BOOKS.
CHRISTMAS'S CRADLE OF THE TWIN GIANTS.* BY the quaint title of" Twin Giants" Mr. Christmas means Science and History. The object of his book is -to examine them both in their origin ; to trace them through their infancy, childhood, and youth, till myths, fables' and romances passed into recorded history, and astrology, alchemy, with the occult arts, became astronomy and chemistry. Mr. Christmas also aims at separating the truth they contained from the accompany- ing falsehood, so as to rescue the memory of many of their followers from the contempt with which they have been regarded as charlatans or im- postors. The time is favoarable to such an object. Much in ancient story that seemed incredible to the last century is proved by later dis- coveries to be perfectly probable. The researches into Egyptian and Etruscan monuments, especially the tombs, have exhibited a civilization far anterior to that of Greece or Rome, and in fact established before the Mosaic dispensation ; a state of society as luxurious and civilized as that of the nineteenth century, with, on some points, a greater knowledge of mechanics, and as much dexterity in their application to the purposes of life. It is doubtful whether even this was an original civilization—whe- ther it did not come at ages still more remote from the far East, in whose ancient monuments and literature are to be traced the pure Theism of the Jew and the Trinity of the Christian. It is less doubtful that a civilization akin to that of the Egyptians and Etruscans once spread over the world beyond the age of recorded history; and whose state as seen by Cresar, when he penetrated towards the North, was as much in its decline as the religions of Budd and Brah when first examined by philo- sophical Europeans. It is the same in science. Contemporary philosophy, less arrogant than that of the eighteenth century, looks with doubt upon the extent to which the priesthood of remote times may not have pene- trated in their discovery of principles, — as, for example, the true character of the solar system, which Pythagoras announced to the West- ern world, though the idea was received as incredible for two thou- sand years. It is the same with mediteval practices. The true philo- sopher (and it is he who gives the tone to society) is quite willing to examine the labours of the astrologers, to investigate the laws of their false though consistent science, to separate where he can the true obser- vation from the erroneous data, and to consider whether some occult in- fluence may not really be exercised upon the body of man by the planets and the signs of the zodiac, to an extent affecting his disposition, though the influence itself is inappreciable by us. In like manner, the chemist will trace with interest the labours and ideas of the alchemist, though he spent his life in the pursuit of that which is unattainable, and which if attainable would be useless or mischievous. For if gold and silver could be made at pleasure, they would fall to the value of the baser metals, from which they were transmuted ; and if life could be indefinitely prolonged, there would be still greater difficulty in living than there is, when, in ad- dition to the competition of greater numbers, Young England or Young France would have to compete with so many old stagers, whose drafts of the elixir vitte gave to the experience of age the vigour and vivacity of youth.
So extensive an investigation into the " cradle " and earlier stages of science and history has been conceived by Mr. Christmas ; but he has not thoroughly carried it out. He dismisses the history of antiquity in a couple of chapters, in which be tells a few fabulous stories respecting the East and Egypt ; a couple of chapters, in which King Arthur and his Knights occupy a conspicuous place, suffice for the heroic and romantic ages of Great Britain ; and that is all we have of the lay portion of early history. Ecclesiastical romance is about as briefly dismissed, monkish stories forming the staple of the tale. Science is treated more fully and systematically. Astrology, in its origin and as a regular system, following certain established rules, and not a mere empirical practice, is exhibited as amply as is requisite for general purposes. Magic, automata or moving images, oneiromancy or sleep and dreams, including their in- terpretation, mesmerism in all its stages, pneumatology, (which includes ghosts, apparitions, and witchcraft,) talismans and charms, and alchemy, are treated at some length, if not with very great mastery. There are two chapters on fairy mythology ; a subject which belongs to popular super- stition, but has nothing to do with science or history. Mr. Christmas states that the subjects of the work have occupied his mind for many years. .And so they may ; but be does not seem to have pursued the investigation upon any sound principle : at least none is traceable in his work, although he well enunciates his object at starting. He seems to have read with an accidental liking rather than upon a formed plan, and many of the numerous volumes he mentions in his list could have little direct bearing upon his researches. His plan wants the character that original research and spontaneous suggestion naturally create. The more historical parts have that common air of compilation which is called for brevity encyclopsadic; the expositional portions re- semble the numerous gossipy volumes on science that have been frequent of late years under the titles of "Curiosities" and "Philosophies," in which anecdotes, tales, and remarkable cases, have been brought together without much scrutiny of the source whence they came, and with the pur- pose of making a readable book. We think Mr. Christmas was prompted by higher motives than this. We believe he really wished to separate the truth and falsehood in early science and history, and to give an.; ac- count of the early story of both which should be at once philosophi- cal and amusing. He has stopped short of the goal, not from deficiency of will, but of power. He wants acumen to penetrate the depths of his subject, and comprehension to grasp its extent. He is also deficient in directness; he often rather writes round his meaning than expresses it at once. The very useful plan that Mr. Christmas proposed to himself is still to be carried out.
