 The Black Code of Illinois by Zabina Edwards, 1883. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Territorial legislation. The Indiana Territorial Legislature passed an Act dated September 17, 1807, which is the embryo of our Black Code with this title, quote, an Act concerning the introduction of Negroes and Milados into this territory, end quote. As statute enactments are rather dull reading, I will summarize the 13 sections of this Act of 1807, which is the nucleus of our Black Code into a few sentences. The Act permits the owner of any Negro or Milado above the age of 15 to bring him into the territory and within 30 days to register him with the clerk and there make an agreement which is to be recorded. Section 1 authorizes the owner of any Negro or Milado of and above the age of 15 years and oing service and labor as a slave in any state or territory in the United States to bring said slaves into this territory. Section 2 provides that the owner of such Negro, etc., might within 30 days go with the same before the clerk of the court of common pleas in the county where the parties reside and agree with the Negro or Milado upon the number of years he or she should serve the master to be recorded by the clerk. Section 3 allows the master in case of the refusal of the slave to make such contract to remove him within 60 days into any state or territory. If the slave should stand on his new dignity and refuse the master could remove him in 60 days, property could be acquired in these registered slaves till males were 35, females 32, and children born of such should be owned by their master till 30 and 28. Section 5 provides that any person removing into the territory with or should any person acquire a property in such slaves they might hold such slaves to service, males to the age of 35, females to 32. Section 6 made it the duty of the master to register with the clerk their names and ages and they were styled registered or indentured servants. Section 13 provided that children born of such indentured parents should serve their masters, parentheses, owners, males until the age of 30, females 28. This continued to be the law of the territory of which Illinois was a part. In 1809 Illinois became a territory of herself and reenacted the former territorial laws making the act above quoted the law of the Illinois territory. It is this law that is referred to in the Constitution quoted and therein somewhat modified. This territorial black code with the constitutional modifications became the law by adoption of the state of Illinois until she remodeled and enlarged it in 1819. But the iniquity of the thing was not yet wholly matured under the state law. It was simplified and worked up into a system. The laws were revised and what had gone before with that which seemed best to have added were codiciled so to speak or made into our code. The revision took place in 1833. It is this revision with the act of 1829 where the special elements of slavery come in by which we may characterize it as a slave as well as a black code. State legislation Act approved March 30, 1819. Section 1 prohibits any black or mulatto person settling or residing in the state without producing a certificate of freedom, etc. This section was amended and will be referred to again. It was the first blow at free Negroes. It follows the precedent of slave state legislation that gives no place for a Negro on our broad domain unless he be a slave. In this case that this state shall not be an asylum for those who ran away from oppression. There are 25 sections to this act and if it were not for the variety of the matter would be very dull reading. I have carefully summarized them all. It would worry you beyond measure if I were to give these sections entire but you may be assured they will read very well by the side of the blue laws, black and blue together. Section 2 makes it the duty of all free Negroes having families and having a certificate as before provided to register their families with a description of each name, age, etc. Section 3 prohibits any person from bringing any slave into this state for the purpose of emancipating such slave. Making it a condition for those who do so to give bond in the penal sum of $1,000, conditioned that such slave shall not become a county charge. Neglecting so to do subjected the offender to a fine of $200 for each one so emancipated. Parentheses, the law was in operation and upon Governor Coles for emancipating his Virginia slaves at Edwardsville in 1819. End parentheses, it was amended in 1833 so as to allow the emancipator release on giving bonds that the slave should not become a county charge. Section 4 requires every black or mulatto except slaves or persons held to service to register his name and his family with their description and the evidences of freedom which shall be recorded by the clerk which certificate of record should be sufficient evidence of freedom except as against the claim of a slave owner. This was a law altogether to hit the free Negro. Section 5 forbids any person under a penalty of $1.50 a day from hiring or employing such Negroes without a certificate of freedom keeping the said free Negro out of employment. This was amended. Section 10 makes it the duty of masters to provide servants with sufficient food, clothing, etc. A law found necessary in slavery but it is nowhere found necessary to require an owner to give his horse sufficient hay and grain unless on common grounds of cruelty to animals. Section 11 makes these contracts for services assignable to other persons with consent of servants such assignments to administrators, assigns, etc. Thus the property relation is recognized. It was a common thing to sell these servants. Section 12 provides that any servant being lazy, disorderly, guilty of misbehavior may be whipped upon an order of a justice or refusing to work be compelled by a like process and forfeiting two days to the end of his service for everyone in which he so refuses and is whipped up to it and all expenses including whipping be paid by him in labor which would finally have to be whipped out of him. Section 13 provides that for the failure of the master's duties or if he is guilty of injuring his servant it must be redressed in the circuit court, a pretty hard court for a flogged slave to get access to. Section 14 makes all contracts between masters and servants during the time of service void. Section 15 makes it the duty of the circuit court at all times to hear complaints of servants being citizens. Here is a difference against masters for immoderate correction or on complaints of masters against servants for desertion, etc. There was a slave law in slave states that absolved a master from punishment if the slave died under moderate correction. There seems to be some protection to the negro in these sections but we shall see that in the act concerning practice in the courts in R laws page 536 it provides that a person having one fourth negro blood shall in no case be a witness against a white person. Section 16 provides that if any servant shall lawfully acquire property during the time of service such property shall be for his own use and the master is compelled to care for him when sick and lame until his term expires under penalty of $30 for use of the county. Parentheses, mercy here again somewhat strained in parentheses. Section 17 forbids any negro or Indian from purchasing any servant other than of their own color and makes such contract void. Parentheses, if this law had been extended to white persons it might have put a new face on servant hire in parentheses. Section 18 forbids any person to hire or to buy, sell, receive of, to or from, any servant or slave, any coin or commodity without consent of the master under a forfeiture of four times the value of the article sold or given. Parentheses, a dollar given in goodwill on Christmas would involve a forfeiture of $4 in parentheses. It also provides that at the expiration of the term the clerk shall give a certificate which shall indemnify any person for their after hiring. Section 19 provides that in all cases of penal acts where free persons are punishable by fine servants shall be punished by whipping and the rate given 20 lashes for every $8 the rate of the currency being $0.40 a lash unless the offender procures another person to pay his fine. Parentheses, we see from the above with all power of contract gone and buying and selling prohibited what little chance the person has of lawfully acquiring property or what chance he may have of paying off a penalty for which the white loafer pays $8 while the black must settle it at the rate of 20 lashes for every $8. We can see no reasonableness in this except that like the skinning of eels they didn't mind it because they were used to it. And parentheses. Section 20 provides that at the expiration of his service every servant may have his freedom recorded etc. Section 21 provides that if any slave or servant shall be found at a distance of 10 miles from the tenement of his master without a pass it shall be lawful for any person to apprehend and carry him or her before a justice by whose order he or she may be whipped not exceeding 35 lashes. Parentheses, how much 35 lashes means there is no way to tell unless someone tries it having them well laid on in parentheses. Section 22 provides that if any slave or servant shall presume to come and be upon the plantation or at the dwelling of any person whatever