course of publication, -'Les Paysans.' They threat- | ened to discontinue their subscriptions if the proprietor persisted in serving out to them in daily slices that fastidious romance of M. de Balzac, of which they could not understand a word, and which was much less interest; ing, said they, than the Woman with the Green Eyes' then publishing in the rival journal. Give us something like the "Femmes aux Yeux verts," cried out the subscriber in 'Saint-Jean-de-Coq-en-Bric-aux-Bois,' and his fellow in Saint Paul-en-Jarret,'' and we 'll dispense with the sequel of your frightful, tiresome, and hateful "Paysans.' combinations, &c. In return he was to be conveniently lodged, washed for, lighted, warmed, and supported at the expense of the master of the Jardies. Balzac fulfilled his engagement to the letter, but Lassailly soon grew so fat and lazy that he was only fit to enjoy the amenities of the Capua into which he had entered, and to keep tormenting dramatic associations miles away from his brains, now dulled by his good condition of body. All went well for a time, but Balzac, who we know was a great night laborer, would require the presence of his ill-fated collaborateur on cold winter nights, when the thermometer would be preparing to sink below zero. These reiterated protests at last had effect. The administration of La Presse was disturbed, every day, either by letter or messenger, Balzac was begged to modify, to cut away, and that in a liberal style, to make incisions wide and deep in the Paysans, that new and The poor assistant, tearing his limbs from repose, half-dressed himself in haste, colossal study of manners where he so admirably paint-one foot shod, the ed these crafty foxes of the fields. And the unfortunate other naked, his nightcap poised over one ear, and writer cut and hacked, but never enough to satisfy the a taper in his hand. He thus traversed the passages wishes of the lovers of 'Les Femmes aux Yeux verts.' that led to the retired room of his patron, a dif At last there was some talk of stopping the story if he ferent man from the Balzac of the streets and the would not use the scalpel to a much larger extent." hero of the cane preserved in the amber of Mine. de Mme. de Girardin found her mantle scarcely Girardin's genius. The Balzac of the study was large enough to protect her friend in this juncture.jaded and pale from want of sleep, and the light He had spread a table of well-cooked, plain food of the wax candles flung yellowish splashes on his before guests whose appetites had been vitiated by high-seasoned meats and heady wines, and they were now ready to sacrifice him with his own kitchen knife. BALZAC TAKES A COLLABORATEUR. forehead and cheeks. The ordinary salute was: "Well, what have you discovered, Lassailly?" “And Lassailly, taking off his cotton nightcap, and striving to open his eyes, still enveloped in vapory dreams, muttered, 'O yes, we must discover, we must FROM what has been already said it may be easily invent something. Well, well, have you invented this deduced that Balzac was no more fitted to produce something? We must make haste; Porte-Saint-Martin a dramatic chef d'œuvre than to secure the approba- is waiting for us; hasten! Harel wrote to me yesterday tion of the admirers of the "Woman with the Green evening. Hasten, man! I saw Frederick Lemaître ereYes, yes. Eyes." He possessed dramatic power but to a lim- yesterday.' 'O, you've seen Lemaitre?' ited extent; his darling studies and tastes tended that will bring all Paris together. Where is this drama He is our own; he is hungry and thirsty for a drama not towards tragedy; he had a great respect, but that's to collect all Paris? Have you it?' 'Not enlittle love for verse, and was not a successful work-tirely; but I am listening. I would prefer to man when encumbered with the bonds of rhyme or hear what you have conceived, and then we could blend rhythm. However, on occasions of some great dra- our ideas, and I am sure Lassailly, you are dreammatic success achieved by this or that man of letters, ing on your feet; your heavy eyelids are closing.' 