* The Cradle of the Twin Giants, Science and History. By Henry Christmas, MA., • F.S.A., Librarian and Secretary of Zion College. In two volumes. Published by Bentley.
But if The Cradle of the Thin Giants be looked at as a collection formed from a wide extent of curious reading, it is entitled to consider- able praise. The accounts of astrology, magic, and alchemy, are suc- cinct, instructive, and suggestive. Several of the other sections deal in curious and interesting stories, sometimes with a touch of the really terrible. Such is this tale of a miracle of Augustine. It has been con- aidered to prove the payment of tithes by the British Christians ; but it only seems to prove that Augustine wished to establish such proof ; and unless clearly of Augustine's age, it proves nothing but the opinion of the monk by whom it was invented.
I' When Augustine was preaching in Oxfordshire, a village priest addreteed him thus= Father, the lord of this place refuses to pay tithes, and my threats of excommunication only increase his obstinacy.' Augustine then tried his pow- ers of persuasion; but the lord replied= Did not I plough and sow the land ? The tenth part belongs to him who owns the remaining nine.' It was now time for mass, and Augustine, turning to the altar, said= I command every excommuni- cated person to leave the church.' Immediately a pallid corpse arose from be- neath the doorway, stalked across the churchyard, and stood motionless beyond its boundary. The congregation, gazing in horror and affright, called Augustine's attention to the spectre. He did not choose, however, to break off the service. Being concluded, he said—' Be not alarmed: with cross and holy water in hand, we shall know the meaning of this.' He then went forward, and thus accosted the ghastly stranger= I enjoin thee, in the name of God, tell me who thou art?' The ghost replied= In British times, I was lord here; but no warnings of the priest could ever bring me to pay my tithes. At length he excommunicated me, and my disembodied soul was thrust into hell. When the excommunicated were bidden to depart, your attendant angels drove me from my grave.' Augustine's power was now exerted in raising the excommunicating priest from his narrow dwellingplace; and having thus a second spectre before him, he asked= Know you this person?' The unearthly clergyman replied—' Full well, and to my cost.' He was then reminded by Augustine of God's mercy, and of the departed lord's long torture in hell. A scourge was put into his hand. The excommunicated party knelt before him, received absolution, and then quietly returned to the gave. His own return thither soon followed ; although Augustine, desirous of his as- sistance in preaching the gospel, would fain have prayed for a renewed term of life. Of coarse, the tithes were regularly paid in future by the hitherto refractory Saxon."
There is unusual point in this story of a German witch. She made a profit by her witchcraft.
" Heiningus Grosius, in his 'Magic% de Spectris Apparitionibusque,' tells us of a witch who used to get a very good living by her arts; and she is the only in- stance on record of a witch doing so. It was her custom, when she had sold any horses, for that was her trade' to make off and never again to appear in that neigh- bourhood. But at Leipsie, having sold several, and given particular directions to the purchasers not to take the animals to the water for three days, one man was tempted, by the unusual nature of the requisition, to disobey. He mounted the beautiful courser, which he had purchased at a very cheap rate, and set off to the water; no sooner had he driven the horse into the water than it disappeared, and the astonished owner found himself sitting upon a bundle of straw. He imme- diately" returned from the stream, and went to the inn; where he found the witch, who it seems had nothing suspicions in her appearance, sleeping on a sofa. He tried to wake her, but in vain; till, taking her by one leg ho determined to pall her off; but, to his utter astonishment, the leg came off, though the lady declined waking ; and the victimized purchaser, more than ever terrified, sought safety in flight. The witch was traced and at last captured; when she was as usual at that period, condemned to the stake. She was accordingly hanged, and a fire kindled underneath ; bat, to the equal horror and surprise of those about, the cri- minal was no longer visible, only a bundle of straw hanging among the flames. Again and again the witch was caught and hanged, but still escaped burning; till they thought of blessing the gallows and the altar, and then the sentence of the law took he full effect."