without leave of his or her owner not being sent on lawful business. Parentheses, it is pretty hard to tell just here in this model of law what is lawful business for a slave in parentheses the owner of such plantation or dwelling may give such servant or slave 10 lashes on the bare back. Section 23 provides that riots, routes, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches by any slave or slaves, servant or servants may be punished at the discretion of a justice and whoever will may apprehend such persons and bring them before the justice. Parentheses, this Mr. Whoever Will becomes a constable. There may be a black crowd perhaps of one more than three jolly persons and at the lead of one white villain they may be brought before a justice and he the only witness of their evil plotting or riotous conduct. Negroes will sometimes laugh boisterously and not one of them can say a word of defense or explanation or affirm that they were not engaged in their spiritual devotions. But they must bear their backs to whatever flagellation the justice may discretionally inflict in parentheses. We have a vague notion that the ordinance of 1887 had something to say to the effect that slaves should not be on this soil to tempt the lash of the justice. Also that the Constitution has something to say in regard to offenses, trial by jury and about unreasonable arrests and that punishments should be in proportion to offenses and not according to the amount of whiskey that had been imbibed. Section 24 imposes a fine of $20 upon any person who suffers or permits slaves or servants of color to the number of more than three to assemble in any house, yard or shed. Parentheses, pasture and woodlot ought to have been added in parentheses for the purpose of reveling night or day. Parentheses, fun as well as mischief is here discouraged by the righteous law. This is a law for white men and they come in for some share of the penalty in giving any countenance to the effervescent demonstrations of the colored person's right to be a man in parentheses. Section 25 makes it the duty of all coroners, sheriffs, judges and justices who see or know of any such assemblage immediately to commit such persons to jail and on proof have them whipped. Parentheses, whipped for having a jolly time in parentheses, not exceeding, exceeding how much, 39 lashes on the bareback the very next day, unless it should be Sunday, then the whipping was to come off Monday. Parentheses, swift and pious justice, every black crowd of more than three for having a jolly night of it, might be tolerably sure of a 39 lash flogging the very next day, unless it was done on the slaves' favorite night for a good time, Saturday night, then they might be sure of the Sabbath's rest and contemplation in jail of what should come on Monday, which might be called a red day. One is perplexed which to admire most, the philanthropy of this law or its piety, as is indicated by its reverence for the Lord's holy day in parentheses. These several last sections seem like a transcript of the slave codes of Louisiana or South Carolina. The people of those days in Illinois must have lived in mortal fear of an insurrection of their numerous slaves. Possibly, there may have been an awakening of conscience to have made cowards of them all. End of The Black Code of Illinois by Zabina Edwards, 1883. Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson. Books in the Wilderness, 1921 by Frederick Niven. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Well do I recall visiting some years ago Frederick Chapman, that charming scholar, remembered with affection by many, worriedly aware of and vexed by, and by all his kindly instincts aloof from, the heartless money-scramble round him, at his home in Twickenham, up the river from London. I remember how the building was braced from end to end by reason of the load of books on his shelves, by these house-supporters known, because of the shape of the bolts holding in the brace-bars, as S's. I thought of him as I was choosing the books to accompany me on a journey into the wilderness. I should have liked to have put the conundrum to Chapman, if you had only room for a few books, which would they be? Would the Bible and Shakespeare, I wonder, have been his reply? I cannot ask him now. The classical allusion, to him at least, would not sound heartless. Charon has rode him across sticks these years ago. Charon allows no dunnage, only our memories and hopes. In a Peterborough canoe boat, despite its blend of load-bearing capacity and buoyancy, one cannot carry a library. The selection of books on view, upon the shelves at the jumping-off place, Nelson, British Columbia, to wit, that selection, made by the book-sellers, of course, had much to do with my own selection. Only one of the volumes that I carried along with me did I specially order. The rest, with the exception of one, I made myself with cuttings, paste, and a notebook, of which more anon. I merely culled from the shelves in the three book-stores of that pleasant Coutinet town. I have known book-sellers who seemed much less to realize the awful responsibility attaching to their tastes. I did not take a Bible with me, and frankly I missed it. Often and often thoughts arise in the silent places among the wild piece of lake and mountain that bring biblical quotations in their train, and I long to verify the quotation. Looking up at the million tamaracks and balsams, the splashes of yellow among the dark green, the white glacier peaks five, six, seven thousand feet above the jade lakes, where pygmy-wise I roll along, such phrases as such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain to it, drift into the mind. Milton also occurs in such odd lines, like gold flecks in quartz, as thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Valembrosa. When I come to some place where the trees that shed the cones and needles give place to the aspens and birches and maples showering their late crimson and yellow to the ground. Walt Whitman comes very easily to the mind, unsought, in such lines as the night and silence under many a star, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know. If writers of the sophisticated order occur, they do so rather by way of contrast than because of their aptness, and ever and again they do occur. Thus I have tried to recapture the exact wording of a passage in all this Huxley's limbo, describing some exquisite dainty figure such as the drawing rooms and salons produced. All I can texturally remember is that he described her feet as like tea leaves under the hem of her skirt. I have only a vague impression of it, and it is like a fashion plate from Vogue. I think of that because I am so far from it in another world. Selecting my books at the jumping-off place, I had to economize space. A pair of spare boots sued for a place, and it was Don Quixote, a bulky volume, that with a pang was ejected. It took up as much room as the boots. I might have sacrificed perhaps three other volumes that took up as much space together, but in the end Don Quixote went alone to accommodate the boots. A pair of waterproof pants, essential for damp days in the bush, if one would be comfortable, pushed out, I forget now, what they pushed out. The core of the interest, it just occurs to me, lies less in the books I took with me than in the books I continue to retain, or the books that, when I go to town for supplies, I carry back with me. On my last trip to town and store I bore away Gautier's voyage on Espana and Hudson's idle days in Patagonia. I think I took Gautier because he was the man who describes himself as one for whom the visible world exists, and canoeing and camping in the wilderness one inevitably longs for a voice to describe the visible world. It is a far cry from the lakes and rivers of British Columbia to Spain, but voyage on Espana is a masterpiece about the visible world. I suppose that is why I took it. Once, in the Mont Blanc in Soho, that haunt of many interested in the written word, when a group of men talked on their favorite theme, I heard a set of W. H. Hudson that he contains no fine writing, and when I responded that to my mind from cover to cover of all his books there is not but fine writing, I was met with the counter repost that he had no consciously fine writing. This robbing of a great author of honor, making out that he is what Johnson called Goldsmith in the nature of an inspired idiot, or a dead vessel wherein mysteriously Nectar appears, seems to me especially here considering it all among these large manifestations of nature, among lakes and mountains and woods, cloudbursts and rainstorm, year, sunshine, yonder, snowfall at another place, and all at once within view. Too niggling for serious attention. It is not true. He who admires the work of W. H. Hudson is an admirer of fine writing. I dislike the wild superlative. I have not read all the books in the world. I am aware that often the best are not thrust under our noses. Hudson is a case in point. He had to wait a long time for recognition and hear other men called the greatest writer of the age. Yet I think it is safe to say at least that his is among the finest writing of our period. That is no merely wild superlative, and I must be honest with myself. I may dislike the phrase fine writing, but I admire W. H. Hudson's prose, and to say that he does not know what he is doing, he is absurd. Obviously he does. He must. His art is no