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on a by-road near Rome; and, when a guest arrived, used to turn him into an ass, or a goat; and so sell him to the next comer for what he would fetch. But it has always seemed to me that the ass and the goat here are parabolical; although William of Malmesbury, in his simplicity, has taken the words in their literal sense. As, for example-when a guest arrived at this inn, the old woman made an ass of him-which might well be; and so on to the young one, mutatis mutandis.

On the point of outwitting a demon, the new German story, built probably upon the legend of Lord Lyttleton, is the best. A student at a German University fancies one night, when he has been in bed about an hour, and certainly has not gone to sleep, that his mother comes to his bedside, and warns him of his approaching death. He was to have died on the third night from that on which he saw the vision; and fell ill, (and probably would have died)-on the morning of the third day; the physician, however, who was sent for, gave his patient, privately, a powerful opiate draught; he slept for eighteen hours; and, when he awoke, it was too late for the ghost to keep her word.

Some demons have been rather waggishly than fraudulently inclined. In Switzerland there was such a one, when time was, who passed for a farmer, and was called Maitre Pierre. This caitiff made a quantity of pigs out of trusses of straw, and taking them to market, sold them to a butch er. And the butcher drove them safely, three parts of the way home, until passing through a brook, the running water dissolved the spell ; and the pigs became trusses of straw again. A farther wonder occurs in this case, when the butcher goes to complain of the cheat. He finds Maitre Pierre gone to bed at his inn, and sends the chambermaid of the house up stairs to wake him. But as the girl lays hold of the conjurer's leg, it comes off in her hand; and the same accident happens when she touches his head; upon which the girl runs down stairs in affright, and the whole family, butcher included, ran up; and Maitre Pierre is found walking about the room in excellent health and spirits. He refunds the money for the pigs; and, of course, is seen no more.

Another rogue, who was a juggler

at Magdeburg, shewed a horse that could read, and so forth, for money. But one day, his audience being smaller than usual, he declared that he would entertain such people as the Prussians no longer. And then throwing the bridle of his horse loose into the air, the horse leapt up after it. And the conjurer laid hold of the horse's tail and went up; and the conjurer's wife laid hold of the conjurer's tail and went up; and the conjurer's wife's maid laid hold of the conjurer's wife's tail and went up; and so they all went up together. Whence the vulgar saying "To go to heaven in a string;" improperly supposed to have been first spoken of, and concerning the penitent hanged.

It is really amazing how anybody can deny themselves the pleasure of believing such strange facts as these; and especially the following.

An over-affection for his profession or calling in this world, may tend to make a person unquiet in the next.One Christopher Murcig, an apothecary's-assistant at Crossten, in Silesia, died on the 14th of March, 1660, and was buried on the 15th. But, on the 16th, he was seen again, in his place, behind the counter, weighing drugs, and pounding, with an immense noise, in the mortar. The horror of the new shopman, at the sight of this coadjutor, may easily be imagined; but, when the clock struck ten, (for this was in the morning,) the apparition took the new-comer's cloak and hat from a nail, and went forth, as he had been used to do at that hour, to visit the patients. It was afterwards found that he called upon several sick persons in the town; and burned one man's wrist, in feeling his pulse, so that the mark of his thumb and finger remains to this day.

Some accounts there be, extant, and very extraordinary ones too, of apparent good conduct by devils, in their visits upon this earth. Giraldus Cambrensis tells of one fiend who acted with great propriety for some time as a gentleman's butler. He was accounted to have the best hand at stirring a fire of any servant in the household; and it was observed, after he was gone, that he had always snuffed the candle with his fingers.

Another demon (according to the same author) took orders, and became a clergyman! This certainly does, at

first sight, seem very strange indeed; but yet it derives some support from another anecdote told by Jean Eveque, d'Asie. There is the proverb, too, moreover, as to the devil's building beside the church; from which one might perhaps augur, that he would get into it if he could.

As the legend goes, however, this fiend conducted himself with great propriety in his profession; and his real quality was discovered only by a slip in conversation. Talking one day with a gentleman upon subjects in ancient history, some act or other was canvassed about the time of Pontius Pilate; when his reverence enforced his statement of the matter, by saying, "The thing was so; for I saw it.' Upon which, concludes the historian, "he · blushed exceedingly, and vanished.”