'Ah! he would rouse his energies, suffer the fumes of it's the intense cold, it is - 'Go to bed, Lassailly. dramatic glory to get possession of his brain, and set In an hour's time we shall see if the muse has visited to work at a piece for Harel or Lireux. In these, as you.' in all his other operations, hardly had he grasped the outline of his plan when he began to calculate the monetary results. He would thus hold forth to one of the few that enjoyed his intimacy: "O, the idea is grand! It is brilliant and solid at the same time; genuine rose-colored granite! We shall cut from massive Egyptian blocks a piece with tableaux for the Porte-Saint-Martin, with Frederic Lemaître for chief figure. There will be a hundred and fifty representations at five thousand francs, one with another. This makes seven hundred and fifty thousand francs. Now let us calculate. The author's claim of twelve per cent on this sum is more than eighty thousand francs, the tickets five or six thousand franes in fine gold, the printed work, ten thousand copies at three francs each. Why that will be a trinket of thirty thousand francs. Then the-" &c., &c. Thus he declaimed one day to Henry Monnier, and just as he came to the point where both had got a fabulous sum in perspective, Monnier heartlessly held out his hand, and asked his friend, now a millionnaire, to lend him a hundred sous on the strength of the speculation. his slippers, Lassailly, resembling a desolate ghost, re"And resuming his pale bougie, and dragging along gained his chamber and the stretcher-bed, on which he was supposed to be discovering the famous drama that would bring all Paris together. Short respite! An hour later new alarms of Balzac's bell tore poor Lassailly's dream from top to bottom, and sent him barefooted, and protected merely by a knitted vest, to the study of his august collaborateur. Then was resumed a repetition of the former scene, Balzac as wakeful as a lion, Lassailly as sleepy as a dormouse; and the result still the same; one demanding his drama at any price, the other in one night was the excellent but unfruitful collaboranot being able to find it even at a higher one. Six times teur summoned by his literary chief. The situation was of the most perplexing character, both in its moral and physical aspect. Finally, Lassailly, though living better, better warmed, better washed, better lighted, better fed, grew pale and meagre, became seriously ill. His nocturnal summonses, and his inability to perform what was expected from him, began to affect his poor brain. Meeting him one day on the Boulevards, and asking, Well, have abandoned them forever,' said he, and his poor how go things at the Jardies? 'O, the Jardies! I In one of these periodical fits he brought a young off there? O, wonderfully well. What a residence, clouded eyes filled with tears. But you were very well man to the Jardies to live with him, and be his col- what views, what a life! Roast meat every day, legumes laborateur, terms running thus: Young Lassailly twice a day, dessert in profusion, and O, such coffee!' was to be at all hours at M. Balzac's disposal, to fur- Then why have you abandoned these delightful Jarnish him ideas if needed, projects, plans, dramatic | dies?' Why! Ah, who could remain? To rise six "LES RESSOURCES DE QUINOLA." It would be injudicious to omit the reading of his play, the "Resources of Quinola," to the company of the Odeon a couple of years after the terrible failure of his "Vautrin." He stood at the end of the long baize-covered table, instead of taking his ease in an arm-chair, as was the invariable custom. "The voice of Balzac, at first heavy, husky, embarrassed, began to clear as he advanced in the reading. It soon acquired a grave, sonorous, and perfect character, and finally when it acquired liberty, and passion began to influence the action, it obeyed the most delicate, most fugitive intentions of the dialogue." He read with great feeling, he gave way to the sentiment of the moment, he made his audience cry, he made them laugh, crying and laughing himself as if thoroughly unaware of the presence of the company. In the laugh he specially carried away his hearers. He harnessed them as it were to his chariot of gayety, and dragged them along. The actors followed the dialogue and incidents with great interest and hope of success till the end of the fourth act, and then [June 30, 1806. | may count on him." The author entertained the most sanguine hopes of the entire success of the "Resources of Quinola." He would have no hired applauders, he would dispose of all the tickets, and when any application was made for any of the boxes or stalls the answer was, they were already disposed of to His Royal Highness of This, or the Grand Duke of That. His real supporters were under the impression that no places were to be obtained, so they stayed away, and the curtain rose on a nearly empty house. The first act, full of color and action, passed off well, but the rest was so chorused by the well-imitated crowing of cocks, barking of dogs, mewling of cats, &c., that the idea of a repetition was given up. The author was found fast asleep in a lonely box when all was over. But we suspect a refined piece of acting in this circumstance. Thus far we have witnessed only defeats in Balzac's attempts at theatrical renown. But these were more the result of determined enmity on the "In a moment, joy, pleasure, gayety, ceased, stopped part of his unfriends, than of want of merit in the like a coach one of