accident. Perhaps what those who object to fine writing mean by the words is what I call the prunes and prisms manner, such as that of, oh, but let the name go. Hudson is in the waterproof bag among the dunnage. He stands the test of the open. Here it may be interjected, although this is rather of those whom I can take with me on such a journey than of those I cannot, that I once tried to read Swinburne, fronting the Atlantic on the Scottish coast, and out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is, that had delighted me in a little den at home, could only call forth some such comment as Hamlet's words, words. John Muir is here. His also is fine writing, very marked to my mind in such passages as that one in which he tells of the wind running in the sierras, and how, climbing a tall pine, the better to watch the wind waves billowing over leagues, he clung to its swaying top like a bobble-link on a reed. Stevenson's Silverado Squatters, in a pocket edition, because of the little space it takes up, though at home I abhor pocket editions, confusing them with hairpin boxes, is of the company. I believe he is a fine writer. The same kind of man, who gives Hudson the discredit of not knowing what he is doing, gives Stevenson the discredit of knowing what he did. Out west here they have an expression for that way of looking at life. They call it narrow gauge. Stevenson accompanies me in that volume, because he could describe what I look at gazing up at the high altitudes, coasting the mountain bases, in a way that satisfies me. Those furs on the crests of the ranges five miles away from me, yet each individually clear, are, as he said, no bigger than an eyelash. Professor Piersall Smith's selection of John Dunn's sermons will not light the campfire or be tossed overboard, but will remain till the snows come and the lakes freeze and I must turn home. His sonorous sentences are not made void and drowned out by the sonorous roll of the Greeks in the gulches. I can read again and again that passage with the toll of a bell sounding in the words that he made for the death of King James I, and the lines in which he muses that all this that is temporal is about a caterpillar got into one corner of my garden, but a mildew fallen upon one acre of my corn. Do not seem a frail conceit, a bit of preciosity here. Lafcadio Hearn is of the party, because he saw the color of the world. I do not read him much, for some reason, but I'd like to have him with me. His, out of the east, won't help to light the fire, even if a cloudburst should drench all the woods. I shall find a bundle of dry red willow twigs somewhere to start the flames. I often wonder how Hearn managed to pass through the foothills of the Rockies and the kicking horse pass and on down to Vancouver and so westward to the east without availing himself of the stopover clause on traveller's tickets. Often I wish he had left us some note of the sparkle of granite boulders and their blue shadows of the azure skies behind the whiteness of glaciers of the colors of the Indians' blankets and the mysterious wild patients in their eyes. Henry James, with his portraits of places, is also here, another fine writer. All of those playwrights, whom we call Shakespeare, were fine writers, but it took Thomas Second to object to Shakespeare's purple patches. Portraits of places, partial portraits, and French poets and novelists, were written by Henry James before he had succumbed to his determination to be Henry James at all costs when he was just Henry James. I think portraits of places will live after every novel of his last phase is forgotten. The preface he wrote to Rupert Brookes' letters from America I know is claimed by some critics to be wonderful prose, but it seems to me that the prose of the essays it introduces is more admirable. They have a simplicity of diction, though of a different kind, as definite and almost as good as that of Henry James' in the days when he was simple. That book of Rupert Brookes should be with me, though it is not. Had it been on a shelf of the bookstores in town I would surely have called it. The chapter in it on Indians, as put on record, I regret to have to repeat the word, simply what all of us feel toward the Aboriginae who do not believe that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. And Brookes' description of the quiet trees, the rocks, the deer stepping down to drink, and the gray blue lakes forever sliding sideways makes it a book to love, although it figured in no list of volumes in great demand in the four quarters. Keats is here, though not for the eve of St. Agnes, its sweetness cloys among the robust scent of cedar and balsam, for almost all of Indemian, except what came from Lampierre, for many passages in Hyperion, lines such as those telling how there is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines when winter lifts his voice, which again, rather than lose in value, read among the big timber, who could write of the sea-shouldering whales, fits in here. Richard Jeffries is in the waterproof bag, his open air, although it is of the open air of England, kindly Kent and blue Sussex, also fits in. I can read him by fire-light when the rosin splatters and the flames leap high, and there is no sound but the sleepy peep-peep of resting lake gulls over the dark blue waters where the stars vaguely light a wind-ripple. Then there is Edward Thomas. He has stood the test. He has not gone overboard. The sense of eternity that the silent places give to us is in his work, and so he remains, telling of how he heard the first cuckoo of an ancient spring before the war, or, cramping in England, came to a deserted house in the smear of rain, and saw its blank windows full of memories. I doubt if there is any addition of his work printed in America. He died in the war, and so became known to more than those who find books without extraneous aid, but he did not die, and he had not lived, as luckily as did Brooke. I do not think his poems are the best of him. The best of him is, in my opinion, in the lost files of the daily and weekly London journals. My own volume of him is a self-made one, a notebook, with cuttings from these papers pasted in. They stand the test of the eternal mountains and the lonely woods. The spirit is in them that is of more than a day. Conrad's Typhoon carries with me McQuirre, Jukes, Solomon Root, Mrs. Root, and Conrad. I have also Hergizheimers, the three black pennies, with many annotations on its margins, linking page with page throughout, linking up the Flight of Geese that the first pennies saw with the Flight of Geese the last saw with dimming eyes, connecting the raccoon hunt of Howitz Day with the raccoon hunt of Jasper's time that Susan saw, the description of the day when the stone was warm under Jasper's hand, while he rested and a hawk hung in the air with the account of how the stone was warm with the last Howit penny sat down to meditate and saw a hawk fly over and was filled with reveries he could not wholly understand. Among all the sartorial rustle of the pages there is the rustle of something else. It is a rustle not out of key with that in the aspens, exquisitely fading for this season by these waterways, and what they're rustling in the quiet strangely talks into the heart. These books, while the billy boils and the flapjack is a cooking, and a coyote may be moans at length of imminent snow, with an eerie crescendo up in the gulches, are veritable companions in the solitude. I might adapt here some words from a paper by Hugh Walpole on a theme not alien which came into my hands on the very day I pushed off. It is, of course, a purely personal list, whatever one may pretend, no list is ever anything else. Every author writes for himself and his own, not even the greatest, how many greatest there are, as Whitman said, are the favourites of all, to say nothing of the fact that few men are stationary. Not everything they admire today will satisfy tomorrow. Somewhere, Stevenson said he had long believed there must be someone who did not care for Shakespeare, and he found the honest man with joy. On another trip there will be other books, and only some, perhaps even none, of these. But in a large fashion the volume selected to bear me company, where are only the seasons and weather, will always, I am sure, knowing the kind of books that alone can live far from cities, where the mind is ceaselessly thrown into a natural wonder regarding the origin and the destiny of all, however dissimilar they may be, yet be similar in this. They will always be books with the quality of art in them, a conscious quality, whether it be art simple or adorned, books with a sense of eternity, either ringing explicit in them, or strangely awakened in the reader's heart, because of their sense of the beauty of the transient. And of Books in the Wilderness by Frederick Niven, Recording by David Wales Coriomania and Historical Sketch, with some account of an epidemic observed in Madagascar by Andrew Davidson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Coriomania. Amongst the epidemics of the Middle Ages, one of the most peculiar, and to the psychologist one of the most interesting, is the Dancing Mania, which, for at least two centuries and a half, appeared at irregular intervals in various parts of Europe. It received different names in different countries. Throughout Western Europe it was called Correa, Correa Sancti Vitti, Coria di Manomania, the Devil's