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OUR neighbours across the water are busy in converting their countrymen to what they wittily call Christianity. There has been a procession to the church of one Saint Ursula, and an elevation in the open air of her old bones, in order that her intercessionary offices might be made available to all such persons of his most Christian Majesty's good city of Paris, as may like to eat their geese alive or amuse themselves with any other trifling peccadilloes equally suitable to a lively and enlightened nation. The disinterested philanthropy of the French character can never sufficiently command our admiration and our gratitude they can never be quiet till they have made all the world as gay, as well dressed, as scientific in sauces, as moral, as philosophical, as religious, as themselves. Thus, when they set up a fille de joie as the Goddess of Reason (her shrine has lately been transferred to Pisa) they kindly offered

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to import her interesting rites into these tristes and superstitious Islands, under the protecting banner of the tri-color and now that they have taken up their old fancy for bits of wood and little rags and self-liquifying blood in phials, and have set their old women at lighting up tallow candles before dolls in hoop-petticoats, they cannot rest till they have made us partakers of all these rich marvels and reasonable consolations. They have got hold of one of our young ladies, who went to France to learn how to dance the gavotte, and unluckily left her Bible behind her. "England," says one of their proselyting writers, "is perishing through her morals." We dont pay a priest for keeping our consciences, and rub off scores as we go, by whispering through a grate. So they thought it would be a goodly work of charity to convert this young lady at the Paris boarding-school, and make of her a fisher of souls at home. The conversion was effected in the most satisfactory and unanswerable manner, by means of a tradition about a sacrament-murdering Jew, who trying to kill the holy wafer made it bleed, and became on the spot a good Catholic. The resuscitating

effects of this pious and veritable legend were surprising: for Miss, who was dead in morals like all the rest of her compatriots, learnt immediately to laugh at her papa, (who stood with the bayonets of the holy church at his throat,) with a Catholical unction truly edifying. But, Sir, we have had a miracle among ourselves: for Doctor Milner, if I recollect aright, published a manifesto in the shape of a narrative, about a girl's amputated leg having been prayed on again; (or some such matter :) and if we look sharp in some of the purlieus of protestantism for convictions and conversions, we shall probably find that Jack is not more than a mile behind Peter. After all, there is something finely exciting in a mystery. It is much more interesting to be told by a nature-dubbed doctor, the seventh son of a seventh son, that you have a worm with a wolf's head in your stomach, then to hear from one of that ignorant body the faculty," (who by some strange unanimity of ill luck never succeed in a case) that a little calomel and scammony will do your business. I have often thought with what a consequential air a man must walk the street, who always smells sulphur, and thinks himself predestined to be damned. What a vast superiority over other men is enjoyed by him, who actually knew the man who saw the ghost of his grandfather! with what a hush of expectation he is listened to, while describing the large buttons on the ghost's coat (by which he was instantly recognized) and the identical little china pantry into which he turned preparatory to vanishing! When, therefore, people talk of credulity and superstition, I am very much inclined to place inclinations of this sort to the account of taste. When our countrymen find the cloaths in their chests of drawers rent into shivers by fleshless fingers, and when they see hard stones flying in volleys at their windows and into their entries, which have been hurled from spiritual fists, I observe that their taste is improved. If the refined swains and shepherdesses of Virgil have their charms,

"(Terna tibi hæc primum triplici diversa

colore

Licia circumdo-.")

