less perceptive faculties, he might have become a BERKELEYAN PHILOSOPHER, instead of the SPINOZA of his village. I could bring forward a great mass of further evidence that my notions are verified as to the true function of this organ, in the success of charlatans, in all departments; but I have occupied you longer than I had anticipated. Yet I must intrude a few minutes longer, just to recapitulate some of the previous statements," that belief is a sentiment depending on what we called "instinctive faith,' "that Marvellousness and Wonder express only some of its modes of action; and if there is any difference in the meaning of the terms now in use, it is only in degree or intensity. That the first employed by Dr Spurzheim is used to indicate any thing mysterious, or the occurrence of some unaccountable event; whilst the term employed by Mr Combe indicates the notion of children or ill-informed adults when they behold any novelty-whether it should be a frightful hurricane, a tremendous storm, or some curious invention in art or science. Many interesting cases are in my possession, should you be disposed to receive another short paper in some future number. I am, Sir, with great respect, your obedient servant, J. L. LEVISON. We are disposed to think that belief is in every case an intellectual operation, though frequently modified in its character by various of the affective powers. Belief that an occurrence has happened, or will happen, seems to be a conception of Eventuality, accompanied by the notion of past or future time; and, in like manner, belief in a fact that is not an event or relation, appears to be a conception of Individuality. The chief affective faculties by which the character of these conceptions is modified, are Wonder, Hope, Veneration, Cautiousness, and SelfEsteem. Causality, also, has much influence. When Wonder is inordinately strong, there is a powerful tendency to believe in the marvellous, the strange, the occult, the surprising. We know a gentleman with the organ large, who confesses that the more wonderful a circumstance related to him is, the more apt is he to believe it. It is among the ignorant that this effect is most likely to happen; for by them the suggestions of the sentiment are in a very slight degree counteracted by knowledge. "Wonder," says Lord Kames, "is the passion of savages and of rustics. ... The more supernatural the facts related are, the more wonder is raised; and in proportion to the degree of wonder is the tendency to belief among the vulgar."* To a similar effect Montaigne observes: "Things unknown are the principal and true subject of imposture; forasmuch as, in the first place, their very strangeness lends Sketches, B. i. sk. iv. § 2. them credit," &c. "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know; nor are any people so confident as those who entertain us with fabulous stories, such as your alchymists, judicial astrologers, fortune-tellers, and physicians.' Hope, when very powerful, disposes men to believe on slight grounds what they wish to happen or to be the case. This sentiment is rightly denominated "credulous hope" by Tibullus "Credula vitam Spes fovet, et fore cras semper ait melius." It facilitates belief in the existence of a state of happiness beyond the grave. By persons in whom the organ of Hope is moderately developed, the evidence of that existence is more critically scrutinized than by individuals differently constituted. Burns, whose Hope was moderate, expresses himself thus: "One thing frightens me much; that we are to live for ever seems too good news to be true. That we are to enter into a new scene of existence, where, exempt from want and pain, we shall enjoy ourselves and our friends without satiety or separation-how much should I be indebted to any one who could fully assure me that this was certain!" Wonder, we may remark, was a feeling by no means deficient in the mind of Burns, Those who have much Veneration are prone to listen with implicit faith to whatever proceeds from the mouth of revered Authority. From Cautiousness arises facility in giving credit to what is feared. A very timid person in a storm at sea is much more apt than a courageous individual to believe the assertion that the ship will assuredly be wrecked. And as Hope disposes to belief in a happy eternity, so perhaps does Cautiousness to faith in a miserable one. Both faculties are aided by Wonder in this." Inordinate Self-Esteem renders people credulous of whatever tends to their own aggrandisement; in weak-minded men, and even in some belonging to a different class, it causes the grossest flattery to be swallowed and believed. This is well expressed by Gay, in his eighteenth Fable: "But flattery never seems absurd; The flatter'd always take your word: They take the strongest praise on trust; Will still come short of self-conceit." Dr Spurzheim seems to have regarded belief as an intellectual operation, and to have, like us, considered Wonder as only a modifying cause. His words respecting this sentiment are, that it "exerts a very great influence over religious conceptions." Now conception is a mode of action of the intellectual faculties alone.-EDITOR. ARTICLE IX. CASE OF JOHN ADAM, EXECUTED AT INVERNESS, ON THE 16TH OCTOBER 1835, FOR THE MURDER OF HIS WIFE. THE murder committed in Ross-shire, in April 1835, by John Adam, on the person of his wife, was one of the most atrocious that have been recorded in the annals of crime. The body of the murdered woman was discovered by some persons employed in planting trees on a tract of waste land through which the road from Inverness to Dingwall, by Kessoch Ferry, passes. The deed having been committed after it was dark, the murderer did not observe that some parts of the dress remained uncovered by the materials he had thrown over the body, from the walls of the ruined cottage within which, it would appear, the poor woman had been killed. By means of a part of a veil the body was discovered. As an old road passed close to the spot, it is probable that, the woman being a stranger, it had been described to her as a near cut, in order to induce her to pass the inclosure. The selection of the spot seemed clearly to have been made with a view to the murder; and this circumstance indu ced some to conclude, at the time of the discovery, that the murderer could not be far off. Advertisements describing the person and dress having been promptly dispersed, some persons from Inverness were induced to come to Dingwall, and by them the body was identified as that of a woman who had lodged with them. They stated circumstances which led to the apprehension of Adam, who had lived some time in Dingwall under the name of Anderson, with