Dance, or the Dance of St. John, while in Italy, in more modern times, it was known as Terrantism. The same disease has been observed in Abyssinia about the beginning of the present century, where it was called Tigretier. It is not my design to give a full account of this malady in its various epidemics, but simply to sketch some of its leading historical features, for without some acquaintance with its history, the following narrative of what was observed in Madagascar would be imperfectly understood. This disease, which we shall name Coriomania, was, as I have said, originally called Correa, or St. Vitus's Dance, but these terms are now inseparably, though inaptly, applied to another and perfectly distinct nervous affection. From this change in name, along with the disappearance of the original Correa from Europe, considerable confusion has arisen. Not a few authors have regarded the descriptions of Coriomania by the older writers as applying to modern Correa, and as these are entirely inconsistent with our everyday experience of the latter disease, they have considered the accounts of the epidemics of Coriomania during the Middle Ages as extravagant and untrustworthy. The short allusion which Mason Good has made to the original disease in his classic work indicates that he had fallen into this error. In a similar way, that Prince of Modern Physicians Joseph Frank, proceeding upon the assumption that Coriomania is identical with Correa, says, those who pretend that in 1374 Correa became epidemic evidently confound it with the serial malady ergotism. In truth, however, Correa does not exhibit itself generally in an epidemic form, but, with some exceptions, is always sporadic. Now it is perhaps possible that one of the forms of ergotism may be liable to be mistaken for the Correa of modern nozologists. It could not have been confounded with Coriomania, with which it has nothing in common. It is sufficient, however, to say that no one maintains that the disease referred to by Joseph Frank was epidemic in 1374. In one of the most recent, and undoubtedly one of our best textbooks on medicine by Dr. Aitken, the same confusion occurs. Thus, treating of Correa, he writes as follows, In Germany it was said for two centuries to have been epidemic, and the patients, probably many of them maniacs, were wont to join in frantic dances. And as late as 1673 they went in procession to the church of some favorite saint, of whom St. John, St. Guy and St. Vitus were the most reputed, end quote. Now the Correa of modern nozologists was never said to have been epidemic, that which was epidemic was clearly a different disease altogether. Sir Thomas Watson has appended to his lecture on Correa a short statement regarding the original disease, which proves that he recognizes its true character. The name, he justly remarks, quote, was applied, and much more suitably, to another set of symptoms of a most singular kind concerning the real occurrence of which we might well be skeptical if we had not the authentic narratives of many instances of such disorder from different persons of credit, as well in this country as in others. An affection characterized by movements which cannot be called spasmodic, but are rather owing to the irresistible propensity to muscular action, increased sometimes to a sort of mania by the force of imitation or by the sound of music. It is the volition in this case that is morbid or perverse, end quote. To increase the confusion, some authors have classed with Correa mania, many anomalous forms of nervous manifestation, some of which are evidently the result of organic disease of the nervous centers. Such are the cases recorded by Segar and others of patients who could only go forwards or backwards, or these singular diseases described as rotatio and maleatio. Correa mania is undoubtedly distinct from spasmodic Correa, on the one hand, and from these singular forms of perverted motion on the other. The various epidemics have been admirably described by Hecker, to whose work those desirous of information may refer, and in which the curious will find references to and quotations from the original authorities on the subject. Some very interesting information is also to be found in Hazer's history of epidemic diseases. Correa mania may be defined as a psychophysical disease in which the will, intellectual faculties, and moral feelings are all more or less perverted with an irresistible impulse to motion and an insane love of music, often sporadic, but with a tendency in certain circumstances to become epidemic. The first appearance of the dancing mania on record occurred at Colbig in the year 1021. Unfortunately, we cannot rely upon the accuracy of the accounts of it that have come down to us, as they are undoubtedly mixed up with the fabulous. The simple fact that such an event occurred can alone be accepted as historical. Beyond this there is no certainty. The tradition is that a dozen of country people having been seized with this disease during the time of divine service, the priest, Ruprecht, cursed them to dance and howl for twelve months for having interrupted the worship, and that this curse was only removed by the prayers and intercession of two bishops, that four of the twelve died, and that the remaining eight continued to suffer from tremblings of the limbs during the rest of their lives. Then again in the year 1278, two hundred persons were seized with it at Utrecht, and while dancing on the Mosul Bridge the structure gave way and many of them perished. But perhaps the first remarkable outbreak occurred in the year 1374 under the name of St. John's Dance, because it began on St. John's Day, which was observed in the earlier centuries in the most outrageous manner, with mirth, debauchery and dancing. It seems to be this epidemic which is referred to by Frank, and strangely enough, supposed by him to have been owing to ergotism. At Isla Chapelle says Hecker, quote, Assemblages of men and women were seen who had come out of Germany and who were united by one common delusion. They formed circles hand in hand, and appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued to dance, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death until they were swathed in claws bound tightly around their waists, upon which they again recovered, end quote. The swathing, which was rendered more effective by the aid of a turnstick, was resorted to on account of timpani. While dancing they were said to have been insensible to external impressions, but haunted by religious visions and caprices of various kinds. The attacks often commenced with convulsions, difficulty of breathing, and mental depression. Beaked shoes very much excited the resentment of the dancers. In Liège the manufacture of these fashionable articles was forbidden by law. Red colors seemed to have been more offensive, the influence of which, Hecker suggests, might lead us to imagine an extraordinary accordance between this spasmodic malady and the condition of infuriated animals. The fact, however, that in other epidemics the affected were enraptured with red colors goes against this ingenious supposition. We shall have occasion again to notice this point when treating of the disease as observed in Madagascar. Quote, after the patients had recovered by means of exorcisms they related that during the attack they felt as if standing in a stream of blood, end quote. This epidemic spread rapidly throughout Germany, Belgium, and the neighboring countries, hundreds of all ages and both sexes being led away by the sympathetic contagion, and this outbreak only finally ceased after a period of four years. Exorcisms were resorted to by the priests when patternosters and simpler means failed. But we are assured that kicks and blows, heartily administered by the bystanders, often afforded still greater relief, and were generally used as adjuvants to other means, and, strange enough, even gladly borne by the sufferers. The common people ascribed this calamity to the immorality of the priests, vulgis autum apud leodium disibat, quad hugismodi plaga populo contigiset eo quad populus male baptisatus erat, maximae apresbetiribus suus tentitibus concubinas. In the following century the dancing mania reappeared at Strasburg, as St. Vitus's dance, and continued more or less for a century and a half. The follies and vices of the previous epidemics were repeated. The patients resorted to the shrine of St. Vitus in crowds, where they were cured, hence the name. The disease was common over northern Germany, France, and Belgium. It had a liking to the Rhine Valley, few of the cities in this district escaped this strange plague. The reason of this geographical predilection does not appear. In this new outbreak both sexes were affected, but women principally, and the upper classes and clergy were almost exempt. As may easily be supposed, profligacy and imposture became associated with these epidemics. Doubtless Paracelsus had two good reason for naming it the lascivious dance. The civil power in some places had to interfere for the suppression of these public exhibitions, but in others the magistrates employed relays of musicians and dancers for the relief of the affected. We'd need not be surprised that the loose and abandoned should feign a disease which gave them an amount of license. But many were said to have acted in earnest the part that they assumed from design. Indeed, so real was the disease, and so great the frenzy