Page images
PDF
EPUB

66

King, with a certain Black called Cæsar as undertaking to leave the colony; but, as Governor; to which panic was added the they had come into it without any secular terror of a Spanish-Popish-plot. Of these vocation or rational purpose, and solely to cases, Anne Hutchinson's is curious, not brave their fate in obedience to the "inner only in itself, as exhibiting the fanaticism light," they refused. It must also be reof a female apostle, but for the indirect marked, that freedom of opinion for thempicture it furnishes of New England at the selves was not so much their aim as the time, where every individual seems to have freedom of insulting the opinion of others. been a theological controvertist, and where Many of the sect, which at this day is remarka private woman, by very nice and not al-able for a guarded composure of language, an elaways very intelligible points of doctrine, borate stillness, precision, and propriety of decould throw a whole community into con- meanor, were at the time referred to as guilty of fusion. The trial of the soldiers at Boston conduct which the experience of a rational and has an interest as being the first blood shed calculating age finds it difficult to conceive.' They in the dispute which eventually lost England as treason. They reviled at all orders of maopenly denounced the Government of New England her colonies, and for the picture it furnishes of the excitable and excited state of the American mind at the time. The case of Zenger is chiefly remarkable for the boldness of the advocate's line of defence, in which he maintained that the jury in cases of libel were judges of law as well as fact, and for the jury's coincidence in that view; a point that was doubtful in England for half a century afterwards. The trials for Witchcraft and the Negro Plot are spe. cimens of that panic fear affecting a whole "In 1665, Lydia Wardell, a respectable mar. society, and satiating itself in blood, which ried woman, entered stark naked into the church arises at certain periods without any ade-in Newbury where she formerly worshipped; and

*

gistrates, and every civil institution. They stigmatized a regular priesthood as a priesthood of Baal. Some of them, in the apprehension of the colonists, were guilty of the most revolting blasphemy against the Sacraments, which they termed carnal and idolatrous observances. They interrupted public worship in a manner as indecent as it was illegal and unbecoming. The feniale preachers exceeded their male associates in these acts of frenzy and folly, and excited the utmost disgust among a people remarkable for their staid and sober deportment.

[ocr errors]

*

[ocr errors]

*

*

The

was highly extolled for her submission to the inward
light, that had revealed to her the duty of illustra-
ting the spiritual nakedness of her neighbors by
this indecent exhibition of her own person.
people,' says Besse the Quaker, who wrote long
after the excitement attending these scenes had
subsided, and in another country, instead of reli
she came in that manner to represent to them, fell
giously reflecting on their own condition, which
into a rage, and presently laid hands on her and
hurried her away to the court at Ipswich;' where
she was hastily sentenced to be severely whipped
at the next tavern-post. She was accordingly
stripped, and tied with her naked breasts against
the splinters of the post, and lashed with more than
a score of stripes; which, though they miserably
tore her bruised body, were yet to the great com-
fort of her husband and friends, who, having unity
with her in those sufferings and in the cause of
them, stood by to comfort her in so deep a trial.'
In the same year, Deborah Wilson, a young and
respectable married woman, made a similar display
in the streets of Salem; for which she was sen-
with her mother and sister, who, it was said had
tenced to be tied to the cart's tail and whipped,
counselled her. Her young husband, who was not
a Quaker, followed after, sometimes thrusting his