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Both these last devils, no doubt, were of the genus called Blue Devils; and, from the blushing of the latter, the phrase, to blush blue," may probably have been derived. Or perhaps, indeed, they might not have been devils at all; but merely different incarnations of the wandering Jew; whose habit of changing his shape, from time to time, is notorious; and who has been detected more than once, like the fiendparson, by the over-strength of his memory.

There is another demon, too, on record, besides the butler, who desired to be a servant; and he haunted the kitchen of a certain Bishop of Saxony, in human shape. This fiend assisted very commonly in the culinary arrangements; and is said to have been the first inventor of the " devil'd biscuits."

If such be the fact, however, I should opine that the discovery was accidental, and that his fiendship came rather with a hope to learn cuisine, than with the power of instructing in it. Because, if the proverb as to the devil's sending cooks (peculiarly) should be deemed equivocal, we have it in evidence, twenty times over, that the infernal" roast and boiled" is not what it should be. Paul Grilland speaks of a man whose wife was a witch; and who went out with her one night (up the chimney!) to a banquet. This witness stated distinctly, that he found a magnificent collation set out; but that everything was very ill drest indeed; and that, above all, there was no salt

The event proves,

upon the table.
that the man could not be mistaken
upon this point; because he mention-
ed the fact once or twice to an Incubus
who stood behind his chair; and, at
last, growing out of patience, he cried
aloud," Good God! will nobody bring
any salt?" Upon which (as usual in
such cases) the table flew away. He
has need, however, o' a lang spoon, (as
the Scottish proverb says,) wha sups
kail wi' the deil. This apprentice, or
whatever he was, at the Bishop's, be-
haved very well for some time; but, at
length, quarrelling with one of the kit-
chen lads, he took a private opportu-
nity, tore him to pieces, and cooked
him (most likely, for practice.) After
which, he became so mischievous, that
it was found necessary to proceed
against him by exorcism; and there is
a long account of his being caught with
a great deal of trouble; and eventual-
ly laid, for an uncertain term, in a well
dripping-pan.

These goblin domestics, indeed, were generally, in the end, ill to deal with, for their masters, as well as their fellow-servants. A Spanish gentleman had one, whose business it was to clean a favourite horse; and the rogue, being idle and negligent, was chid occasionally for not well currying the animal. But mark what followed. Getting tired of repeated jobations, the mischievous imp one day carried, the horse up to the top of a high tower, and there left him, with his head thrust out of a window. The Spaniard, returning home, was surprised to hear his favourite neigh to him from so strange a situation; but the demon had disappeared, and the horse never could be got down any more.

All servants, in fact, who take no wages, are apt to be both careless and insolent; and the devil, were it only for his pert tongue, I should think not worth hiring. In the affair of the demon of Mascon, a jeer of his is actually recorded.-Some person-I believe, a man of worship-asking him rather a weak question, with a view to exorcise him, he answered, "I heard long since thou wast a fool, and now I am sure of it." And, thereupon, laughed, or spoke Greek, or committed some other affront against the good man, like an uncourteous fiend as he was.

But I might go on, almost for ever, with strange legends and instances out

of the thousand and one volumes, in all languages, which have been written upon this interesting subject; and not meddle then with the horde of divines and metaphysicians who have touched the question, en passant, either in the way of principle or illustration.There is the impressive story of the Italian soldier, who gave his money in charge at night to his host; which the host, in the morning, denying, and he insisting upon, he was cast into prison as a thief. What can be more exemplary than the man in the black cap who sits under the Judge, upon the trial for the soldier's life; and when the inn-keeper swears he wishes" the devil may take him if ever he had the money," seizes the self-forfeited traitor, and bursts through the roof of the court with him? Or what a tale might be formed upon the legend of Saint Gregory of Nice, who describes the spectres and demons, in a city infected with the plague, walking about in broad day-light-as though growing insolent upon the prospects before them?-Jean Eveque states a similar fact; but, in his case, the fiends went about in the shape of ecclesiastics. Imagine a man sending for a confessor, and a devil making his bow!