of some of these poor, deluded mortals, that they actually, quote, dashed their brains out by running against walls and corners of buildings, or rushed headlong into rapid rivers where they found a watery grave, end quote. While the morbid impulse lasted, the physical endurance was truly extraordinary. This point has been insisted upon by every writer. Thus many hundreds continued dancing for days and nights in the public places of Strasbourg without tasting food. From what I have myself witnessed I can well enough believe the account by Felix Plater, of a case which certainly to many would seem almost incredible. Without giving his words, his story is that he remembered a girl who had the dancing mania and who exhausted several powerful men commissioned by the authorities to dance with her. They relieved each other by turns, and this continued above four weeks when she fell down exhausted and was carried to an hospital where she recovered. She had remained in her clothes all the time, entirely regardless of her lacerated feet. She merely sat down occasionally to take some nourishment during which the hopping movement continued. The disease known as Tarantism, and which was once common in Italy, was undoubtedly Coriomania. The writings of Ferdinando, Buglivi, and others contain very full descriptions of it. While we may reasonably doubt the traditional etiology of the affection, we must accept the evidence of so many trustworthy and competent observers regarding the symptoms of which they were eyewitnesses. The Tarantula or Oranea Tarantula of Linnaeus, which many regard as the phalangeum of the Greek and Roman writers, is the name given to a spider common not only in Apulia but in various parts of Europe and Asia. The effects of the bite of the Tarantula have never been very satisfactorily made out. The subject is an interesting and curious one upon which much has been written. A strong argument against the notion that Coriomania was so caused is this, that whereas the spider has very probably existed in Italy for ages, Coriomania only appeared there in the 14th or 15th century. Besides, the phalangea were known and carefully described by many ancient naturalists and physicians, but none of these ascribed to their bite the power of producing this strange disorder. Paulus Egonata, treating of the bites of these spiders, mentions as local symptoms, redness, coldness, and itchiness of the part, and, constitutionally, grousing, trembling, pain in the stomach, vomiting, erections of the penis, dysuria, and cold perspirations, all probably enough results and quite in accordance with what we know of the action of animal poisons. The premonitory symptoms of Tarantism were melancholy and lassitude, sometimes sleeplessness with excitement, and occasionally tremors and vomiting. These symptoms often appeared in those bitten by the Tarantula when predisposed to the malady. Not that the bite actually produced the disease, but in a nervous, excitable person, fully convinced that the poison produced such symptoms, and brooding over a bite real or imaginary, we can easily understand how the terror itself should induce this psychological condition. We must remember that the most ridiculous opinions prevailed even among scientific men on this subject. Almost every species and variety of spider, not only in Italy but everywhere, was considered poisonous. Scaliger affirms that so virulent were some of the spiders found in Gascony that, quote, if trodden upon, so as to be crushed, their poison would penetrate through the very soles of the shoes, end quote. No wonder, then, if a nervous girl who believed herself to have even been in contact with this loathed insect should become affected with what she understood to be the inevitable consequences of the poison. Again, when these symptoms made their appearance, the patient, influenced by the universal delusion, readily fancied that they must have been bitten. From the premonitory melancholy, patients were aroused by the sound of music, and a great variety of instruments was in use. Baglovie enumerates among the instruments employed to cure tyrantism, the drum, timbrel, shepherd's pipe, leer, and cymbal, along with fiddles and flutes of various kinds. If we can credit that celebrated author, and in this particular we cannot doubt his statement, some patients were quite unaffected by certain of these musical instruments, yet immediately responded to another, and forthwith began to dance. In fact, there seems to have been a wonderful amount of caprice in this respect, but human credulity cannot believe that this dislike of certain instruments and partiality for others was, as Baglovie asserts, dependent upon the size, color, or virus of the spider which had inflicted the wound. Whatever differences there may have been in regard to the instrument, all agreed in their love of quick and lively music, and even the least musical seam, while under this disease, to have become so wonderfully acute and just in their perception of harmony, that a false note was unendurable. Bands of music traversed the country to cure the malady, and no doubt often caused, or at least encouraged it. The dancing generally continued from ten to fourteen hours daily, and from three to six successive days, and this amount of exertion, we are told, gave rise to no apparent fatigue. As in St. Vitus's dance, so in tarantism, the mania showed a tendency to recur annually, and was cured every year by resorting to the means we have described. Whether a foregone belief that the disease was not to be eradicated, but must necessarily return, by praying upon the mind, produced this result, or whether, as is probable, some other cause operated in this way, it is impossible to say. The ordinary termination of the disease seems to have been in recovery, and, as we said, its duration was comparatively limited. The other phenomena of the disease were not so uniform. Some, in their infatuation, cast themselves into the sea or into rivers, courting destruction. Others were buried up to the neck in earth to obtain relief. Many afflicted by melancholy frequented the tombs, while others, laboring under sexual excitement, abandoned themselves to their passions. Beglovie says that, quote, maids and women otherwise chaste enough, without any regard to modesty, fall as sighing, howling, and into very indecent motions. They love to be tossed to and again in the air and the like. Others, you cannot please, unless they be soundly drubbed on the breach, heels, feet, and back, end quote. Unlike the St. John's dancers in Germany, those affected by tarantism generally liked red colors. Green seems to have also been much admired. It is unnecessary to enter into a minute description of the Tigretier or dancing mania of Abyssinia. The account of it in Hecker's work, to which we have referred, or the original by Pierce, is within the reach of those interested in the subject. A short summary is all that is necessary, as this will suffice to show its identity with the disease of Europe. A. It was more or less epidemic, chiefly affecting women. B. It began with symptoms of constitutional disorder, at first febrile, which sometimes gave place to a lingering morasmus, with an affection of speech, and was occasionally fatal. C. It was characterized by an intense craving for music and an impulse to dance, leap, or run, with an almost supernatural power of physical endurance while the mania lasted. D. It was regarded by the natives as a demoniacal possession. All these points were brought out in the simple and upon the whole trustworthy narrative of Nathaniel Pierce, who was himself an eyewitness of what he relates, and who had the misfortune of observing it in his own wife. C. One thing is very remarkable in his account of the tigre tie, and in this respect it differs a little from what has been observed elsewhere. That is, the very marked constitutional disorder preceding and accompanying the disease, proving what the history of medical psychology affords many examples of, that the most serious physical disease may be determined or caused by psychological influences. D. What affinity the leaping egg you in Scotland had to true choreomania, I shall not attempt to decide. The following account of it will illustrate its character. Those affected complain of pain at the lower part of the back, to which succeed convulsion fits, or fits of dancing at certain periods. During the paroxysms, they have all the appearance of madness, distorting their bodies in various ways, and leaping and springing in a surprising manner, once the disease has acquired its vulgar name. Sometimes they ran with astonishing velocity, and often over dangerous passes to some place out of doors which they have fixed on in their minds, or perhaps even mentioned to those in company with them, then dropped down exhausted. At other times, especially when confined to the house, they climb in the most singular manner. In cottages, for example, they leap from the floor to what are called the box, or the beams by which the rafters are joined together, springing from one to another with the agility of a cat, or whirling round one of them with emotion resembling the fly of a jack, end quote. Having thus referred to Coriomania as has been seen in various parts of Europe and in Abyssinia, I shall proceed to give a short account of this singular disease as observed by myself and others in Madagascar, a disease so strange that I might well have hesitated