Imatges de pàgina
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What bearing of formes! what holdinge of swords!
What puttyng of botkins through legge and hose!

These tricks approximate closely to those of the modern jugglers, who have knives so constructed, that when they are applied to the legs, the arms, and other parts of the human figure, they have the appearance of being thrust through them.* The bearing of the forms or seats we may suppose to have been some sort of balancing; and the holding of swords alludes probably to the sword dance.

In a short chapter, entitled "Prestigiæ, or Sleights," published a century and a half ago, we have a view of a juggler's exhibition. It consists of four divertisements, including the joculator's own performances; the other three are tumbling and jumping through a rope, the grotesque dances of the clown or mimic, and dancing upon the tight rope. In modern times the juggler has united songs and puppetplays to his show.

At the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign the profession of the juggler, with that of the minstrel, had sunk so low in public estimation, that the performers were ranked not only with "ruffians, blasphemers, thieves, and vagabonds," but also with "heretics, Jews, Pagans, and sorcerers." In more modern times, by way of derision, the juggler was called a hocus pocus, a term applicable to a pickpocket or a common cheat.

These artists were greatly encouraged in the middle ages; they travelled in large companies, and carried with them such machinery as was necessary for the performance of their deceptions, by which apparatus, with the assistance of expert confederates, they might easily produce illusions of a very startling and inexplicable nature to spectators totally ignorant of natural philosophy, and prone to every species of superstitious credulity. Probably they had no exhibitions so astounding at first sight as the modern phantasmagoria, the automaton chess-player, the balloon, the sympathetic inks, and several of our chemical wonders, phenomena of which the principles are now familiar to many a schoolboy. Even our fire-eaters and combustible foreigners, who walk into an oven at a heat that will cook a beefsteak, are but

* A full description of these tricks with knives, illustrated by engravings, is given in Malcolm's Customs of London, vol. iii. p. 28.

renewing pyrotechnic wonders that were known and practised centuries ago. The little black-letter "Book of Secretes of Albertus Magnus," which discovers many "mervelys of the world," gives full instructions how to perform the following exploits: 1. "When thou wilt that thou seeme inflamed, or set on fyre from thy head unto thy feete, and not be hurt."-2. "A merveylous experience, which maketh menne to go into the fyre without hurte, or to beare fyre, or red hot yron in their hande without hurte." Dr. Fordyce, Sir Joseph Banks, and others, went into a heated room of nearly as high a temperature as M. Chabert's oven; the girls mentioned by M. Tillet supported a heat of sixty degrees higher; recent experiments fully confirm the capacity of human beings to endure a still greater exposure to heat, without any very serious inconvenience; and, in short, an extension of our philosophical knowledge will outjuggle jugglers of every description.*

Our sapient monarch James I. was not altogether without grounds for ascribing the marvellous exploits of the tragetours to witchcraft and demonology, since instances occurred wherein those performers, in order perhaps to excite the greater attention, assumed to themselves the possession of supernatural powers, and even suffered death, under their own confession, as wizards and sorcerers. Upon this subject Lord Verulam's reflections† form a fine contrast to the narrow and bigoted ideas of the royal author of the Demonology. "Men may not too rashly believe the confession of witches, nor yet the evidence against them, for the witches themselves are imaginative, and believe ofttimes they do that which they do not; and people are credulous on that point, and ready to impute accidents and natural operations to witchcraft. It is worthy the observing, that both in ancient and late times the great wonders which they tell are still reported to be wrought, not by incantations or ceremonies, but by anointing themselves all over. This may justly move a man to think that these fables are the effects of imagination; for it is certain that ointments do

*See Hone's Every-day Book, vol. ii. p. 780. An account of the ignivorous achievements of Powel, who exhibited in England about fifty years ago, may be found in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, 4to., p. 213; from which book and Brand's Popular Antiquities these brief notices have been chiefly gleaned.

In the tenth century of his Natural History:

all (if they be laid on any thing thick), by stopping of the pores, shut in the vapours, and send them to the head extremely."

The age of superstition and credulity is rapidly passing away; a smile of contempt is the principal effect produced by the cozening priests who at Naples go through the annual mummery of liquefying St. Januarius's blood; a new Faustus might spring up in Germany, or a second Galileo at Rome, without any fear of their being punished as magicians or heretics; and that juggler must be a conjurer indeed, who, even at the ignorant village of Tring, where the last of the witches was put to death, could now persuade his spectators that his legerdemain tricks were of a supernatural character, or performed by the aid of demons.