quate cause that is apparent to an inquirer;
of which the Popish plot in England is
another example, and, on a much larger
scale, the Reign of Terror in France. The
persecutions of the Quakers have often
been adduced as an example of New Eng-
land fanaticism, and of the bloody spirit
that animated the Puritans. Of the fanati-
cism there is no doubt; but, looking at the
opinion of the age and the circumstances
under which the colony was founded, the
charge of bloody-minded persecution must
be received with some limitations. The
Quakers were intruders into the colony,
and, bating that they were English subjects,
foreign intruders. A cruel and extremely
penal spirit, no doubt, characterizes the
laws against them, (it was also character-
istic of the age,) but the object was to deter
persons from bringing them into the juris.
diction, and to confine them until they
could be expelled. When these measures
failed of effect, they were banished, under
pain of death; and though several, on re-hat between the whip and her back.
turning, were executed, the execution rest-
ed with themselves: they had the option of
*In the case of Junius's "Letter to the King,"
the jury, puzzled by Lord Mansfield's charge
brought in a special verdict "guilty of printing and
publishing only"; which, after various delays, and
a question as to how far judgment for libel could
be pronounced upon such a verdict, ended in the
triumph of the printer.

"In July 1675, four women and one man were arrested in Boston, for creating a horrible dis turbance, and,' as the warrant set forth, affrighting people in the South church at the time of the public dispensing of the word on the Lord's day, whereby several women are in danger of miscarrying.' Margaret Brewster, the leader of the band, appears to have arrived in the town from Barbados on the Lord's day, and leaving her riding

clothes and shoes at the door of the Southnance of the evidence touching acts of the church, she rushed into the house with her accused when they were "not present in female companions, creating an alarm in the the body"-a species of evidence so easy astonished assembly tl.at baffles description. She was clothed in sackcloth, with ashes upon her to invent, and of course impossible to dishead, and her hair streaming over her shoulders: prove. It is difficult to say whether the her feet were bare, and her face was begrimmed following statements are pure inventions of with coal-dust. She announced herself as an illus- folly or malice, or optical delusions, arising tration of the black-pox, which she predicted as an from deranged health and the melancholy approaching judgment on the people. Upon her temperament so likely to be induced by the examination before the Magistrates, she said that fanaticism of New England, and taking the God had three years since laid this service upon her in Barbados, and she had her husband's con- shape of the current superstition. The evisent to come and perform it. She and her female dence was given on the trial of Bridget companions were sentenced to be stripped from Bishop, an old woman who had been in the middle upwards, and tied to a cart's tail at the ill-repute as a witch for more than twenty South meeting-house, and drawn through the town, years. receiving twenty lashes on their naked backs."

The true moral of the whole, however, is the uselessness of persecution. As long as the Quakers were made objects of attention and punished, so long they persisted in disturbing the colony; when neglected or treated with contempt, they came not to it, or sank down into quiet citizens. Rhode Island, founded on a principle of perfect freedom, saw this from the beginning; and the letter in which the colony announced to the Government of Massachusetts their determination to pass no laws upon the subject, contains the rationale of civil interference with religious freedom, which so many have yet to learn.

PRANKS OF A WITCH NOT PRESENT in the BODY.

Samuel Gray testified, that about fourteen years

ago (1678) he waked on a night and saw the room where he lay full of light; and that he then saw plainly a woman between the cradle and the bedside, which looked upon him. He rose and it vanished, though he found the doors all fast looking out at the entry-door, he saw the same woman in the same garb again, and said, " in God's name, what do you come for?" He went to bed and had the cradle gave a great screech, and the woman the same woman assaulting him. The child in disappeared. It was long before the child could be quieted; and though it was a very lively thriv ing child, yet from this time it pined away, and after divers months died in a sad condition. He knew not Bishop nor her name; but when he saw "We find,' they said in a letter to the General her after this, he knew by her countenance and Court, that in those places where these people apparel, and all circumstances, that it was the apaforesaid, in this colony, are most of all suffered parition of this Bishop which had thus troubled him. to declare themselves freely, and are only opposed Richard Cowan testified, that eight years ago, by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come; and we are informed that they be as he lay awake in his bed, with a light burning gan to loathe this place, for that they are not op- of the prisoner and of two more that were strangers in the room, he was annoyed with the apparition posed by the civil authority, but with all patience to him, who came and oppressed him so that he and meekness are suffered to say over their pre-could neither stir himself nor wake any one else; tended revelations and admonitions: nor are they like or able to gain many here to their way: and surely we find that they delight to be persecuted by civil powers; and when they are so, they are like to gain more adherents by the conseyte ofis kinsman offered for this cause to lodge with their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings.'