a young English woman, Dorothy Elliot, who passed as his wife, and had behaved uniformly well: She was useful to the public authorities, and appeared to be truly penitent. No attempt to flee was made by Adam, when the body was discovered. When brought into the apartment where the dead body lay, he denied all knowledge of the person, and scarcely a symptom of agitation was visible, even when desired by the procurator-fiscal to take hold of the cold hand (which he did), and say whether he had ever held that hand before. From information received from the people with whom the woman had lodged at Inverness, it was ascertained that her friends lived at Montrose. Some of them were sent for and came immediately to Dingwall, and identified the body as that of Jean Brechin, their relation, and Adam as the man to whom she had been recently married. He still denied all knowledge of the woman and her relations. The following is the substance of the judicial declarations which he made, taken from the Inver ness Courier newspaper of 23d September 1835, and which formed part of the proceedings of the trial: "The prisoner's declarations were then read. The first was taken by Mr Cameron, procurator-fiscal, before Mr Mackenzie, Sheriff-substitute, on the 14th April. In this the prisoner professed to give an account of his whole life. His name, he said, was John Anderson, and he had never been known by any other. He was born at the Townhead of Dalkeith; he mentioned the names of his teachers at school, and of the several masters whom he had afterwards served in different capacities; that, in 1829 or 1830, he went into the service of a Mr Crichton, the tenant of New Barns, three miles east of Cupar Angus, with whom he continued until about 1831 or 1832, when Mr Crichton's lease expired, and that gentleman took the farm of Barnhill, 34 miles from Nottingham, and the property of the corpora tion of that town. Here the declarant had L. 40 per annum of wages; but Mr Crichton becoming bankrupt, his servants were discharged, and he (Adam) travelled north. He was never a soldier. He brought with him the sum of L. 55, the accumula+ tion of his earnings while with Mr Crichton. About the new year of 1834, he said he married, by license, Dorothy Elliot, the daughter of Edward Elliot, a publican in the town of Mansfield, who accompanied him north. His intention was to obtain employment as an overseer, but, failing in this, he went to Dingwall, and worked at such labour as he could obtain. He remained in Dingwall till the beginning of March, when he went south to see his friends at Dalkeith, and received L. 70 from his mother, as his share of his father's succession; he also lifted L. 40 from his brother, being a sum he (the declarant) had given to him when he came from Barnhill. He denied all knowledge of the deceased Jean Brechin, and had never, he said, been at Montrose. He had received some furniture and clothes left him by an aunt named Janet Bunton; he acknowledged being in Inverness about the furniture; but he denied that he had ever been in a house in Chapel Street. This declaration of the prisoner was very long, and contained a multitude of minute details. The second declaration was dated two days afterwards, April 16, and was also taken in presence of Mr Mackenzie, Sheriff-substitute. It was substantially the same as the first, and, contained a distinct denial on the part of the accused of all knowledge of the deceased, and her relations in Montrose. The third declaration was taken before Mr Sheriff Tytler, Inverness, on the 7th of May, and was wholly different from the former. In this he said his name was John Adam, and not John Anderson; that he was a native of the parish of Lintrethen, county of Forfar; that his mother is at present the tenant of Craigieloch in the same parish; that he never was a farm ser vant in England; that in 1831 he enlisted in Glasgow into the 2d Dragoon Guards, but deserted from the regiment while stationed at Duffield in Derbyshire, in March 1834; that he induced Dorothy Elliot to accompany him, on his promising to marry her; that they travelled to his mother's house at Craigieloch, and thence to Inverness and Dingwall, but he was never formally married to the said Dorothy. He acknowledged visiting Jean Brechin in Montrose about Martinmas last, as he wished, he said, to get repayment of some money he had lent to her before he joined the Dragoon Guards; but Jean Brechin refused to give him the money until he came back to marry her. Accordingly, as arranged between them, he went back to Montrose in the end of February or beginning of March, stopped about a fortnight, was married to Jean Brechin at Laurencekirk, and came to Inverness, where he left her. He obtained the Bank receipts from Jean Brechin, one for L. 96 and the other for L. 15, on the 9th of March, two days before their marriage. He never told Dorothy Elliot the true cause of his absence in the south, nor of his having been married to Jean Brechin. He visited Jean three times at Hector Mackintosh's lodgings, Inverness, and a fourth time on the Monday se'ennight after the Saturday upon which he had the furniture brought to Dingwall. On this occasion when he (the declarant Adam) was about to set out for Dingwall, Jean took him aside and told him that she did not wish to remain any longer in these lodgings as they were cold, and that she would therefore pay them and leave them. He said she might take lodgings in any other part of the town she preferred. Jean settled for her lodgings, and came with declarant towards the Ferry, carrying with her a reticule basket and umbrella and a bundle; on their arriving at the Windmill, the declarant observed that the boat was about to start, and then took leave of Jean and hurried on to the Ferry, and she returned to the town. He had never, he said, seen Jean Brechin since the said Monday evening unless the corpse shewn to him by the procurator-fiscal was her's; but the features were so much altered and disfigured, that the declarant cannot say they were those of Jean Brechin. [The reading of these declarations caused a strong sensation in Court. The last agreed with the evidence on many points up to the fatal day on which the deceased, for the last time, was seen with the prisoner.]” The third of these declarations was made after Adam saw it would be useless to make any effort against the testimony of the clergyman who married him to Jean Brechin, and the witnesses from Montrose, from his native parish, and from the regiment from which he had deserted. It was proved that, under pretence of providing a proper habitation, Adam had persuaded his wife to remain at Inverness till it was ready. In the mean time he had |