whose wheels has just been fractured. pieces themselves. Since his death, which disarmed What was the matter? What had happened? This the hands of his many foes, and silenced their happened that Balzac at the end of the fourth act, after tongues, dramas founded on his novels have been blowing his nose, applying his handkerchief to his fore-eminently successful; witness "Mercadet," and the head and cheeks, and putting his hand under his white play founded on the story of Eugenie Grandet, on waistcoat to adjust his braces, and pull up his trousers which poor Robson's Daddy Hardacre is founded. which had got down several inches through his late violent exercise, - it happened, we repeat, that Balzac announced to his audience palpitating with anxiety, that the fifth act was not yet written. O, such surprise, such consternation, such long faces! I will now,' said the undaunted man, 'give you the outline of it.' We have in these unconnected sketches afforded mere glimpses of the ordinary life of our author, · some of them illustrating his own acute observation, that "in every man of genius there is a great deal of the child." A work embodying his early strug "Mme. Dorval, though sufficiently eccentric herself, gles to acquire reputation, his later to keep out of was not the less taken aback while Balzac began to pre- the debtors' prison, and surround himself with lux pare for his recital. She leaned towards me, and wink-uries, the workings and progress of his genius, the ing those eyes so beautiful, so blue, and so expressive, and lowering her voice, said, Ah, my good friend, who is this strange man?' 'Balzac, the famous Balzac.' Parbleu, I know that well enough, but has he come here to make a jest of us? Ah, you must take him as he is.' But when he brings a manuscript to his publisher, does he offer him only the half?' He gives him much less than the half; he often gives him nothing at all, for frequently the first line of the work is not written when the bargain is made."" All this time the great man was rolling up his manuscript, searching for the cord in his pockets, then under the table, and finally finding it in his hat. After searching every corner of his brain for the fifth act, he unfolded its plan, and his audience deserted him one by one with all their hopes and enthusiasm quenched and dead. analysis of his own character and disposition, the faults and merits of his best productions, the attain ment at last of his long-desired elysium, and his brief enjoyment thereof, is yet to be written. Saint Beuve has well and critically handled his literary genius, Leon Gozlan has given us pleasant glimpses of the phases of his domestic life, Eugene Mirecourt, a good-natured résumé of his literary career and his early difficulties, Werdet, one of his editeurs, the style of his dealings with his publishers, and his sis ter, Mme. de Surville, has let in light on amiable traits in his family relations. It would require tal ent, time, and patience to produce a complete ta bleau of his productions, his character, his genius and his genuine life. Despite this unpleasant episode, the rehearsal went THE PRINCESS CARABO0. on; but, notwithstanding the need of constant communication between manager and author, Balzac EARLY in the year 1865 there died at Bristol would not give Lireux his town address. After female of considerable personal attractions, whose many proposed methods of holding constant inter-early history was amusing enough, yet took a strong course, our hero fixed on the following, which few others would have had the wit to light on. “Lireux, you have an intelligent stage servant?" "Very intelligent; he was a collector of debts." "Diable! he's perhaps too intelligent." "O, you hold upon credulous persons half a century sing She pretended to be a native of Javasu, in the In dian Ocean, and to have been carried off by pirates by whom she had been sold to the captain of a brig Her first appearance was in the spring of 1817, Almondsbury, in Gloucestershire. Having been ill-used when on board the ship, she had jumped overboard, she said, swam on shore and wandered about six weeks before she came to Almondsbury. She appears next to have found her way to Bath, and there to have created a sensation in the literary and fashionable circles of the city and other places, which lasted till it was discovered that the whole affair was a romance, cleverly sustained and acted out by a young and prepossessing girl, who sought to maintain the imposition by the invention of hieroglyphics and characters to represent her native language. In 1817 there was published at Bristol a narrative of this singular imposition, " practised upon the benevolence of a lady residing in the vicinity of Bristol by a young woman of the name of Mary Willcocks, alias Baker, alias