to record the facts if they had not been witnessed by so many whose character and judgment placed their evidence beyond question. In the month of February 1863, the Europeans resident at Antonanarivo, the capital of Madagascar, began to hear rumors of a new disease which it was said had appeared in the West or Southwest. The name given to it by the natives was Imaninjana, and the dancers were called Ramaninjana, which probably comes from a root signifying to make tense. The name did not convey any idea of its nature, and the accounts given of it were so vague as to mystify rather than enlighten. After a time, however, it reached the capital, and in the month of March began to be common. At first parties of twos and threes were to be seen, accompanied by musicians and other attendants, dancing in the public places. In a few weeks these had increased to hundreds, so that one could not go out of doors without meeting bands of these dancers. It spread rapidly, as by a sort of infection, even to the most remote villages in the central province of Emerina, so that, having occasion to visit a distant part of the country in company with an Englishman, we found even in remote hamlets, and, more wonderful still, near solitary cottages, the sound of music indicating that the mania had spread even there. The public mind was in a state of excitement at that time, on account of the remarkable political and social changes introduced by the late King Radama II. It is unnecessary here to explain the nature of these changes, or the way in which they moved the people generally, and roused the superstitious feelings of the lower classes. A pretty strong anti-Christian, anti-European party had arisen, who were opposed to progress and change. This strange epidemic got into sympathy, especially in the capital, with this party, and the native Christians had no difficulty in recognizing it as a true demoniacal possession. There was universal consternation at the spread of this remarkable disease, and the consternation favored its propagation. Those affected belonged chiefly, but not by any means exclusively, to the lower classes. The great majority were young women between fourteen and twenty-five years of age. There were, however, a considerable number of men to be seen amongst the dancers. But they certainly did not exceed one-fourth of the entire number, and these also belonged mostly to the lower orders of society. Very few, indeed scarcely any, Christians came under this influence. No doubt partly because the general spirit of dissatisfaction and superstitious unrest did not affect them directly. Their sympathies were rather with those changes, political and social, which disturbed the masses. They were, so to speak, beyond the reach of the current. Their exemption may be partly explained by their superior education, mental and moral, but was also very manifestly owing to their firm conviction that the whole affair was a demoniacal possession of their heathen countrymen which could not affect them as Christians. They could thus look at it as outsiders, with the interest of observers, without the fear which, in such a malady, is one of the means of its propagation. The patients usually complained of a weight or pain in the precordia, and great uneasiness, sometimes a stiffness about the nape of the neck. Others, in addition, had pains in the back and limbs, and in most cases there seems to have been an excited state of the circulation, and occasionally even mild febrile symptoms. One or more of these premonitory symptoms were frequently observed. There were numerous cases where they were absent. After complaining, it may be one, two or three days, they became restless and nervous, and if excited in any way, more especially if they happened to hear the sound of music or singing, they got perfectly uncontrollable, and, bursting away from all restraint, escaped from their pursuers and joined the music, when they danced sometimes for hours on end with amazing rapidity. They moved the head from side to side with a monotonous motion, and the hands in the same way alternately up and down. The dancers never joined in the singing, but uttered frequently a deep, sighing sound. The eyes were wild, and the whole countenance assumed an indescribable, abstracted expression, as if their attention was completely taken off what was going on around them. The dancing was regulated very much by the music, which was always the quickest possible. It never seemed to be quick enough. It often became more of a leaping than a dancing. They thus danced to the astonishment of all, as if possessed by some evil spirit, and, with almost superhuman endurance, exhausting the patience of the musicians who often relieved each other by turns, then fell down suddenly as if dead. Or, as often happened, if the music was interrupted, they would suddenly rush off as if seized by some new impulse, and continue running until they fell down almost or entirely insensible. After being completely exhausted in this way, the patients were taken home, the morbid impulse apparently in many cases destroyed. Sometimes the disease, thus stopped, never recurred, but more frequently there was a return. The sight of dancers, or the sound of music, even in the distance, or anything which, by association, seemed connected with the disease, determined a recurrence of the fit. The patients were fond of carrying about with them sugar canes. They held them in their hands, or carried them over the shoulder while they danced. Frequently, too, they might be seen going through their singular evolutions with a bottle of water upon their heads, which they succeeded wonderfully in balancing. The drum was the favorite instrument, but others were used, and all were acceptable. When there was no musical instrument to be had, the attendants beat time with their hands, or sung a tune which was a favorite amongst the Raman and Jhana. There is a sacred stone in a plain below the city where many of the kings of Madagascar have been crowned. It is a large, rather irregular stone, partly built, so as to round it off, and is about eight feet high and twelve feet in diameter. This stone was a favorite rendezvous for them. They danced here for hours on end, and concluded by placing the sugar cane as a sort of offering upon the stone. The tombs were also favorite places of resort for these dancers. They met in the evenings, and danced by moonlight for half the night or longer amongst the graves. Many of them profess to have intercourse with the departed, and more particularly with the late queen. In describing their sensations afterwards, some said that they felt as if a dead body was tied to them, so that with all their efforts they could not shake themselves clear of it. Others thought that there was a heavy weight continually dragging them downwards or backwards. They disliked, above all things, hats and pigs. The very sight of these objects was so offensive that, in some cases, it threw them into a kind of convulsion, but more frequently excited their rage. Still more inexplicable was their dislike of every article of dress of a black color. Swine are reckoned unclean by several tribes in Madagascar, and might thus be an object of superstitious horror. Hats, as associated with foreigners, might similarly be objected to. But what is there in a color to excite antipathy? Yet this caprice has been so common in this disease, in all its recorded epidemics, as to deserve attention. This phenomenon was likewise observed in the child pilgrimages of the 13th century, which, towards the end, began to assume some of the characteristics of choreomania. Faulkter's laban, speaking of the sense of sight, says, quote, The several colors have a decided, not fully defined, but individually modified, psychical effect. In general, the positive colors, red, yellow, etc., excite the mind, the negative, blue, etc., calm it, end quote. If it be difficult to ascertain the psychical effect of colors in health, how much more so in disease? The sense of sight is probably not more depraved than the other faculties and senses. In Abyssinia we have seen that the faculty of speech was disordered. The most intellectual of all the senses, that of hearing, is always affected to a remarkable degree, as evidenced not only by the morbid desire for music, but by the illusions and delusions connected with this special sense. All this points to a morbid condition not only of the motor centers, but of the most important ganglia at the base of the brain, a morbid condition chiefly functional in character and produced by psychical causes. The disease was associated with national prejudices, religious and political. Did these originate it? I think not. They simply afforded as it were the condition, or one of the conditions, of its epidemic manifestation. They formed the bond of sympathetic union among the affected. To become epidemic this disease must see some popular idea or superstition at once so firmly believed as to lay hold of the heart of the people and so generally as to afford scope for the operation of pathological sympathy. Thus Coriomania was associated with the religious superstitions of the Middle Ages. Manifestly hostile to the priests, so deep was the hold which the Church exercised over even its dissatisfied children, that exorcisms as we have seen became one of the most potent means of cure. In Madagascar, in the same way, those who know the respect of the natives for their ancestors and