Then there are the histories, out of number, of persons frighted by imaginary spectres; all of which lose their force, if we give up the existence of spectres in reality. There is that brilliant idea of the lady who sees a female at the foot of her bed-she recoils but the phantom distinctly moves, and extends its arm towards her. The lady is sleeping in a strange house; and sees herself in a looking-glass, which is framed in the wainscot of the room. Or there is the still more entertaining adventure of the ape who puts on the coeffure of a deceased Duchess, and gets into her bed, to the total rout of the whole household, who believe that their late mistress is come back. And what a delicious idea is that about the boarding-school at Lisle, in 1640; in which one Antionette Bourignon being the mistress, all the young ladies,

to the number of forty, were suddenly discovered to be witches! Some of these girls, says the relater, were very young; and they confessed " many strange things."

And, for myself, my mind is made up, as I have said, to believing all these things without any reason; not merely because I never found anybody yet who could give a satisfactory reason for his belief; but also because most of the writers who explain feats of sorcery, seem to me to make them ten times more incredible than they were made by the sorcerers themselves. Thomas Ady, for instance, a writer upon witchcraft, of the year 1656, after exposing the monstrous frauds of pretended conjurors and wizards, shews the manner in which their apparently miraculous feats are accomplished, and adds full directions for doing the same, "without harm or danger." Ady's first recipe for conjuring (ex uno disce, &c.) is not amiss. "Take wref's hair,' he says, "and put it in your pocket; and it will make mad bulls, and every other kind of cattle, run away from you!"

No; there would be no getting on, by halves, in this way. For a conjurer to give up the devil, is like a ropedancer's giving up his pole. And, for resigning all these beautiful and entertaining truths, to a man of any spirit, the thing would be impossible. The hunter looks, with an evil eye, upon enclosure bills and increased population; for these are circumstances which thin his game, and narrow his field of action; and the child of romance looks back with regret to those wild beliefs and superstitions of which the progress of science and education has deprived him. Fodoré, a French writer, complains, in a fanciful treatise, of the naturalist Reamur, for having discovered that ants do not eat in the winter. "For, by undeceiving mankind," says he, " as to the providence of these little creatures, Mr Reamur has deprived poets of a beautiful moral illustration."

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It is now, in our opinion, sufficiently evident that this great question is once again to be forced in some shape or other upon Parliament, in the course of the ensuing session. The Clarksons, &c. are publishing new pamphlets with old contents. And Mr Brougham, in a euloge on some of these productions in the last Edinburgh Review, talks openly of the "delusive" conduct of the ministry in the matter of the Buxton debate. Mr Brougham was present at that debate, and he made one of the unanimous house which accepted Mr Canning's resolutions: but a few months have passed, and this eminent statesman has had such opportunities of examining the whole affair candidly and completely during the interval, that he has been enabled to make up his great mind, that he was one of a House of Commons that suffered themselves to be juggled by Mr Canning, in May last. Societies on societies, meanwhile, and associations upon associations, and subscriptions on subscriptions, are springing and spreading everywhere, and embryo petitions begin already to stir and quicken. Liverpool, the enlightened city of Liverpool, in former days the great mart and mainspring of the slave trade, the last that clung to that traffic, the one only place that for a season Rachel-like lamented, and would not be comforted because it was not this very Liverpool, takes the lead in supporting the wildest measures of those, whom for thirty years she execrated as her most relentless enemies. Blessed change! Salutary transformation! The slave trade of Liverpool was—the Indian free trade of Liverpool is-The days of the ultra-antiabolition spirit of Liverpool are gone by the day of the ultra-mitigation spirit of Liverpool has dawned and grown. We live in beautiful times!

The article in the Edinburgh Re

Don Juan, Canto XII.

view is well, and on the whole temperately written. This we admit freely: because, whatever other people may do, we entertain a high respect for Mr Brougham's talents, and are always gratified when we find him abstaining from that coarse and virulent strain of language, which is one of the sins that most easily beset him, and which has indeed done more to degrade him in the general eye, than many of his more serious offences.. When we have said this, however, we are afraid we have exhausted praise. The article contains no new FACTS of the smallest importance, and exhibits no felicitous application of intellect to the exposition of obscure or controverted TRUTH. It is a mere string of old commonplaces, calmly and cleverly expressed— interspersed with a few specimens of glaring, and we can scarcely believe, involuntary misrepresentation, both as to facts and as to principles-of which more, perhaps, in the sequel.