[ocr errors]

*

*

*

*

*

and that he was the night after molested again in the throat and pulling him almost out of the bed. the like manner; the said Bishop taking him by

him; and that night, as they were awake discoursing together, the witness was once more visited by the guests which had formerly been so troublesome, his kinsman being at the same time struck speechless and unable to move hand or foot.

As matter of attraction respecting what Cotton Mather's title calls "The Wonders of the Invisible World," the trials for witch-He had laid his sword by him; which those uncraft are the most amusing. They are al- happy spectres did strive much to wrest from him, but he held it too fast for them. He then grew so the best treated (perhaps they admitted able to call the people of his house; but although of the best treatment) by Mr. Chandler; a they heard him, yet they had not power to speak brief narrative telling the history of ther stir, until at last, one of the people crying out public delusion, and the general mode of "what is the matter?" the spectres all vanished. carrying on the trials, whilst any particular* John Louder testified, that upon some little concase is exhibited at length. Except in the illegality of the proceedings, the Governor troversy with Bishop about her fowls, going well having no power to appoint the court he to bed, he awoke in the uight by moonlight and saw clearly the likeness of this woman grievously nominated to try the witches, the proceed-oppressing him; in which miserable condition she ings do not essentially differ from similar held him unable to help himself till near day. He cases in this country, unless in the predomi- told Bishop of this; but she utterly denied it, and

**

*

*

**

*

*

threatened him very much. Quickly after this be- [to lift a bag of corn of about two bushels, could not ing at home on a Lord's day with the doors shut budge it with all his might. Many other pranks about him, he saw a black pig approach him; of this Bishop the witness was ready to relate. which endeavoring to kick, it vanished away. He also testified, that he verily believed the Immediately after, sitting down, he saw a black said Bishop was the instrument of his daughter thing jump in at the window and come and stand Priscilla's death: "of which suspicion, pregnant before him. The body was like that of a monkey, reasons were assigned." the feet like a cock's, but the face much like a John Bly and William Bly testified, that being man's. He being so extremely affrighted that he employed by Bridget Bishop to help take down the could not speak, this monster spoke to him and cellar wall of the old house wherein she formerly said, "I am a messenger sent unto you, for I un-lived, they did in holes of the said old wall find derstand that you are in some trouble of mind; several poppets, made up of rags and hog's brisand if you will be ruled by me you shall want for tles, with headless pins in them, the points being nothing in this world." Whereupon he endea- outward; "whereof the prisoner could now give vored to clap his hands upon it; but he could feel no account unto the Court that was reasonable or no substance, and it jumped out of the window | tolerable,” again; but immediately came in by the porch Before we quit this able and interesting though the doors were shut, and said, "you had better take my counsel." He then struck at it volume, let us note two points: either Cowith a stick; but struck only the groundsel, and lonial America produced no case of private broke the stick. The arm with which he struck crime so atrocious as to be remarkable for was presently disabled; and it vanished away, its atrocity, or Mr. Chandler has not reHe presently went out at the back door, and spied corded it: how rapidly opinion changes if this Bishop in her orchard, going toward her house; but he had not power to set one foot for the change be marked at some elapsed time, ward unto her. Whereupon, returning into the and not in its gradual progress. It is cushouse, he was immediately accosted by the mon- tomary to talk of the wonderful fluctuations ster he had seen before, which goblin was going in public opinion during the present cento fly at him; whereat he cried out, "the whole tury, and no doubt they have been very armor of God be between me and you!" So it sprung great; but they are nothing so great as back and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many took place during a similar space of time apples off the tree in its flying over. At its leap, in the Plantations respecting Quakers and it flung dirt with its feet against the stomach of the man; whereon he was then struck dumb, and Witchcraft-although some suppose the so continued for three days together.