their unbounded reverence for their resting places might a priori have decided the form which such a mania would assume in that country. It must further be remembered that Coriomania never appears as an epidemic except when the public mind is deeply agitated by some general cause. In illustration of this it will be remembered, as Hecker and others have pointed out, that Coriomania, in its first outbreak, followed closely upon the Black Death, and was to be ascribed to the excitement of men's minds and the consequence of wretchedness and want. The mental and moral state of the people induced by such great calamities as the Black Death and the inundations of the Rhine, and by the political and religious conditions of the period, the feuds of the barons, the corruption of the Church and of public morals, the licentious exercise of power or the unwarranted resistance of authority, were all exciting causes of its epidemic manifestation. The disease was rarely fatal, still a few cases of death undoubtedly happened, and these only occurred so far as I am aware where the patient was restrained from joining in the dances. It would seem that these actually died from pent-up passion or excitement. The dancing, no doubt, was so far salutary. The music served to regulate and control the wild muscular movements that might otherwise have proved injurious. A most remarkable fact is that the mere physical exercise, prodigious and long-continued as it is in this disease, seems perfectly harmless. I never heard of its having proved fatal, or even to have produced abortion in pregnant women, a circumstance observed by Burton in his account of the earlier epidemics, and enforced with more than his usual pith and quaintness. The question of the reality of these phenomena requires a few words, although what has been said above in regard to the disease in Germany applies equally to Madagascar. No one who saw it can doubt that it was perfectly real as a psychopathy, and no one of candor or discrimination will deny that a certain amount of imposture was practiced. It was more difficult, however, than one might suppose to feign this disease and act it out consistently. The look, manner, movements, and power of enduring physical exertion were sufficient to distinguish the simulated from the real. It is remarkable, and should never be lost sight of, how often the most contradictory and opposite feelings and motives seem to be mixed up in such cases. It can easily be understood how many of these Ramananjana may have become the victims of a strong morbid impulse, which they at first either feigned or fostered. How wonderful is the history of human delusion, and how nearly the strongest delusions in some of their aspects border on imposture. Witness the burning for witchcraft in Scotland. Never was there any want of witches to burn, while the demand for them continued. Poor infatuated women and men were found to confess to the most impossible of crimes, with certain death staring them in the face, so long as the public superstition demanded such victims. A sad record of human folly, darker than anything else I know of, is to be found in some of the volumes of the Woodrow Society's publications. It must never be forgotten by the physician how strangely interwoven is the spiritual and the physical in man, especially is it to be remarked how physical diseases resulting from psychical causes will often be cured by strong mental impressions. Hysteria has thus often been cured. Burhave cured epilepsy in children by a threat. The suicidal monomania of the Malaysian girls was overcome by the fear of their bodies being exposed after death. In the same way in Madagascar, the fear of punishment alone, or combined with moral discipline, prevented the mania in many families when such means were adopted by my advice. Legal enactments almost extinguished it for a time by confining the affected to their own houses and preventing the public performance of music. Since this first and most remarkable outbreak, the disease has occurred annually every spring. We find in the post the following account of the Slider Epidemic of 1864, evidently written by a European resident in the island. Quote, The queen has been greatly alarmed at an epidemic of the Ramananjana which has raged over the capital. This disease is a sacred malady of an extraordinary character and of which the doctors understand nothing. Too true. The patient is seized with convulsions, raises savage cries and rolls on the ground in the streets. The population is almost entirely soon stricken with the same malady, and great possessions of people pass along the streets creating disorder and such movements are often taken advantage of to upset a throne or overturn a ministry. The unfortunate Radama was a victim of the Ramananjana of 1863, end quote. Although this account is exaggerated and the facts not detailed with any accuracy or elegance, it tends to illustrate the impression caused by even a mild epidemic of Coriomania in those who for the first time witness it. From inquiries that I have made, I find that a similar disease has existed in Madagascar for at least 50 years and is called Ambo. It seems in no respect different from Coriomania except that it is sporadic. From a careful consideration of these facts, we may deduce the following propositions. A. Coriomania is a distinct psychophysical disease with its leading features clearly marked and uniform to be distinguished from modern Correa and from organic nervous disease. B. There is always as an essential part of it an uncontrollable impulse to dance and a morbid love of music, very generally also peculiar caprices regarding certain colors and objects, the power of speech being occasionally affected and moral mania common. C. The subjects of this disease are those most liable to hysterical diseases, that is young women about the age of puberty and men of an excitable temperament. D. Although it may be sporadic, it shows a tendency to become epidemic during periods of general excitement. E. In its epidemic form it is usually associated with some prevalent deep-rooted belief or superstition. F. It spreads by what we may call pathological sympathy. G. When epidemic, it is generally preceded by premonitory symptoms referable to the nervous system and secondarily induces physical derangement and sometimes even death. It would be foreign to the design of this paper to enter into any of the interesting psychological questions which suggest themselves in connection with this subject, such as the nature of the changes on the nervous centers, the primary cause of such changes, and the organic lesions resulting therefrom. In queries such as these must be of deep interest to the physician, the philosopher, and the divine. But this disease is of special practical interest to the magistrate and medical jurist. In Madagascar this mania in no small degree tended to bring about the rebellion which ended in the death of the sovereign and his ministers and determined a revolution political and social in that vast island. Such an epidemic may occur again in India or other countries where British interests may be deeply involved and in such cases it is important that the physician should know the disease and be able to direct the authorities to a proper view of its nature and cure. End of Choreomania, an historical sketch with some account of an epidemic observed in Madagascar by Andrew Davidson. Liverpool, a few years since, by James Aspinall. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Chad Horner. Chapter 19 The Church In the days we are speaking of was in a very torpid and sleepy state, not only in Liverpool but throughout the land. None of the evangelical clergy had then appeared in this district to stimulate the pace of the old-fashioned, jog-trot, high-churchmen. Neither had Laudism revived under its new name of Piscesm. Nothing was heard from our pulpits. But what might have passed muster at Athens or been preached without offence in the great mosque of Constantinople. In fact extract of Blair was the dose administered, Sunday after Sunday, by Drizzy teachers to Drizzy congregations. If it did no harm it did no good. We do not here speak of James Blair, Commissary of Virginia, President of William and Mary College etc. whose works, little known, contain a mine of theological wealth. We allude to Dr Hugh Blair, whose sermons, so celebrated in his day and long after, are rarely when analysed nothing better than a string of cold, moral precepts, mixed up with a few gaudy flowers, called from the Garden of Rhetoric. We have often wondered at the praise beyond measure which Dr Johnson again and again bestowed upon Blair's diluted, slip-slop and namby-pamby trifles. He not only spoke of them in the highest terms on every occasion, but thus, in his strange way, once exclaimed, I love Blair's sermons, though the dog is a Scotchman and a Presbyterian, and everything he should not be. I was the first to praise them, such was my candour. At all events, as we have already stated, extract of Blair was the pulpit Panacea, universally prescribed at the beginning of the 19th century. And we are bound to add, as far as our youthful recollection go, that the majority of the Liverpool clergy in those days were rather blue than above the average of mediocrity. There were some among them, however, whose names are worth recalling. One of the best preachers in those old times was the incumbent of St. Stephen's Byrum Street, the