Bakerstendht, alias Caraboo, Princess of Javasu"; for which work Bird, | the royal academician, drew two portraits. It was ascertained that she was a native of Witheridge, in Devonshire, where her father was a cobbler. She appears to have taken flight to America, and in 1824 she returned to England, and hired apartments in New Bond Street, where she exhibited herself to the public at the charge of one shilling; but she did not attract any great attention. slung at the stern, she cut the ropes, dropped safely into the ocean, and rowed away. The wind was too strong from the land to allow of the vessel being brought about to thwart her object. Sir Hudson introduced her to Bonaparte under the name of Caraboo! She described herself as Princess of Javasu, and related a tale of extraordinary interest, which seemed in a high degree to delight the captive chief. He embraced her with every demonstration of enthusiastic rapture, and besought Sir Hudson that she might be allowed an apartment in his house, declaring that she alone was an adequate solace in his captivity.. "Sir Hudson subjoins: The familiar acquaintance with the Malay tongue possessed by this most extraordinary personage, (and there are many on the island who understand that language,) together with the knowledge she displays of the Indian and Chinese politics, and the eagerness with which she speaks of these subjects, appear to convince every one that she is no impostor. Her manner is noble and fascinating in a wonderful degree.' "A private letter adds the following testimony to the above statement: Since the arrival of this lady, the manners, and I may say the countenance and figure of Bonaparte, appear to be wholly altered. From being reserved and dejected, he has become On being deposed from the honors which had been gay and communicative. No more complaints are awarded to her, "the Princess" retired into compar- heard about inconveniences at Longwood. He has atively humble life, and married. There was a kind intimated to Sir Hudson his determination to apply of grim humor in the occupation which she subse- to the Pope for a dispensation to dissolve his marquently followed, that of an importer of leeches;riage with Maria Louisa, and to sanction his indissobut she conducted her operations with much judg-luble union with the enchanting Caraboo."" ment and ability, and carried on her trade with However, corroboration of this strange story is credit to herself and satisfaction to her customers. The quondam "Princess" died, leaving a daughter, who, like her mother, is described as very beautiful. There is also a very strange story of the Princess having got an introduction to Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena, of which affair the following account appeared in Feliz Farley's Bristol Journal, September 13, 1817: "A letter from Sir Hudson Lowe, lately received from St. Helena, forms at present the leading topic of conversation in the higher circles. It states that, on the day preceding the date of the last despatches, a large ship was discovered in the offing. The wind was strong from the S.S.E. After several hours' tacking, with apparent intention to reach the island, the vessel was observed to bear away for the N.W., and in the course of an hour the boat was seen entering the harbor. It was rowed by a single person. Sir Hudson went alone to the beach, and to his astonishment saw a female of interesting appearance drop the oars and spring to land. She stated that she had sailed from Bristol, under the care of some missionary ladies, in a vessel called the Robert and Anne, Captain Robinson, destined for Philadelphia; that the vessel being driven out of its course by a tempest, which continued for several successive days, the crew at length perceived land, which the captain recognized to be St. Helena; that she immediately conceived an ardent desire of seeing the man with whose future fortunes she was persuaded her own were mysteriously connected; and her breast swelled with the prospect of contemplating face to face an impostor not equalled on earth since the days of Mohammed; but a change of wind to the S.S.E. nearly overset her hopes. Finding the captain resolved to proceed according to his original destination, she watched her opportunity, and springing with a large clasp-knife into a small boat which was wanting. SUPERSTITION.