CHAPTER XX.

Sedentary Amusements.—Music, Minstrels.

"The man that hath not music in his soul,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds.
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted."

Shakspeare.

WHY should we record the various and profound theories which have been formed upon the origin and first invention of music? Surely it is more philosophical and true, more in accordance with the dictates of religion and the grateful promptings of reason, to acknowledge it at once as the immediate, the earliest, and the most precious boon of Heaven. Nature herself has implanted in the heart of man a love of song, and of melodious combinations, by which he may give vent to, and create an echo for, his own joy in his happier moments, dissipate his sorrows when under affliction, and cheer his labour at all times. By this innocent artifice the peasant and the mechanic lighten their daily drudgery; and the boatman, as he times the motion of his

cars to some familiar tune, seems to convert his toil into a pleasure. It has even, by a sad perversion of its peaceful tendencies, emboldened man to confront all the perils of war; and Quintilian expressly affirms that the high reputation of the Roman soldiery was partly attributable to the effect produced by the martial sound of the horns and trumpets. Music is the purest, the sweetest, the most enduring of all our gratifications. If the best things abused become the worst, there are few of our blessings which may not be said to contain within them the seed of a curse; but from this liability to perversion, from this principle of selfcorruption, the fascinating art of which we are now treating, is in a great measure exempt. "When music, heavenly maid, was young," we are indeed told that she possessed an infuriating and even a maddening power; but we are not to yield implicit credence to the reveries of poets and fabulists. No; music is naturally an allayer, not an exciter, of the angry passions; she seeks to ally herself with religion and virtue, rather than with their opposites; she is our guide, our solace, our preserver from evil temptations; and he who feels not the complacent influence of this guardian spirit should beware lest he justify the sinister averment of our motto.

To the divine gift of speech, the source of so many inappreciable pleasures and advantages, music adds a universal language which all may understand, by which all may be equally charmed, and which is infinitely more lively, more animated, and better adapted than any other to excite the emotions of the heart. There is not, it must be confessed, a more noble instrument than the human voice, which, possessing exclusively the power of uttering articulate and intelligible sounds, can make thought melodious, can infuse the whole soul into its mellifluous intonations, and at once ravish the ear, subdue the heart, and exercise the intellect. But when the soul is penetrated and absorbed by some exciting object, ordinary speech is inadequate to the full expression of its transports. Yielding to the vehemence of its impressions, it effuses itself in cries, exclamatory apostrophes, and every variety of impassioned cadence; and not content with this vocal outpouring of its feelings, it seeks the aid of music, which calms its agitation by imparting to sounds a variety, extent, continuity, and sooth

ing sweetness, which the voice can never attain. Such being the effects of this divine science, for such almost may music be termed, we can little wonder that in the earlier ages it was almost exclusively appropriated to the usages of religion, whose chief province it is to transport and elevate the soul by sentiments of joy, love, and gratitude to heaven. In these devout ecstasies, music, supplying what the human organs are incompetent to convey, enables the heart to give vent to the deep emotions of admiration and rapture; makes it feel its own happiness; enlarges its holy joy, by the expansiveness of correspondent sounds, and seems to furnish it with melodious wings that it may waft itself upwards to the great object of its adoration. Such were the purposes to which was applied by David, whose psalms, chanted to the accompaniment of voices and instruments, were intended to make known the miracles of the Deity, and to give a more fervent, grand, and sonorous expression to the praises, the gratitude, and the homage of man.

In the infancy of the art, music, when not exclusively appropriated to religion, seems to have been restricted, even among the Pagan nations, to the highest and most important objects, to which it addressed itself by a character of gravity and simplicity. Ancient authors tell us that all the laws and exhortations to virtue, the lives and achievements of gods, heroes, and illustrious men, were written in verse, and sung publicly by a choir to the sound of instruments; a practice which we know to have also prevailed in the earliest times among the Israelites. More efficacious means for impressing the mind of the hearer with the love of religion and virtue could hardly be devised, than when the sublime sentiments of both, clothed in all the dulcet accessories that could captivate the sense and touch the soul, as well as hallowed by the sanctifying influences of the temple wherein they were promulgated, were poured at once upon the ear and upon the heart of the auditor. Such were the important effects formerly attributed to this art, both upon morals and politics, that Plato and Aristotle, who disagree in almost every other maxim, accord in their approbation of music as a powerful instrument in softening the roughness and ferocity of uncivilized man, and of forming the public character of nations. To this high praise, however, it can only have been entitled in its primitive state, when, by

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