Reverend G. H. Percy, a fine fellow in every way. He is still alive at his living of Charestly in Warchestershire, to which he was presented through the influence of Old Queen Charlotte. His mother-in-law, the wife of the Reverend, Mr. Sharp, then vicar of Childwall, had been about the court in some capacity or other, and it was the good fashion of Her Majesty never to forget her friends. Mr. Percy must have reached the age of the patriarchs, at least. Then there was the Reverend Mr. Milner of St. Catherine's Church, Temple Street, which was removed in making some improvements in that part of the town. Per Mr. Milner, when not washing his hands, he employed each hour of the day in running, after the hour before, and was always losing ground in the race. A kind-hearted man he was, and a pleasant one, when you could catch him. He was known as the late Mr. Milner. The Reverend Mr. Lewis, preached in those days at Christchurch. He was considered to be a brilliant star in the pulpit, and was indeed a first-rate scholar, a fellow student with the illustrious canning. He made many and strong efforts to reclaim him from a course of life which unhappily contradicted and marred all his Sunday teachings. But, even with regard to his sermons, effective and telling as they were, made by style, voice and manner, it was found after his death, when they passed into other hands, that they were chiefly Blair, with others copied from the popular Writers of the Day. A clergyman who was to preach before the Archbishop of York, had the choice of them for the occasion. He picked out the one which seemed to him to be the most spicy in telling, and confident at the time that it was the production of this himself, delivered it with mighty emphasis and stunning effect. When it was over, the Bishop blandly smiled, praised it exceedingly, and then to the honour and astonishment of the preacher whispered, I always liked his sermons. Naming the author from whom it was taken, never did Per Jack-Daw feel so much pain at being divested of his borrowed plumage. One of the ablest men, although a mumbling kind of preacher in those times, was the Reverend Mr. Kidd, who was for so many years one of the curates of Liverpool, a kind of church surf who could never rise to be a church thriller. He had many kind friends, and at many a table which we could mention, a plate and knife and fork were always laid for the per curate, but he ever appeared to us to be an oppressed and depressed man with a weight upon his spirits which nothing could shake off. There was indeed a romance attached to his history, although he was perhaps the most unromantic looking person that the human eye ever rested upon. He was a brilliant scholar when a student of Braesnosed College, Oxford, and his hopes and ambition naturally aspired to a fellowship. It was supposed to be within his grasp, but how wide is the distance between the cup and the lip? The principle was unpopular and severely flogged in a satirical poem which appeared without a name. Its cleverness led him to suspect Mr Kidd, and without looking for any other proof of the authorship, he became his sworn enemy and used all his influence and only too successfully to turn the election against him. Some love affair we have also heard, but this was, it may be only, one of the tales of our grandfather went wrong with him about the same time. So that altogether he was thrown upon the world a sad and downcast man with blighted hopes and blasted expectations from his very youth and settled down into the curacy of Liverpool, where he saw more than one generation of inferior men, inferior in scholarship, in learning, in wit, in all and everything promoted over his head. A pleasant, agreeable quaint and original companion but tongue-tied in large party, he saw through the hollowness of the world and despised it. There was nobody like him for unmasking a sham and reducing a pretender to his real and proper dimensions. And then his chuckling laugh when he had accomplished such a feat and impaled the human cock chaper upon the point of his sarcasm and how bitterly he would allude to his curious poverty as smacking his lips over a glass of old port at some friend's table He did not dislike his glass of port. He would tell us that his own domestic alliance of the same was to spell at the cork on a weekday and to take a single glass to support him through his duties on a Sunday, per fellow. Once upon a time and such godsens did not often fall to his portion he had married a couple among the higher orders and received for it a banknote which perfectly dazzled him Then the marriage dinner he was a guest at both and perhaps took his share of the good things which were stirring his way home was through the hay market another gentleman whose path was in the same direction hearing a great noise came up and found our friend fighting furiously for his fee with a lamp post and exclaiming as he struck it with his stick you want to rob me of it you scoundrel do you but come on we'll see he wrote one of the bridge water treaties and who lately died at Oxford full of years and honors another well-known clergyman in those days was the Reverend Mr. Moss who was afterwards vicar of Walton for so many years his share of the drum ecclesiastic was decidedly the drumstick but although a very moderate performer in the pulpit he had a very good standing in society and was very much liked in his own set he never was man the cause of so much wit in others and often at his own expense he was known in his own circle as Old England because he expected every man to do his duty that is he never met a brother clergyman by any chance without seizing upon him and asking him if he could do his duty on the next Sunday in allusion to his convivial qualities and bad preaching somebody once said of him that he was better in the bottle than in the wood this gave him such dreadful offense that he positively consulted his lawyer on the subject of prosecuting the impious blasphemer for a libel the answer to his inquiry was a hearty laugh on the part of the solicitor himself with an intimation that he would be laughed out of court also amidst a char of jokes about the poet's description of the oxonians of that day steeped in old prejudice and older port and be poked with all sorts of fun about canting, recanting and decanting the decanter triumph although it was a strong allusion to the original offending joke and the idea of a prosecution was abandoned Mr Moss had an intense horror with all sorts of innovations and in the case of the first railway that between Manchester and Liverpool this feeling was greatly increased by the fact of his being a large shareholder in a certain canal which might be affected by its success was most raved whenever the subject was mentioned in company he long clung to the notion that the accomplishment of the line was impossible and fabulous he magnified every difficulty built upon every obstacle and concluded every harangue on the question with the triumphant exclamation but never mind they cannot do it chat moss will stop it this was said in allusion to that great bogey waste so called a time did really battle with the baffle the skill and efforts of the engineers on one occasion when our friend had been holding forth in his usual strain and finished with a look of defiance at all around him chat moss will stop it Mr Thomas Kruther who was one of the party quietly answered depend upon it your chat moss will stop it this to us is the purest essence of wit and very knee-blow altruism of it the force of humour like pit's description of what a battle should be it is sharp, short and decisive it is brilliant pointed telling there is a joke of almost a similar kind in Boswell's life of Johnson I told him, writes the former of one of Mr Burke's playful Sally Zippon Dean Marley I don't like the denary of ferns it sounds so like a barren title Dr Heath should have it said I Johnson laughed and condescending to trifle in the same mode of conceit suggested Dr Moss but the wit here is overdone and wire-drawn until it becomes forged heavy and exhausted Kruther's extempore retort beats the laboured efforts of Burke, Boswell and Johnson all put together as it bursts forth sparkling, glittering, dazzling on the spur of the moment depend upon it your chat moss will stop it we treasure a good thing and love to embalm it Mr Kruther the author of this unrivaled witticism had a twinkle about the eye which seemed to say for him that he had many a shot in the locker of equal colour were and ready for action we did not know much of him or shelves but we have always been told that his stories of humour and wit were as rich as they were inexhaustible the specimen or as men say in Liverpool the sample which we have given that's an opinion we must not forget to mention in connection with the Reverend G. H. Percy that of the sons of Liverpool were these under his care in 1804 and who thumbed their lexicons with redoubled zeal when promised a holiday to witness the marching and counter-marching of the brave army before his Royal Highness Prince William of Glowchester in Moss Lake Fields or Bank Hall Sands Sear and Yellowleaf are still fit for active service W. C. Ritzen E. Molliny Thomas Brondry F. Haywood R. W. Preston and James Borden the Reverend James Aspinall Rector of Althorpe, Lincolnshire was also long a favourite people of the Reverend Patriarch End of chapter 19 of Liverpool a few years since by James Aspinall