* HAVING accepted the very great honor of being allowed to deliver here two lectures, I have chosen as my subject Superstition and Science. It is with Superstition that this first lecture will deal. The subject seems to me especially fit for a clergyman; for he should, more than any other men, be able to avoid teaching on two subjects rightly excluded from this Institution, namely, Theology—that is, the knowledge of God; and Religion- that is, the knowledge of duty. If he knows, as he should, what is Theology, and what is Religion, he should best know what is not Theology, and what is not Religion. For my own part, I entreat you at the outset to keep in mind that these lectures treat of matters entirely physical, which have in reality, and ought to have on our minds, no more to do with Theology and Religion than the proposition that theft is wrong has to do with that that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. It is necessary to premise this, because many are of opinion that superstition is a corruption of religion; and though they would agree that as such, corruptio optimi pessima, and that it is pernicious, yet they would look on religion as the state of spiritual health, and superstition as one of spiritual disease. After this, it will be necessary to define superstition, in order to have some tolerably clear understanding of what we are talking about. I beg leave to define it as, - Fear of the unknown. This is not the place wherein to argue with either | anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels down, and of these parties; and I shall simply say that super- adores it. If a rat has nibbled one of his sacks, he stition seems to me altogether a physical affection, takes it for a fearful portent, a superstition which as thoroughly material and corporeal as those of Cicero also mentions. He dare not sit on a tomb, cating or sleeping, remembering or dreaming. because it would be assisting at his own funeral. He purifies endlessly his house, saying that Hecate (that is, the moon) has exercised some malign influence on it; and many other purifications he observes, of which I shall only say that they are by their nature plainly (like the last) meant as preservatives against unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible. He assists every month with his children at the mysteries of the Orphic priests; and finally, whenever he sees an epileptic patient, he spits in his own bosom to avert the evil omen. Johnson, who was no dialectician, and, moreover, superstitious enough of himself, gives eight different definitions of the word; which is equivalent to confessing his inability to define it at all: "1. Unnecessary fear or scruples in religion; observance of unnecessary and uncommanded rites or practices; religion without morality. 2. False religion; reverence of beings not proper objects of reverence; false worship. 3. Over-nicety; exactness too scrupulous." Eight meanings, which, on the principle that eight eighths, or indeed 800,,do not make one whole, may be considered as no definition. His first thought, as often happens, is the best, "Unnecessary fear." But after that he wanders. The root-meaning of the word is still to seek. But, indeed, the popular meaning, thanks to popular common sense, will generally be found to contain in itself the root-meaning. I have quoted, I believe, every_fact given by Theophrastus; and you will agree, I am sure, that the moving and inspiring element of such a character is mere bodily fear of unknown evil. The only superstition attributed to him which does not at first sight seem to have its root in dread is that of the Orphic mysteries. But of them Müller says that the Dionusos whom they worshipped" was an infernal deity, connected with Hades, and was the personification, not merely of rapturous pleasure, but of a deep sorrow for the miseries of human life." The Orphic societies of Greece seem to have been peculiarly ascetic, taking no animal food save raw flesh from the sacrificed ox of Dionysos. And Plato speaks of a lower grade of Orphic priests, Orpheotelestai," who used to come before the doors of the rich, and promise, by sacrifices and expiatory songs, to release them from their own sins, and those of their forefathers," Let us go back to the Latin word Superstitio. Cicero says that the superstitious element consists in "a certain empty dread of the gods," a purely physical affection, if you will remember three things: 1. That dread is in itself a physical affection. 2. That the gods who were dreaded were merely (with the vulgar who alone dreaded them) imper--and such would be but too likely to get a hearing sonations of the powers of nature. 