"Upon the producing of this testimony," says Cotton Mather, "Bishop denied that she knew this deponent. Yet their two orchards joined, and they had often had their little quarrels for some years together."

William Stacy testified, that receiving money of this Bishop for work done by him, he was gone but a matter of three roods from her, and looking for his money found it unaccountably gone from him. Some time after, Bishop asked him whether his father would grind her grist for her? He demanded why? She replied because folks count me a witch. He answered, "no question but he will grind it for you." Being then gone about six roods from her with a load in his cart, suddenly the off-wheel slumpt and sunk down into a hole, upon plain ground; so that the witness was forced to get help for the recovering of the wheel. But, stepping back to look for the hole which might give him this disaster, there was none at all to be found. Some time after, he was waked in the night; but it seemed as light as day, and he perfectly saw the shape of this Bishop in the room troubling of him; but upon her going out all was dark again. He charged Bishop afterwards with it; and she denied it not, but was very angry. Quickly after, this witness having been threatened by Bishop, as he was in a dark night going to the barn, he was very suddenly taken or lifted from the ground and thrown against a stone wall; after that, he was again hoisted up and thrown down a bank at the end of his house. After this, again passing by this Bishop, his horse, with a small load, striving to draw, all his gears flew to pieces and the cart fell down; and this deponent going then

age of the Stuarts was an age of stagnation. The fact is, history is progress; and it would form a curious chapter of it to note the changes that have taken place in the world's mind at comparatively short periods.

DIETETICS.

From the Spectator.

Food and its Influence on Health and Disease; or an Account of the Effects of different kinds of Aliment on the Human Body. With Dietetic Rules for the Preservation of Health. By MATTHEW TRUMAN, M. D.

THIS is a very pleasant volume on a very vital subject, and in which the most philosophical engage some twice or thrice a day, unless they belong to that unfortunately large class (which Dr. Truman expressly excludes from consideration) whose ill condition arises from a "paucity rather than a superabundance of food." In this essay on aliment, an immense number of facts are brought together, relating to some of the four thousand articles with which man at various times and under various circumstances has gratified his palate or satisfied his hunger. The curious epicure may obtain from Dr. Truman's essay on Food, a précis of the history, not of eating, but of things eaten; and learn the reason why certain

national dainties, to him nauseous-as more and trouble it less." Dr. Truman, whale-blubber-are desired by the peoples however, gives the modus operandi of diet which indulge in them. Here too he will-which, no doubt, imparts more impress find a judicious and discriminating advo- and conviction to the rule. The principal cacy of cookery as a chemical art, whose axiom we have deduced from Food and its object, like that of all arts, is to develope Influence on Health and Disease, is the pofor the gratification of man the qualities pular and genial one-Live variously and found in nature; a medical inquiry into the well; eat mixed food; Nature intended nutritive properties of the different classes man to live on variety; and do not be deof food-animals, vegetables, fish, and so luded into Cornaro systems of diet, for the forth; together with some hints touching old Venetian had a peculiar idiosyncracy, the management of his own diet, and an in- and was an invalid to boot. teresting exhibition of some physiological wonders in our microcosm or little world. The execution of the whole, moreover, is as agreeable as the matter is attractive; the style, with a gossipy character, possessing a closeness and neatness which rise to easy clearness in the chemical or physiological expositions.