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lasses. A bit of a cross-bun kept in a sly drawer from last Good Friday has often superseded my favourite medicine James's Powder: and many a bit of bride-cake, laid under a maiden's pillow, has brought in her dreams the future bridegroom, with a Belcher handkerchief round his neck and a carnation in his mouth. I was, the other day, lounging in a country church-yard (not with the idea of making an elegy," but from sheer nothing-to-do-ism), and while staring with something of a lack-lustre eye at the gilt-edge prayer-books and wrist-bones, which so tastefully relieve the winged cherubs' heads on the top of the better sort of gravestones, my attention was drawn to a booby of a lad, who was prowling about on the side of a newly-opened grave. To my downright blank astonishment he took up a skull and bit a tooth out of it. Spirit of Vathek! thought I, and of all your beastly Gouls, what a Curius Dentatus have I here stumbled upon! Had I such a stripling Ugolino articled to me, I should certainly cancel his indentures, for fear in some freak of somnambulism he should catch me without a night-cap. Pray, friend, may I ask what you find toothsome in this sort of fare?" "Why, Sir, Ise be apt to have the tooth-ache." tooth-ache! You have given me one, I can tell you." 66 Yeas, Sir; and if you can but get a bite at the tooth of a death's head, you'll never have the tooth-ache never no more." Upon my word, my good Sir, I see no right you can possibly have to give the tooth-ache to other people."-This hob-nail exorcist of odontalgic maladies, may, perhaps, raise a smile in your town readers; but let them look at home. I should like to know how many warts were cured and how many women brought into that state in which they "wish to be who love their lords" by touching the hand of the last man who was hanged? Besides, we are mightily fond of confining this sort of disposition to unlettered folks; but how many a shovel-hatted gentleman with mortified cadavarous visage and spindle legs, having crossed the way possibly to avoid encountering some worldly moral clergyman, in leather breeches and a round hat, has seen a black tom-cat with eyes of a very ques

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66

The

*Tale of a Tub.

lurking doubts as to who was looking at him? Nay, Sir, you may meet grave

gentlemen, with mathematical heads and Demosthenic lungs, declaiming at the tea-table on the interference of Satan in their kitchen, and entertaining more than one scruple as to the cause of the last high wind. Who forgets Lawford's-Gate? How many an "elderly gentleman" has it in his power to correct the most incorrigible scepticism, by showing the very identitical crooked pins that were deposited by a good for nothing witch in the flesh of the children? Why, Sir, if you and I never had our heads wrenched round as on a pivot, so as to afford us the liberty of looking down our backs, or if we have never been caught by a morning visitor with our palms sticking to the ceiling, and our heels threatening a rather abrupt salute to the nose of our intruding friend, it does not follow that this will never happen. If you should make the ascent first, I only condition that, like Gilpin, "I may be there to see." I beg to be understood, however, that I fully expect to be sent for: like Boswell, I mean to declare myself "full of belief:" and I have no idea of taking Mr. Beauclerc's sneering counsel, and corking it up."" Let any one peep into Glanville's Witches; (I would not have him stare into it too rudely) and see how naturally on old woman flies out at the window (some wicked wag may think it a pity the act of parliament which drove out the witches, by forbidding to burn them, was repealed) let him observe with what a probable air the devil is seen as large as life, curvetting and beating a drum on the roof of a house, and let him disbelieve it if he dare. I only let him look well at the backs of his hands, when he gets up in the morning.

say,

If after these luminous proofs you any longer hesitate, I shall make short work and overwhelm you at once. Pray, Sir, did you ever read and meditate upon Turner's Complete History of the most remarkable Providences ?" You will say, perhaps, you never heard of it: then do let me lay before you and your readers a few specimens. I shall add no further

* I must acknowlege my obligations for this interesting epithet to a pathetic pastoral,

which commences

"By the side of a murmuring rill,

An elderly gentleman sat;
Under his hat was his wig,

And over his wig was his hat.".

A NUN IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE.

From the chapter on Divination, Sooth

saying, and Witchcraft.

Memorable is that famous story in Wierius of Magdalena Crucia, first a nun and then an abbatess of a nunnery, in Corduba, in Spain. Those things, which were miraculous in her, were these: that she could tell almost at any distance how the affairs of the world went: what consultations or transactions there were in all the nations of Christendom: from whence she got to herself the reputation of a very holy woman and a great prophetess. But other things came to pass by her or for her sake, no less strange and miraculous; as that at the celebrating of the Holy Eucharist, the priest should always want one of his round wafers, which was secretly conveyed to Magdalen by the administration of angels, as was supposed, and she receiving of it into her mouth, ate it in the view of all the people to their great astonishment and high reverence of the saint. At the elevation of the host, Magdalen being near at hand, but yet a wall betwixt, that the wall was conceived to open and to exhibit Magdalen to the view of them in the chapel, and that thus she partaked of the consecrated bread. When this abbatess came into the chapel herself, upon some special day, she would set off the solemnity of the day by some notable and conspicuous miracle; for she would sometimes be lifted up above the ground three or four cubits high: other sometimes bearing the image of Christ in her arms, weeping savourly, she would make her hair to increase to that length and largeness, that it would

come to her heels and cover her all over and the image of Christ in her arms, which anon, notwithstanding, would shrink up again to its usual size; with a many such specious though unprofitable miracles.

