OF POPULAR

LITERATURE

No. 237.

CONTRARY TO THE CUSTOM S. I AM, for my own part, an individual of Spartan virtue and the strictest morals. If I picked up a purse of money in the street to-morrow, I am almost certain that I should advertise it in the newspapers. If I took somebody else's portmanteau home with me in place of my own, I should at once propose to myself to return it to its original proprietor without any consideration respecting the relative value of the

two.

Still, as the moral philosopher observed who ate the sucking-pig which was sent as a present to his friend, 'One must stop somewhere;' and there is a limit even to my notions of what should be expected of an honest man. I condemn but cannot help extenuating the conduct of that paterfamilias who, upon the troublesome question of allowance of luggage, describes his party as 'seven first-class passengers,' when three of the same are infants, and pay no fares. The poor fellow reasons (I hope and believe) somewhat after the following fashion: The railway authorities permit little children to travel free; that permission is absurd unless they permit their baggage to travel free also, these iron cots are their private property; my own portmanteau has been partially usurped by certain heterogeneous garments of ridiculously small dimensions; this bag, which I am always instructed to "see to," and carry in my hand so carefully, and which clinks as I move, as though there were something frangible in it, must certainly belong to them, and should be conveyed gratis. Moreover, I was not asked how many tickets I had procured, but how many persons were travelling with me.'

This last exculpation I consider to be a reprehensible quibble; but if paterfamilias sticks solely to his first notion of the semi-generous manner in which the railway authorities behave in regard to infants, and practically reforms their half-measures-in spite of themselves-by giving a whole effect to them-that man has then my sympathy, though not perhaps my admiration. I confess I am not able to look upon a public company as upon a private individual. I have not imagination enough-my weakness arises from that, I think—to identify a Board with a human Being. I cannot detect that feeling of shame within me when I mulct an association of directors, which I should entertain if I took an article of value, or indeed any article, out of the coat-pocket of a single member of that body. I smoke in contravention of by-laws. I give money to luggage-porters, with a tacit understanding that I shall in return for it enjoy certain immunities, in spite of the particular requests

PRICE 140.

to the contrary that are addressed to me in print at every station, and of the 'Certain Dismissal' which is threatened so inexorably to the recipients.

With these little flaws in my otherwise immaculate moral character, it is not to be expected that I should entertain a servile respect for Her Majesty's Revenue laws; that I should religiously observe those Duties which are not so much natural as Customary. I do smuggle a little, when an opportunity offers itself, and that's the honest truth. In addition to the pecuniary saving, which is not inconsiderable in articles such as lace and tobacco, there is a considerable charm in defeating an organised system, in setting at nought a whole army of individuals that has been expressly levied for my discomfiture. Besides, if the worst comes to the worst, if a smuggler falls into the hands of a revenue-officer, he cannot be put to death, nor even transported for life: the risk of fine or imprisonment is of course considerable, but not more than sufficiently great to enhance the excitement. I had done a little in velvets, and made insignificant ventures of silk and jewellery more than once before I tried my first grand coup in laces, but I felt upon that occasion, I confess, excessively nervous.

It was autumn, and I was crossing the Channel to Dover amid a crowd of returning tourists, almost all of whom were dreadfully inconvenienced by a strong westerly wind. Tot homines, tot sententiæ, was never proved to be so false a proverb before. Numerous as the company was, it was all of one mind, or at least of one stomach; the deck, as a modern wit (who I wish was my friend) once observed, looked like some horrid picnic. It was terrible, as I stood at the bow, to see nothing else but the drooping hats and bonnets of my fellow-beings as the vessel dipped and rose-an endless game of pitch-and-toss, where nothing turned up but heads. One sea-green face, however, was visible, the property of a middle-aged lady of large dimensions, and it interested me very deeply. Those nervous eyes, that twitching mouth, that countenance vainly striving to look unconcerned, I recognised at once as belonging to the amateur female smuggler running her first cargo. She would have been ill, I could see, only she had too great a weight upon her mind to enjoy any such relaxation. She saw that I was looking fixedly at her, and a blush came over her face, at once making the green one red.' Yes, it was plain she smuggled; she was stouter than any woman of her general appearance had any right to be.

