LOVE OF THE MARVELOUS.

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our guard against that love of the marvelous which we find inherent in our nature.

These and similar considerations will ever weigh with the prudent and reflecting observer. Yet it is to be conceded, that the principle above referred to, of the vast accumulation of evidence from the concurrence of reliable witnesses, is not only just, mathematically considered, but, in a variety of cases, strictly applies in practice.

If we find, for instance, at different periods of the world and in various nations, examples constantly recurring of men testifying to certain phenomena of the same or a similar character, then, though these alleged phenomena may seem to us highly improbable, we are not justified in ascribing the concurrence of such testimony to chance. We are not justified in setting down the whole as idle superstition; though in these modern days it is very much the fashion of the world, proud of having outgrown its nursery-tales, so to do. Disgusted by detecting a certain admixture of error and folly, we often cast aside an entire class of narrations as wholly baseless and absurd; forgetting that when, at remote periods, at distant points, without possibility of collusion, there spring up, again and again, the same or similar appearances, such coincidence ought to suggest to us the probability that something more enduring than delusion may be mixed in to make up the producing cause.*

"Take any one of what are called popular errors or popular superstitions, and on looking at it thoroughly we shall be sure to discover in it a firm, underlying stratum of truth. There may be more than we suspected of folly and of fancy; but when these are stripped off there remains quite enough of that stiff, unyielding material which belongs not to persons or periods, but is common to all ages, to puzzle the learned and silence the scoffer."-RUTTER: Human Electricity, Appendix, p. vii.

To the same effect is the expression of a celebrated French philosopher:"In every error there is a kernel of truth: let us seek to detach that kernel from the envelop that hides it from our eyes."-BAILLY.

It is truth only that is tenacious of life, and that rises, with recg efies, throughout the lapse of ages, eiastic ander repressica and contempt.

Let us cake, as an example, that description of popular stories which relate to haunted houses, the universal prevalence of witch is simitted by those who the most ridienle the idea that they prove any thing save the folly and credalay of maand* Is it the part of Philosophy contemptuously to ignore all evidence that may present itself in favor of the reality of such alleged disturb

ances?

It may be freely conceded, that for many of the stories in questica no better foundation can be found than those panie terrors which are wont to beset the ignorant mind: that others, doubtless, are due to a mere spirit of mischief seeking to draw amusement

*Who has not either seen or heard of some house, shut up and uninhabitabile, filen in decay and looking dusty and dreary, from which at midnight strange sounds have been heard to issue,-aerial knockings, the rating of chains and the groaning of perturbed spirits?-a house that people have thought it use to pass after dark, that has remained for years without a want, and which no tenant would occupy, even were he paid to do so? There are hundreds of such houses in England at the present day, hundreds in France, Germany, and almost every country of Barope; which are marked with the mark of fear,-places for the pious to Mess themselves at and ask protection from, as they pass,-the abodes of ghosts and evil spirits. There are many such houses in London; and if any vain boaster of the march of intellect would but take the trouble to find them out and count them, he would be convinced that intellect must yet make some enormous strides before such old superstitions can be eradicated."-Mackey's Popular Delusions, vol. ii. p. 113. The author does not deem the hypothesis that there is any thing real in such phenomena worth adverting to, eren as among possible things.

Nor was the idea of haunted houses less commonly received in ancient times than among us. Plautus has a comedy entitled Mostellaria, from a specter said to have shown itself in a certain house, which on that account was deserted. The particular story may have been invented by the dralat; but it suffices to indicate the antiquity of the idea.- Plaut. Mostel., v. 67

THE MONKS OF CHANTILLY.

101

from these very terrors; and, finally, that there are instances where the mystification may have covered graver designs.* But because there are counterfeits, is there therefore no true coin? May there not be originals to these spurious copies?

In another part of this work I shall bring up the evi

One such is related by Garinet, in his "Histoire de la Magie en France," (p. 75;) a clever trick played off by certain monks on that king whose piety has procured for him the title of "The Saint."