But you will say that the narrative of these things is not true, but they are feigned for the advantage of the Roman religion, and so it was profi

table for the church to forge them and record them to posterity. A man, that is unwilling to admit of any thing supernatural, would please himself with this general shuffle and put off; but when we come to the catastrophe of the story, he will find it quite otherwise for this saint at last began to be suspected for a sorceress, as it is thought, and she being conscious, did, of her own accord, to save herself, make confession of her wickedness to the visitors of the order, as they are called: viz.-that for thirty years she had been married to the Devil in the shape of an Ethiopian: that another Devil, servant to this, when his master was with her in her cell, supplied her place among the nuns at their public devotions! That, by virtue of this contra she had made with this spirit, she had done all the miracles she did. Upon this confession she was committed, and while she was in durance, yet she appeared in her devout postures, praying in the chapel, as before, at their set hours of prayer; which being told to the visitors by the nuns, there was a strict watch over her that she should not stir out; nevertheless she appeared in the chapel, as before, though she was really in the prison.

Now what credit or advantage there can be to the Roman religion by this story, let any man judge; wherefore it is no figment of the priests or religious persons, nor melancholy, nor any such matter: (for how could so many spectators at once be deluded by melancholy?) but it ought to be deemed a real truth: and this Magdalena Crucia appearing in two several places at once, it is manifest that there is such a thing as apparitions of spirits. Q. E. D.

A YOUNG MAN HAUNTED BY A SHE

SPECTRE.

From the Chapter "Satan permitted to hurt the good in their health of body."

Another relation was published 1683, called " A Narrative of the Demon of Spraiton, in the county of Devon." The relation thus:-About the month of November last, in the said parish and county, one Francis Fey (servant to Mr. Phil. Furse) being in a field near his master's house, there appeared unto him the semblance of his master's father, with a mole-staff in his hand, as he was wont to carry when living the spectrum bid him

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not be afraid of him, but tell his master that several legacies bequeathed by him were unpaid, naming ten shillings a piece to two persons, The spectrum, speaking to the young man of his second wife, who was also dead, called her wicked woman; though the relator knew her, and esteemed her to be a very good woman.

Now the next day, the young man riding home to his master's house, with the servant of a gentlewoman, near Totness, near the entrance of the parish of Spraiton, there appeared to be upon the horse behind the young man, a spectrum resembling the old gentleman's wife spoken of before. The demon often drew the young man off his horse, and threw him with great violence to the ground, to the great astonishment of the gentlewoman's servant and divers others that were spectators of the action. At his coming into his master's yard, the horse which the young man rid, though very poor, leaped at once 25 feet at one spring. Soon after the she-spectrum showed herself to others in the house, viz. Mrs. Thomasin Gildy, Ann Langdon, and a little child, which they were forced to remove from the house: she appeared sometimes in her own shape, sometimes in forms very horrid, now and then like a monstrous dog belching out fire; at another time it flew out of a window in the shape of a horse, carrying with it only one pane of glass, and a small piece of iron. One time the young man's head was thrust into a very strait place between the bed's head and the wall, and forced by the strength of divers men to be removed thence; who, being much hurt, was advised to be blooded; and the ligature of his arm was conveyed from thence about his middle, where it was strained with so much violence that it had almost killed him, and being cut in sunder, it made a strange and dismal noise, so that the standers by were affrighted at it.

At divers other times he hath been in danger to be strangled with cravats and neck-cloths, which have been drawn so close that with the sudden violence he hath near been choaked, and hardly escaped death. Another time one of his shoe-strings was observed (without the assistance of any hand) to come of its own accord out of his shoe, and fling itself on the other side of the room; the other was crawling after it, but a maid, spying that, with Nn