'Madam,' said I, approaching her by a series of gymnastic evolutions, which the unstable character of the plane whereon I moved compelled-'I see you

have no attendant; can I be of any service to you? I am an old sailor, and have, as you see, my sea-legs under me.'

The poor woman gazed on the limbs referred to with an unintelligent and frightened air; she had evidently never heard of sea-legs,' or else she had understood me to say that I had three legs, and she stared accordingly.

'I want nothing, sir, I thank you,' replied she feebly, unless you could put me on shore.'

'We shall be, my dear madam,' said I, taking out my watch, but keeping my eye steadily upon her-' we shall be in less than ten minutes at the Custom-house.' A spasm-a flicker from the guilt within-glanced over her countenance.

'You look very good-natured, sir,' stammered she. I bowed, and looked considerably more so, in order to invite her confidence. If I was to tell you a secret, which I find is too much for me to keep to myself, oh, would you hold it inviolable?'

'I know it, my dear madam-I know it already,' said I smiling; it is Lace, is it not?'

She uttered a little shriek, and- Yes, she had got it there, among the crinoline. She thought it had been sticking out, you see, unknown to her. 'Oh, sir,' cried she, it is only ten pounds' worth: please to forgive me, and I'll never do it again. As it is, I think I shall expire.'

'My dear madam,' replied I, sternly but kindly, 'here is the pier, and the officer has fixed his eye upon us. I must do my duty.'

I rushed up the ladder like a lamp-lighter; I pointed that woman out to the legitimate authority: I accompanied her upon her way, in custody, to the searching-house. I did not see her searched, but I saw what was found upon her, and I saw her fined and dismissed with ignominy. Then, having generously given up my emoluments as informer, to the subordinate officials, I hurried off in search of the betrayed woman to her hotel. She did not receive me warmly, and for a long time, indeed, refused to hear a word that I had to say. At last I overcame her antipathy so far as to get her to look at a piece of point-lace of twice the value of that which had been so ruthlessly taken away from her. I then placed in her hand the amount of the fine in which she had been mulcted. Then I began my explanatory

statement:

'You had ten pounds' worth of smuggled goods about your person, madam. I had nearly fifty times that amount. If you were alarmed for the possible consequences of your rashness, what, think you, must have been the state of my feelings upon my own account? I turned informer, madam, let me convince you, for the sake of both of us. You have too expressive a countenance, believe me, for this sort of free-trading, and the officer would have found you out at all events, even as I did myself. Are you satisfied, my dear madam? If you still feel aggrieved or injured by me in any manner, pray take more lace; here is lots of it.'

We parted the best of friends.

I had a second adventure, the other day, of a much less dangerous character, but which, as it happily illustrates my great natural ingenuity, I here take leave to add. Having come from the Mediterranean a few weeks ago to Southampton, I happened to be in possession of a couple of pounds of exceedingly fine cigars, adapted to my special taste, and which I was determined no custom-house fingers should meddle with. As soon as the vessel was brought alongside the quay, I left my cabin, and made my

way to the movable gangway.

'Sir,' said the official at the deck end of it, with a malicious grin, 'I think I must trouble you to take off your hat.'

To you?' cried I-'never! You are not Prince Albert in disguise, I suppose, nor the Bey of Tunis?' 'Come, come,' exclaimed the fellow-official persons, it may be here observed, have the greatest possible dislike to being rallied, or, as the vulgar have it, 'chaffed' by anybody-none of your sauce; you take that hat off, or it will be the worse for you.'

'Which hat?' asked I innocently-whose hat?' 'Yours,' replied he savagely-yours. It's tipped up over your forehead in a way which convinces me that you have something in it.'

'My very dear sir,' answered I blandly, of course I have something in it. I always carry my pockethandkerchief there; and there's my head besides.'

This suspicious person telegraphed, nevertheless, to his confederate upon the shore, who seized upon me as I touched ground, and with the same ridiculous pertinacity, requested me to take my hat off.