The following popular legend of Owen Glendower exhibits the fiery Welshman as a man of more humour than we have been accustomed to look for, from Shakspere's character. "At a period rather later flourished Owen Glendower; and he, according to tra- dition, was really a wizard,—that is, he derived his power from an infernal source. He is said to have made a compact with the Devil, by virtue of which, he having all the benefit of supernatural power on earth, when he died, provided always the fiend did not kill him, his soul was to be forfeited ; and this was to take place whether he was buried in a church or out of a church. This singular agreement was properly signed, sealed, and delivered on both sides. Owen Glendower had sovereignty over all the spirits of the air, and by their aid became both great and famous; but he had not the slightest intention of performing his part of the agree- ment—he directed that after his death he should be buried neither in a church nor out of a church, but under the church-wall; so that the precautions of the Evil One were all in vain, and he was cheated at last." One of the most important points of Mr. Christmas's book is his.fre- quent defence of alchemists, astrologers, and others, from the charge of sheer imposture continually brought against them. Theirs was really an art, although a false one ; and many had faith in it. The practice of astrology must also have given to a man of ability no small knowledge of human character ; which is sometimes delineated in Elizabethan style. We need not go far to recognize an original who might have at for these dispositions, whether Mercury and Saturn had anything to do with his nativity or not. "The explanation of the aspects takes up a large portion of books written on judicial astrology: out of about four hundred aspects we will take two or three to exemplify what is meant. The aspects of Saturn to Mercury will do as the ex ample: the conjunction shows craft and subtlety in the native; an inclination to dive into hidden things, and a love for mysteries: it denotes covetousness and pride with great appearance of gravity. If Saturn be the significator, the native is eloquent, but if Mercury, he has an impediment in his speech ( (5 The trine, sextile, or quintile, marked thus, h h 5tile are all more or less powerful, in making the native conceited, full of whims and contrivances, yet rarely successful in carrying them into effect; studious, subtle, and reserved. This is when Saturn is significator; but when Mercury is in that position, the native is peevish and discontented, ingenious, but wilful and obsti- nate. The opposition, quartile' or semi-quartile of Saturn and Mercury, thus h cs) or h 1, are all exceedingly evil configurations. The native will be cunning, but in a low way; and whichever planet be the signifies- tor, the effect will be the same."
In the following quotation respecting natural magic, the facts may be reckoned absurd; but the theory is as good as many theories afloat.
"There were, as has been already hinted, two branches into which the octet philosophy was divided: one, the investigation of the occult properties of matter; and cam which treats of the nature, influence and characters of spiritual beings, their mode of communion with mortals, and the ways by which their aid might be obtained. The first may generally be denominated natural magic ; not in that confined sense in which the term is now understood, but embracing the fabulous as well as the true—the pursuits of the alchemist as well as those of the juggler. To give a well-known example. When it was stated, without making the ex- periment, that the diamond could only be cut by applying it to the blood of a he-goat, and one person after another repeated the story, the property in the blood by which this effect was produced was called an occult property. Every jeweller knew better; but Roger Bacon was the first who publicly ascertained the false- hood of the assertion, and undeceived the learned. Volume after volume of such occult properties might be culled from Pliny alone, who' in his Natnral History,' has made a choice collection of them. No one who believed the story of the goat's blood, supposed that the strange effect was produced by other than phy- sical causes; the modus operandi might be unknown, but the terminus operandi was always in such cases referred to the action of matter upon matter. Again, when on the authority of Pliny it was asserted that the odour of aniseed pre- vented disagreeable dreams, the physician who adopted the belief in this effect always accounted for it by some soothing operation produced on the sensed= by the small of the plant.
'From such notions, some true and more false, arose an occult medicine, an occult natural history, an occult natural philosophy. The eircumambient air,' says Heliodorus, a great philosopher of his day, 'penetrating our bodies, through our eyes, and mouths, and nostrils, and infinite porous passages, carries with it the same qualities itself is endowed with, and i produces effects n human bodies answerable to those qualities. Now, when peo- ple disposed to envy espy good in others, they taint the air about with noxious vapours, and breathe a sort of poisonous infection upon them they behold; which being of a subtile, spirituous nature, pierces into the very bones and marrow; and from thence envy becomes the cause of that disease which is not improperly called fascination, or bewitching. And consider how usual it is for people to catch blear-eyes and pestilential distempers without touching any person infected, without lying in the same bed, or so much as sitting at the same table with them, but only by drawing in the same air.
" ' We have a notable instance of these spreading infections in the case of love; which is usually engendered by sight, the parties affected darting beams of conta- gion to each other from their eyes; as may easily be conceived, because the sight, being the most quick and fiery of any sense' becomes susceptible, upon that ac- count, of every the least impression, and through its hot quality absorbs the effluvia of love. I might exemplify this, if there were any need, out of our sacred books that treat of animals. There we learn that the sight of a water-fowl called charadrius cures the jaundice; and if a person sick of that distemper chance to look upon hers she shuts her eyes in abhorrence, and flies away immediately,—not, as some think, for envy of the cure she works, but because by seeing the person affected the disease is transfused in her: for that reason she avoids such sights as she would her death's blow. And perhaps you have heard of a serpent called the basilisk, which with its eye only blasts and destroys every creature that comes in its way. Neither ought we to think it strange that some people by this means bewitch their best friends and them to whom they mean no hurt. For, being naturally envious, the effect is more owing to their constitutions than to any spontaneous act.'"
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