3. That it was physical injury which these gods were expected to inflict. from the man who was afraid of a weasel or an owl. Now this same bodily fear, I verily believe, will be found at the root of all superstition whatsoever. its tentacles, or the fish to dash into its hover, species would be exterminated wholesale by involuntary suicide. But he himself agrees with this theory of mine; But be it so. Fear is a natural passion, and a for he says, shortly after, that not only philosophers, wholesome one. Without the instinct of self-presbut even the ancient Romans, had separated super-ervation which causes the sea-anemone to contract stition from religion, and that the word was first applied to those who prayed all day ut liberi sui sibi superstites essent,-might survive them. On the etymology no one will depend who knows the remarkable absence of an etymological instinct in the ancients, in consequence of their weak grasp of that sound inductive method which has created modern criticism. But if it be correct, it is a natural and pathetic form for superstition to take in the minds of men who saw their children fade and die - probably the greater number of them-beneath diseases which they could neither comprehend nor cure. The best exemplification of what the ancients meant by superstition is to be found in the lively and dramatic words of Aristotle's great pupil, Theophrastus. The superstitious man, according to him, after having washed his hands with lustral water,—that is, water in which a torch from the altar had been quenched, goes about with a laurel-leaf in his mouth, to keep off evil influences, as the pigs in Devonshire used, in my youth, to go about with a withe of mountain ash round their necks to keep off the evil eye. If a weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into the road, or (with the innate selfishness of fear) lets some one else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. Yes; fear is wholesome enough, like all other faculties, as long as it is controlled by reason. But what if the fear be not rational, but irrational? What if it be, in plain, homely English, blind fear, fear of the unknown, simply because it is unknown? Is it not likely then to be afraid of the wrong object, to be hurtful, ruinous to animals as well as to man? Any one will confess that, who has ever seen a horse inflict on himself mortal injuries, in his frantic attempts to escape from a quite imaginary danger. I have good reasons for believing that not only animals, here and there, but whole flocks and swarms of them, are often destroyed, even in the wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for instance, as cause a whole herd of buffaloes to rush over a bluff, and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this capacity for panic, fear, - of superstition, as I should call it, is greatest in those animals, the dog and the horse, for instance, which have the most rapid and vivid fancy. Does not the unlettered Highlander say all that I want to say, when he attributes to his dog and his horse, on the strength of these very manifestations of fear, the capacity of seeing ghosts and fairies, before he can see them himself? But blind fear not only causes evil to the coward He has a similar dread of a screech-owl; whom he himself, it makes him a source of evil to others; for compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas it is the cruellest of all human states. It transforms Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets the man into the likeness of the cat, who, when she up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an | is caught in a trap, or shut up in a room, has too low an intellect to understand that you wish to release her; and in the madness of terror, bites and tears at the hand which tries to do her good. tolerably hard physical facts, all of them; the children of physical fancy, regarded with physical dread. Yes; very cruel is blind fear. When a man Even if the superstition proved true; even if the dreads he knows not what, he will do he cares not demon did appear; even if he wrung the traveller's what. When he dreads desperately, he will act neck in sound earnest, there would be no more spiritdesperately. When he dreads beyond all reason, ual agency or phenomenon in the whole tragedy he will behave beyond all reason. He has no law than there is in the parlor-table, where spiritual of guidance left, save the lowest selfishness. No somethings made spiritual raps upon spiritual wood, law of guidance and yet his intellect, left unguid- and human beings, who are really spirits, and ed, may be rapid and acute enough to lead him into would to heaven they would remember that fact, terrible follies. Infinitely more imaginative than and what it means, believe that anything has hapthe lowest animals, he is for that very reason capa-pened beyond a clumsy juggler's trick. ble of being infinitely more foolish, more cowardly, more superstitious. He can, what the lower animals (happily for them) cannot, organize his folly; erect his superstitions into a science; and create a whole mythology out of his blind fear of the unknown. And when he has done that, Woe to the weak! For when he has reduced his superstition to a science, then he will reduce his cruelty to a science likewise; and write books like the Malleus Maleficarum, and the rest of