'If you lay a finger on my hat,' cried I furiously, 'I'll first knock you down (I was six feet one without the hat, which was an exceedingly tall one), and then bring an action against you for an aggravated assault. I want to get into the town particularly; there are friends expecting me-female friends; I insist upon being let go.'

The cold-blooded official smiled grimly without reply, and took me to his superior, by whom the same demand was repeated. I said that, in courtesy, and not upon compulsion, I would touch my hat to him; but that I would not take it off without a warrant. Then I was marched away in custody of a sort of guard of honour to the office of the superintendent. That individual convinced me of his right to enforce this absurd request of taking off my hat; and under protest, and to oblige him, as being a very gentlemanly person, I did it. There was nothing in my hat, as I had affirmed from the very first, except my pockethandkerchief. Officials never apologise; but I do hope that they felt they had wronged a fellowcreature by their cruel suspicions. I hastened back to the vessel, dived into my cabin, and presently reappeared with my tall hat tipped over my forehead more than ever.

'Would you like me to take my hat off?' inquired I of the first gangway-man. 'Would you like me to take my hat off?' asked I of the second. I demanded, in short, whether I should again bare my injured head, of every custom-house officer who had been superfluous about that ceremony before. But they all looked sheepish or annoyed, and replied that they had had quite enough of me and my hat already. It was therefore certainly not my fault, but their own, that my two pounds of special Regalias, which really were in my hat the second time, have not assisted, in their proper quota of some eighteen shillings, to swell the revenues of my native land.

a

DR MADDEN'S 'PHANTASMATA. UNDER this name, Dr Madden has given us laborious, yet popular view of the various epidemic manias which raged in Europe during the middle ages, and particularly during the two excited centuries connected with the Reformation. It is a strange, wild subject, profoundly interesting as a chapter of the mental history of our race, affording many important warnings, and perhaps worthy of deeper philosophical consideration than it has ever yet received. Dr Madden treats it chiefly as a physician, tracing its connection with the more familiar forms of lunacy; yet, being also a littérateur, he has not neglected to present it in such a manner as to attract the ordinary reader.

In the first volume, and earlier half of the second,

came in December 1634 to assist in expelling demons from the Ursuline nuns of Loudun. Before he had been at work more than a month, he was so far affected as to lose his speech. Then a demon, who possessed the face of the superioress, and spoke by her mouth, suddenly left her, and took possession of Surin, causing him to change colour, constricting his chest, and also depriving him of speech. Being exorcised out of the father, the demon returned to the body of the superioress; soon after, it came back to the father, who now began to suffer internal pains that caused him to twist his body like one afflicted with the cholic. Writing to a friend regarding his sufferings three months after, he tells how the demon passes from the possessed person into himself, throwing him down in convulsions which last for several hours. I cannot explain,' says he, what passes in me during this time, nor how that spirit unites itself to mine, still acting like another self, as if I had two souls, of which one is deprived of her body and of the use of her faculties, and holds herself apart, contemplating the actions of the soul which now occupies the body. The two spirits fight in the same field, which is the body, and the soul is, as it were, divided. On the one side, the soul is subject to diabolic influence, and on the other to her natural inclinations, or those which God gives.... When, prompted by one of these devils, I wish to make the sign of the cross on my mouth, the other devil, with great rapidity, turns away my hand, and catches my finger with the teeth, to gnaw me with rage. The extremity in which I find myself is such, that I have scarcely one free faculty. When I wish to speak, my mouth is closed; at mass, I am suddenly stopped; at table, I cannot convey the morsel to my lips; at confession, I forget | in a moment all my sins; and I feel that the devil comes and goes, as in his own house, within me. Directly I awake, he is with me at prayer; he deprives me of consciousness when he pleases; when my heart would expand itself in God, he fills it with when I would watch, he sets me asleep; and he publicly by the mouth of the demoniac (the sisterprioress) boasts that he is my master.'

rage;