"The instance of Cornaro, who improved his fore frequently most improperly quoted; for, health so much by great frugality of diet, is therethough the plan of living he followed might suit some persons, it would infallibly cause disease, and ultimately death, if rigorously adopted by most people. The account he has left of the small quantities of food he was in the habit of subsisting The reader must not extend this praise, majority of individuals would find an attempt to on, is alone sufficient to show how injurious the or expect from the work, what it does not live in a similar manner. He tells us that he was possess, and probably never aimed at es- extremely unhealthy and decrepid up to the age of sentially it has no principle of any novelty; forty, when he determined on adopting a most abthe account of the elements of animal and stemious plan of diet, and eating every thing by vegetable food-the fibrin, albumen, &c. of weight. The entire quantity of food he took daily animals-the gluten, mucilage, &c. in veconsisted of twelve ounces of bread, eggs, &c., getables-with the respective proportions only twenty-six ounces of food, solid and liquid. and fourteen ounces of liquids, making altogether of nourishment they yield, and their re- By following this course, he recovered his health, spective facilities of digestion-may be and lived to be one hundred and four years of age. found in many books on chemistry and Many may suppose that the long life he attained dietetics. Some of the physiological ex-proves the healthiness of his mode of living; it positions, though not new, are less popularly known; and many of the facts are not to be called new in strictness, for we all knew that Frenchmen eat frogs, and cannibals human flesh. The attraction lies in the clear arrangement, the novel air imparted to the facts by bringing so many of them together, and the easy pleasantness of style with which they are presented.

was certainly healthy for him, and might be so for any other person in a similar state of body to himself: but he must always be considered as a sort of invalid, in whom the powers of nutrition were very weak, and unable to assimilate a larger quantity of nourishment; for if he had ever required more food, he could not have borne it—as was proved by the addition of merely two ounces of solid food to his usual allowance always causing him fever; and yet a more generous diet would could have supported it. It is by no means deundoubtedly have been very beneficial to him, if he sirable to try and subsist upon too little food; for this practice occasionally induces a peculiar condition of the stomach, which renders it incapable of bearing the stimulus of the quantity of nourishment necessary for a vigorous state of body."

The defect of the book, to us, is its want of conclusion. When we have read it through, we are much where we were as regards specific rules of diet. Dr. Truman says, indeed, that many constitutions have an idiosyncracy which enables them to take, and even with benefit, things that are inju rious to others: but this we knew before. of Dr. Truman's book has conveyed a sufAs we know not that our general account He cautions the reader against improper ficiently distinct idea of its nature and exeabstinence, as likely to be injurious: but cution (which is indeed not very easily conCelsus, nearly two thousand years ago, an- veyed by description), we will draw pretty nounced a somewhat similar opinion, when he warned mankind, in varying their mode freely upon its varied contents, that they of life (by sleep, watching, food, fasting, may speak for themselves. &c.) to tend towards the benign extreme. Our author dwells upon the advantage of influencing the body by diet rather than medicine but Bacon, and probably others before him, propounded a similar rule, and for the reason that "diets alter the body

REPTILE food.

The animals belonging to the class Reptilia which afford food to man are not numerous. The turtle supplies a very nutritious and wholesome article of diet; and, now that the voyage between this country and the West Indies is made in such

PRE-EMINENCE OF MILK.

a short time by steamboats, it will no doubt be im- sphynx-moth, and a grub found at the root of ported in greater abundance, with much advantage the sugar-cane. Snails are taken as food in to our population at large. Turtle was first intro- many parts of Europe. The earth-worm is eaten duced into this country, as an article of food, in Van Diemen's Land. The Greenlanders, about the middle of the seventeenth century. Negroes, and Chinese eat the pediculus huThe following extract from the Gentleman's manus; the Javans have also been accused of Magazine for the year 1753 shows it was at that eating these insects, but this they deny, though time considered a great rarity:-" Friday, Au- they confess to biting them. gust 31. A turtle weighing 350 pounds was ate at the King's Arms Tavern, Pall Mall: the mouth of an oven was taken down to admit the part to be baked." The greater number of turtle consumed in London are brought from Jamaica; where much care is bestowed on breeding and preserving them: they are sold in the shops in that island at a less cost than beef or mutton. Some of them are so large, that one would be a sufficient repast for a hundred persons, and admit of fourteen men standing with ease at the same time on its back.

