloth or sheet in which she was wrapt, and pulled her up and down the pond till the same came from off her, and then she appeared naked; that then Colley pushed her on the breast with his stick, which she endeavoured with her left hand to catch hold of, buthe pulled it away, and that was the last time life was in her. He also deposed, that after Colley came out of the pond, he went round among the people who were the spectators of this tragedy, and collected money of them as a reward for the great pains he had taken in showing them sport in ducking the old witch, as he then called the deceased.

The jury found the prisoner Colley—guilty.

The reporter of the trial states, from the mouth of John Osborne, the following particulars not deposed to in court, namely: that as soon as the mob entered the vestry-room, they seized him and his wife, and Red Beard carried her across his shoulders, like a calf, upwards of two miles, to a place called Gubblecut; where not finding a pond they thought convenient, they then carried them to Marlston-green, and put them into separate rooms in a house there; that they there stripped him naked, and crossed his legs and arms, and bent his body so, that his right thumb came down to his right great toe, and his left thumb to his left great toe, and then tied each thumb and great toe together; that after they had so done, they got a cloth, or an old sheet, and wrapped round him, and then carried him to the Mere on the green, where he underwent the discipline as has been related in the course of the trial. What they did with his wife he could not say, but he supposed they had stripped her, and tied her in the same manner as himself, as she appeared naked in the pond when the sheet was drawn from off her, and her thumbs and toes tied as his were. After the mob found the woman was dead, they carried him to a house, and put him into a bed, and laid his dead wife by his side; all which he said he was insensible of, having been so ill-used in the pond, as not to have any sense of the world for some time; but that he was well assured it was so, a number of people since informing him of it who were present. His wife, if she had lived till Michaelmas, would have been seventy years of age; he himself was but fifty-six.

The infatuation of the people in those parts of Hertfordshire was so great, in thinking that these people were a witch and a vizard, that when any cattle died, it was always said that Osborne and his deceased wife had bewitched them. And even after the trial, a great number of people in that part of the country thought the man a vizard, and that he could cast up pins as fast as he pleased. Though a stout able man of his age, and ready and willing to work, yet none of the farmers thereabouts would employ him, ridiculously believing him to be a vizard, so that the parish of Tring were obliged to support him in their workhouse after his wife’s death.

So far is reported by the editor of the trial.

On the 24th of August, 1751, Colley was hung at Gubblecut-cross, and afterwards in chains. Multitudes would not be spectators of his death; yet “many thousands stood at a distance to see him die, muttering that it was a hard case to hang a man for destroying an old wicked woman that had done so much mischief by her withcraft.” Yet Colley himself had signed a public declaration the day before, wherein he affirmed his conviction as a dying man, that there was no such a thing as a witch, and prayed that the “good people” might refrain from thinking that they had any right to persecute a fellow-creature, as he had done, through a vain imagination, and under the influence of liquor: he acknowledged his cruelty, and the justice of his sentence.[234]

The pond wherein this poor creature lost her life was in mud and water together not quite two feet and a half in depth, and yet her not sinking was deemed “confirmation strong as proof of holy writ” that she was a witch. Ignorance is mental blindness.

White Mullen.Verbuscum Lychnitis.Dedicated toSt. Julitta.

[234]Gent. Mag. xxi. 378.

St. Ignatius, of Loyola,A. D.1556.St. John Columbini,A. D.1367.St. Helen, of Sweden,A. D.1160.

St. Ignatius Loyola—Founder of the Jesuits.

Ignatius was born in 1495, in the castle of Loyola in Guipuscoa, a part of Biscay adjoining the Pyrenees. In his childhood he was pregnant of wit, discreet above his years, affable and obliging, with a choleric disposition, and an ardent passion for glory. Bred in the court of Ferdinand V., under the duke of Najara, his kinsman and patron, as page to the king, he was introduced into the army, wherein he signalized himself by dexterous talent, personal courage, addiction to licentious vices and pleasures, and a taste for poetry; he at that time composed a poem in praise of St. Peter. In 1521, he served in the garrison of Pampeluna, against the French who besieged it: in resisting an attack, he mounted the breach sword-in-hand; a piece of stone struck off by a cannon ball from the ramparts bruised his left leg, while the ball in its rebound broke his right.[235]

Dr. Southey in a note to his recentlypublished “Tale of Paraguay,” cites the Jesuit Ribadeneira’s account of this accident to Ignatius from his life of him in the “Actæ Sanctorum,” where it is somewhat more at length than in the English edition of Ribadeneira’s “Lives of the Saints,” which states that St. Peter appeared to Ignatius on the eve of his feast, with a sweet and gracious aspect, and said that he was come to cure him. “With this visitation of the holy apostle,” says Ribadeneira, “Ignatius grew much better, and not long after recovered his perfect health: but, as he was a spruce young gallant, desirous to appear in the most neat and comely fashion, he caused the end of a bone which stuck out under his knee, and did somewhat disfigure his leg, to be cut off, that so his boot might sit more handsomely, as he himself told me, thinking it to be against his honour that such a deformity should be in his leg: nor would he be bound while the bone was sawed off.” Father Bouhours, also a Jesuit, and another biographer of Ignatius, says, that one of his thighs having shrunk from the wound, lest lameness should appear in his gait, he put himself for many days together upon a kind of rack, and with an engine of iron violently stretched and drew out his leg, yet he could never extend it, and ever after his right leg remained shorter than his left.

————When long careRestored his shattered leg and set him free,He would not brook a slight deformity,As one who being gay and debonair,In courts conspicuous, as in camps must be:So he forsooth a shapely boot must wear;And the vain man, with peril of his life,Laid the recovered limb again beneath the knife.Long time upon the bed of pain he layWhiling with books the weary hours away.And from that circumstance, and this vain man,A train of long events their course began,Whose term it is not given us yet to see.Who hath not heard Loyola’s sainted name,Before whom kings and nations bow’d the knee?Tale of Paraguay.

Long time upon the bed of pain he layWhiling with books the weary hours away.And from that circumstance, and this vain man,A train of long events their course began,Whose term it is not given us yet to see.Who hath not heard Loyola’s sainted name,Before whom kings and nations bow’d the knee?

Tale of Paraguay.

Ribadeneira says, that one night while Ignatius kept his bed and was praying, a great noise shook all the chamber and broke the windows, and the Virgin Mary appeared to him “when he was awake, with her precious Son in her arms;” in consequence of this vision he resolved to embrace a life wherein he might afflict his body. For this purpose, he determined to go a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and bought a cassock of coarse canvass for a coat, a pair of country buskins, a bottle, and a pilgrim’s staff; he gave his horse to the monastery of our blessed lady at Montserrat; hung up his sword and dagger at our lady’s altar; and having spent the night of Lady-day, 1522, at the said altar, departed to institute the Society of Jesus, in his canvass coat, girded with his cord, walking with his pilgrim’s staff bare-headed: he would have gone bare-footed but he was forced to wear one shoe on the foot of the broken leg. Thus he went,

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