the witch-literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; of which Mr. Lecky has of late told the world so much, and told it most faithfully and most fairly. It may seem to some that I have founded my theory on a very narrow basis; that I am building up an inverted pyramid; or that, considering the numberless, complex, fantastic shapes which superstition has assumed, bodily fear is too simple a cause to explain them all. But if those persons will think a second time, they must agree that my base is as broad as the phenomena which it explains, for every man is capable of fear. And they will see, too, that the cause of superstition must be something like fear, which is common to all men; for all, at least as children, are capable of superstition: and that it must be something which, like fear, is of a most simple, rudimen But fear of the unknown? Is not that fear of the unseen world? And is not that fear of the spiritu-tary, barbaric kind; for the lowest savage, of whatal world? Pardon me: a great deal of that fear, all of it indeed which is superstition, is simply not fear of the spiritual, but of the material; and of nothing else. But what has that to do with mere fear of the unseen? The fancy which conceives the fear is physical, not spiritual. Think for yourselves. What difference is there between a savage's fear of a demon, and a hunter's fear of a fall? The hunter sees a fence. He does not know what is on the other side: but he has seen fences like it with a great ditch the other side, and suspects one here likewise; he has seen horses fall at them; and men hurt thereby. He pictures to himself his horse falling at that fence, himself rolling in the ditch, with possibly a broken limb; and he recoils from the picture he himself has made; and perhaps with very good reason. His picture may have its counterpart in fact, and he may break his leg. But his picture, like the previous pictures from which it was compounded, is simply a physical impression on the brain, just as much as those in dreams. Now, does the fact of the ditch, the fall, and the broken leg, being unseen and unknown, make them a spiritual ditch, a spiritual fall, a spiritual broken leg? And does the fact of the demon and his doings, being as yet unseen and unknown, make them spiritual; or the harm that he may do a spiritual harm? What does the savage fear? Lest the demon should appear; that is, become obvious to his physical senses, and produce an unpleasant physical effect on them. He fears lest the fiend should entice him into the bog, break the hand-bridge over the brook, turn into a horse and ride away with him, or jump out from behind a tree and wring his neck, ever he is not capable, is still superstitious, often to a very ugly degree. Superstition seems, indeed, to be, next to the making of stone-weapons, the earliest method of asserting his superiority to the brutes which has occurred to that utterly abnormal and fantastic lusus naturæ called man. Now let us put ourselves awhile, as far as we can, in the place of that same savage, and try whether my theory will not justify itself; whether or not superstition, with all its vagaries, may have been, indeed must have been, the result of that ignorance and fear which he carried about with him, every time he prowled for food through the primeval forest. - A savage's first division of nature would be, I should say, into things which he can eat, and things which can eat him; including, of course, his most formidable enemy, and most savory food, his fellow-man. In finding out what he can eat, we must remember, he will have gone through much experience which will have inspired him with a serious respect for the hidden wrath of nature; like those Himalayan folk, of whom Hooker says, that as they know every poisonous plant, they must have tried them all, not always with impunity. So he gets at a third class of objects, things which he cannot eat, and which will not eat him; but only do him harm, as it seems to him, out of pure malice, like poisonous plants and serpents. There are natural accidents, too, which fall into the same category, stones, floods, fires, avalanches. They hurt him or kill him, surely for ends of their own. If a rock falls from the cliff above him, what more natural than to suppose that there is some giant up there who threw it at him? If he had been up there, and strong enough, and had seen a man walking underneath, he would certainly have thrown the stone at him and killed him. For first, he might have eaten the man after; and even if he were not hungry, the man might have done him a mischief; and it was prudent to prevent that, by doing him a mischief first. Besides, the man might have a wife; and if he killed the man, then the wife would, by a very ancient law common to man and animals, be |