Serpents are eaten in many parts of the world: the American Indians are very fond of rattlesnakes, cooked as we dress eels. The anaconda, and other boas, afford a wholesome diet to the natives of the countries they inhabit. Adders are stated to be used as food in many parts of France and Italy. Crocodiles, the guana, and other lizards, are eaten in South America and the Bahama Islands. The bull-frog is considered in America as good as turtle.

THE DELUDED PARISIANS.

The Rana esculanta, or edible frog, is a favorite article of diet in France, Germany, and Italy. Toads seem also to be eaten by the French, though unwittingly. Professor Dumeril used to relate, in his lectures at the Jardin des Plantes, that the frogs brought to the markets in Paris are caught in the stagnant waters round Montmorenci, in the Bois de Vincennes, Bois de Boulogne, &c. The people employed in this traffic separate the hind-quarters and legs of the frog from the body, denude them of their skin,

arrange them on skewers as larks are done in this country, and then bring them in that state to market. In seeking for frogs, these dealers often meet with toads; which they do not reject, but prepare them in the same way as they would frogs; and, as it is impossible to determine whether the hind-quarters of these creatures, after the skin is stripped off, belong to frogs or toads, it continually happens that great numbers of the supposed frogs sold in Paris for food are actually

toads.

INSECT FOOD.

Dr.

This is one of the most important articles of diet derived from the animal kingdom, and has many remarkable properties worthy of notice belonging to it. In the course of this work it will be shown, that the higher orders of animals require a mixture of different alimentary substances for their nutrition; for when they are limited to any one kind of food, their condition is either deteriorated, or disorganization of structure ensues. Milk is the only aliment which offers an exception to this rule-that is to say, which is capable of supporting life alone. Prout has well remarked, that all other alimentary matters exist for themselves, or for the use of the animal or vegetable of which they form a constituent part. Milk, however, is prepared by nature expressly as food, being of no other use to animals whatever. It would naturally be expected, that since milk possesses the nutrient property in so eminent a degree, its composition must be peculiar, and contain a greater diversity of the principles forming alimentary matter than other kinds of food. Such, indeed, is the fact; for every sort of animal milk is composed of albumen, oil, and sugar, suspended in a large quantity of water. The proportions in which these three substances are united in different kinds of milk vary exceedingly, but they have always been found to exist in the milk of all animals.

RATIONALE OF RAW OYSTERS.

few minutes to a temperature of 165 deg. FahAlbumen coagulates on being exposed for a renheit; which causes different processes of cookery greatly to vary the digestible properties of substances containing an abundance of it. Eggs exposed to a high temperature, merely long enough to cause partial coagulation of the albumen, are much lighter and more digestible than they are after the application of heat to them has been continued to complete it, or as it tible qualities of oysters may be modified in a is termed, till they are boiled hard. The diges

similar manner. In a raw state, or when the albumen they contain is uncoagulated, a great number may be eaten without causing any bad

Humboldt says, the children in some parts of South America may be seen dragging enor-effects. One of the most distinguished French mous centipedes from their holes and craunching them between their teeth without compunction. The white ant is eaten by the Indians in Brazil, Guana, on the banks of the Rio Negro, and Cassiquiaire. The Negroes in the West Indies are very partial to a caterpillar found on the palmtree. The Caffre hordes of South Africa feed upon locusts, ants, and a variety of insects too numerous for detail. Locusts and grasshoppers are eaten in Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Madagascar, and China. The Chinese also eat the chrysalises of the silk-worm, the larva of the

physiologists of the present day used to declare, he did not care about eating oysters unless he could be supplied with at least twelve or fourteen dozen for his own share; a number he was continually in the habit of taking at one meal, without experiencing any symptoms of indigestion. Numerous other instances could be adduced of persons eating similar quantities with impunity. Stewed oysters, however, in which the albumen is coagulated, could not, in all probability, be partaken of with similar freedom, without causing a great derangement of the stomach.

« PreviousContinue »