In the meantime, it is our intention to direct our own readers' attention both to the true facts and the true principles, onthe consideration of which this case must be judged. We shall have, after a fair and full examination of both, no difficulty in bringing home the guilt of flagrant and systematic deviation from, and suppression of, FACTS, to those who were beaten in the Buxton debate, and, we think, about as little in shewing that all the three parties who were represented in that discomfited knot, are chargeable, either with a total blindness to the true principles of reason, as applicable to the question before us, or with the worse fault of pretending such blindness, for the purpose of diverting suspicion from the glances of a penetrating, pervading, and most unscrupulous selfishness.

The report of the debate above mentioned, published by the Mitigation Society, and enriched with the preface and commentaries of that body, has

See a paper in this Magazine, No LXXXI.for October last.

been already more than once spoken of by us. It is, in fact, the most important publication, in every point of view, to which the present controversy has yet given rise. It is here that we can consider at leisure, the expressed sentiments of all parties-it is here that we can compare the conflicting statements, and balance the opposed arguments, of the leaders; and it is here also, unless we be very greatly mistaken, that we can most clearly detect the system of chicaneries by which the humbler tools of one side are at least suffered to back the open warfare of its chiefs. Before a new debate occurs, it were well that the old one should be thoroughly sifted and understood. The Edinburgh Reviewer distinctly charges the ministers with having conducted themselves on this occasion like hypocrites and knaves-we at least know not what other meaning can be given to the epithet "delusive" already quoted from this performance. The charge is no light one, and we venture to prophesy, that it will be effectually answered in the proper quarter. But we, in the meantime, shall take the liberty to reverse the situation of the parties, and placing the mitigators themselves at the bar, see what answer they can make to certain charges of the very same character, which every attentive and candid reader of the volume in question must have in some measure anticipated.

Our general assertion is simply this: The speakers on Mr Buxton's side are chargeable with many mistatements as to matters of fact, and the mitigation commentators still more grievously so. In proving this, we shall at least do some good; for we shall teach these persons to be more cautious the next time they come before the senate and the public: we shall probably have shorter speeches, and less triumphant annotations cura variorum. Some obstacles, at all events, will be brushed away from the threshold, and the rival champions will both come with greater ease into their true arena, and have a salutary fear before their eyes, in case they should be tempted to think of bringing any but the right weapons with them.

A word or two more, however, in limine. It is really very annoying to see the extent to which the abuse of words and phrases has been carried in the whole of this matter. Why, for

example, should we be compelled to talk of the Society for the Mitigation of West Indian Slavery? The Society for the Mitigation of the Mitre, or the Society for the Mitigation of the Duties on East Indian Sugar, would be far nearer the truth. Mr Buxton's far-famed motion about the slaves was made on the 15th of May last; Mr Whitmore's motion about the sugar followed on the 23d day of the same month. The same people-certainly the same influence figured on both occasions. Mr Wilberforce was one of the great men on both. What have the avowed objects and views of Mr Wilberforce to do with the question about the duties on sugar?-These gentlemen are so confident of support from their own set, and from the gaping multitudes whom their sweet words command and stultify, and so certain, at the same time, that they are not to be bearded, as to the truth and essence of all their schemes, by any person, far less any party whatever in Parliament, that it is not wonderful they should venture much. And yet-if anybody had predicted a year before, that the next motion about West Indian slavery would be made in the same week with a motion about East Indian sugar, people in general would have utterly disbelieved it."No," it would have been said, "that will, to be sure, be in their minds; but you are going too far now. They are not quite so regardless of appearances; religious as they are, they are a little more wise in their generation, notwithstanding, than you seem to give them credit for."-Probably no answer would have been made to this; and yet the event has shewn itself. Say what people may, these men are not to be altogether despised. The very audacity of their proceedings half redeems their folly. This open and thorough-going reliance upon the gullibility of John Bull, shews an intimate and even intense acquaintance with the assailable points of the national character. There are two quackish ways of doing things; the conciliatory, that is, the pluckless method, of late too often adopted by those who ought to be most above it; and the bold brazen method-the method of the Bishes, the Burgesses, and the Buxtons. This last has been adopted, and with much success, by the Society for the Mitigation of the Duties on East Indian Sugar. They were re

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