It was the afflictions of these nuns of Loudun that led to the celebrated prosecution of the obnoxious priest, Urbain Grandier. When this dismal case is treated among modern rational authors, it is customary to hold up the nuns as practising an imposition for the destruction of an innocent man; but the theory of a deliberate or systematic imposture on their part is precluded by the fact of the continuance of the same painful demonstrations for several years after Grandier's execution; and, moreover, the Loudun possessions are but one example of many in which there has been no such malignant object alleged. For anything that appears, the Loudun nuns were as much the victims of some influence beyond the control of their own better sense, as any others that gave similar manifestations. In our time, were such phenomena to present themselves, they would be treated as disease, and, instead of religious exorcisms, which seem only to have fed the malady, there would have been some strong alterative treatment of a purely physical kind. It may be suspected, however, that there was something more in these cases of so-called demonomania than what our orthodox medicine is willing to admit. The resemblance of many of the phenomena to those of mesmerism is extremely striking.

Our readers will understand that these are but glances at a series of strange and wild historiettes, which they will find in full and interesting detail in Dr Madden's book. We close the volumes of our learned author with thanks for his bringing so many curious matters into a regular and accessible form. With his theories regarding them, proceeding as these

do on the narrow views of existing medical science, we cannot say we are satisfied. They all seem to us to rest on some assumption, and they certainly ignore whole classes of facts as well attested as any of the rest.

DOWN AT THE GRANGE.

I.

As soon as the few friends who visit this little vicarage of mine at Woodislee, for the first time, have done admiring its low white front, all garlanded with honeysuckle, and the wild growth of ivy overhead, I take them to the school-house, as a sight more pleasant still; quite as large, and twice as high it is, and built of rough-hewn stone, with a porch almost as big as the house itself, to shelter the children when they come too early for their school-time. The thymy smell of the moorland is borne to us as we approach, along with the murmur of their voices, making it seem doubly like the hum of bees; and the stock in its garden, and the sweetbrier that peers in at its open casements, make the air fragrant within. The schoolrooms of both boys and girls are lofty and well ventilated, and however their young hearts may long to be up and away over the purple hill, there is, at least, no headache nor drowsiness to dull their little wits. In the winter-time, too, all is snug and warm, so that fewer small red noses, and a less universal infant snuffle, are perceptible in the school-house of Woodislee than in any similar place that I am acquainted with. The squire built it at his own expense, and the cottage of the master and his wife beside it likewise. Higher upon the moorland yet-a beacon to be seen from half-a-dozen counties, and a landmark for the ships that come up from the western world-stands the new church, and has stood there those ten years in despite of the four winds. Oh, pleasant sight upon a Sabbath morn, while the bells are still ringing their first peal, and along the winding sandroad come the good people up by twos and threes: the young men in their clean white smock-frocks, and the girls in gay apparel; the old men toiling slowly with hat in hand, their gray hairs lifted by the breeze, and their old dames resplendent in the scarlet cloaks they are so loathe to leave off wearing, though the summer is come; and all, as they stop to rest from time to time, turning to westward gladly for that glorious view. The glimmering towns, from which, too, comes a faint and faroff music; the teeming hedgerows, with the deep blood-red Devon lanes; the crystal river hiding from the sun in the cool copses; the sparkling sea, with its fair burdens mostly motionless, but on its verge a dim white speck that grows, and close inshore (that was itself a speck when the bells rang for school an hour ago) a huge three-masted ship-an isle of snow, or a white cloud fresh fallen; and so with thankful hearts, I hope, for the fair world that has been given us to dweil in, we enter into church at Woodislce. Massive need its walls be, and the tall gray tower, straight and without flaw, when the fierce north-wester blows-and they are so. The good squire built this also-Mr Markham that is, who lives in the great house yonder with the gables, which is called the Grange.

When I first came to Woodislee, I came as curate, for the incumbent was near ninety years of age, and very infirm. I had a hundred pounds a year, and the little cottage that is now in ruins close by the old church, to live in, and never dreamed to have done better. That would have been enough and to spare, indeed-without my good wife here and the four little ones of course, who then were not in the questionfor the place is not a dear one as to living. The Brent,