Having heard his confessor speak in high terms of the goodness and learning of the monks of St. Bruno, the king expressed a desire to found a community of them near Paris. Bernard de la Tour, the superior, sent six of the brethren; and Louis assigned to them, as residence, a handsome dwelling in the village of Chantilly. It so happened that from their windows they had a fine view of the old palace of Vauvert, originally erected for a royal residence by King Robert, but which had been deserted for years. The worthy monks, oblivious of the tenth commandment, may have thought the place would suit them; but ashamed, probably, to make a formal demand of it from the king, they seem to have set their wits to work to procure it by stratagem. At all events, the palace of Vauvert, which had never labored under any imputation against its character till they became its neighbors, began, almost immediately afterward, to acquire a bad name. Frightful shrieks were heard to proceed thence at night; blue, red, and green lights were seen to glimmer from its casements and then suddenly disappear. The clanking of chains succeeded, together with the howlings of persons as in great pain. Then a ghastly specter, in pea-green, with long, white beard and serpent's tail, appeared at the principal windows, shaking his fists at the passers-by. This went on for months. The king, to whom of course all these wonders were duly reported, deplored the scandal, and sent commissioners to look into the affair. To these the six monks of Chantilly, indignant that the devil should play such pranks before their very faces, suggested that if they could but have the palace as a residence they would undertake speedily to clear it of all ghostly intruders. A deed, with the royal sign-manual, conveyed Vauvert to the monks of St. Bruno. It bears the date of 1259. From that time all disturbances ceased; the green ghost, according to the creed of the pious, being laid to rest forever under the waters of the Red Sea.

Another instance, occurring in the Chateau d'Arsillier, in Picardy, will be found in the "Causes Célèbres," vol. xi. p. 374; the bailiff having dressed himself up as a black phantom, with horns and tail, and guaranteed himself against the chance of a pistol-shot by a buffalo's hide fitted tightly to his body. He was finally detected, and the cheat exposed.

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THE MENTAL EPIDEMICS

dences which present themselves to one who seriously seeks an answer to the above queries.* Let those who may decide, in advance, that the answer is not worth seeking, be reminded that there are twenty allegations which are worthy to be examined, for every one that may be unhesitatingly received.

Again, there is a class of phenomena, as widely spread as the disturbances above alluded to,-probably somewhat allied to them, but more important than they, to which the same principle in regard to the concurrence of testimony in various ages and countries eminently applies; those strange appearances, namely, which, for lack of a more definite term, may be grouped together as mesmeric.

Without seeking, amid the obscurity of remote antiquity, a clew to all that we read of the so-called Occult Arts, as among the magicians of Egypt, the soothsayers and diviners of Judea, the sibyls and oracles of Greece and Rome,†-we shall find, in later times, but commencing long before the appearance of Mesmer, a succession of phenomena, with resemblance sufficient to substantiate their common origin, and evidently referable to the same unexplained and hidden causes, operating during an abnormal state of the human system, whence spring the various phases of somnambulism and other analogous manifestations, physical and mental, observed by animal magnetizers.

Time after time throughout the psycho-medical his

* See further on, under title “Disturbances popularly termed Hauntings.” †The curious in such matters may consult the "Geschichte der Magie," by Dr. Joseph Ennemoser, Leipzig, 1844,-of which, if he be not familiar with German, he will find an English translation, by William Howitt, "History of Magic," London, 1854.

Also, the "Cradle of the Twin Giants, Science and History," by the Rev. Henry Christmas, M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., London, 1849.

Both are works of great research.

tory of the Middle Ages and of modern Europe-sometimes among Catholics, sometimes among Protestants -recur these singular episodes in the history of the human mind, usually epidemical in their character while they last, each episode, however, independent of the others and separated from them widely by timo and place; all narrated by writers who take the most opposite views of their nature and causes, yet all, no matter by whom narrated, bearing a family likeness, which appears the more striking the more closely they are studied.

Examples are numerous: as the alleged obsession (1632 to 1639) of the Ursuline Nuns of Loudun, with its sequel, in 1642, among the Sisters of St. Elizabeth at Louviers; the mental aberrations of the Prophets or Shakers (Trembleurs) of the Cevennes, (1686 to 1707,) caused by the persecutions which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and the pseudo-miracles of the Convulsionists of St. Médard (1731 to 1741) at the tomb of the Abbé Pâris.*

All this occurred, it will be observed, before the very name of Animal Magnetism was known, or any natural explanation of these strange manifestations was suspected; at a time when their investigation was considered the province of the ecclesiastical tribunals, not

For details touching the disturbances at Loudun, consult "La Démonomanie de Loudun," by La Flèche, 1634; "Cruels Effets de la Vengeance du Cardinal de Richelieu; ou, Histoire des Diables de Loudun," Amsterdam, 1693; "Ecamen et Discussions Critiques de l'Histoire des Diables de Loudun," by M. de la Ménardaye, Paris, 1747; "Histoire Abrégée de la Possession des Ursulines de Loudun," by the Père Tissot, Paris, 1828. For those of Louviers, see "Réponse à l'Examen de la Possession des Religieuses de Louviers," Rouen, 1643. As to the Prophets of the Cevennes, see "Théatre Sacré des Cevennes," by M. Misson, London, 1707; "An Account of the French Prophets and their Pretended Inspirations," London, 1708; "Histoire des Troubles des Cevennes," by M. Court, Alais, 1819. The works on the St. Médard disturbances are elsewhere noticed.