Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 by Various
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Various >> Chambers\'s Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852
The events detailed in the preceding narrative are fitted to suggest
various interesting reflections and amusing speculations. The fate
of the Palaeologi--one day on a throne, the next in a dungeon,
passing from regal state to wretched exile--may have been the bitter
lot of other imperial families. If we find the descendants of the
Greek emperors in the humble occupation of sailors and
churchwardens, and vestrymen and road-trustees, there is nothing
extravagant in the supposition, that we may have royal porters and
scavengers on our streets, the sceptre having degenerated into the
besom, and the truck taken the place of the chariot of state. The
family of Nimrod may still exist, and retain their ancestral
propensities in the craft of sportsmen and deer-stalkers, or in the
lower grade of Jehus and jockeys. Who knows but the posterity of
Solomon may be retailing old clothes, and the heirs of the
Nebuchadnezzar dynasty still exist somewhere--perhaps among our
graziers or cattle-dealers, our keepers of dairies or secretaries of
agricultural associations. The line of Tamerlane may have ended in a
grave-digger, and that of Frederick Barbarossa in a hair-dresser.
The ideal transmigration of Pythagoras was not more improbable or
more wonderful than the strange metamorphoses through which, in the
course of centuries, the living representatives of kings and
emperors are sometimes doomed to pass.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: There is a slight error in the date of the inscription,
as the entry of his burial is October 20th 1636.]
[Footnote 2: Only two sons of Thomas are mentioned by Gibbon--Andrew
and Manuel; but the evidence of the Landulph tablet shews that he
must have had a third, John.]
[Footnote 3: Her name is entered in the register as 'Dorothea
Paleologus de Stirpe Imperatorious.']
[Footnote 4: _British Empire in America_, vol. ii. p. 111.]
A CHAPTER ON CATS.
The newspapers have recently been chronicling, as a fact provocative
of especial wonder, the enterprise of some speculative merchant of
New York, who has just been despatching a cargo of one hundred cats
to the republic of New Granada, in which it would appear the race,
owing, as we may believe, to the frequently disturbed state of the
country, has become almost extinct.
Your cat is a domestic animal, and naturally conservative in its
tastes--averse therefore to uproar, and to all those given to
change. Its propensities are to meditation and contemplative
tranquillity, for which reason it has ever been held in reverence by
nations of a similar staid and composed disposition, and has been
the favourite companion and constant friend of grave philosophers
and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in
the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their 'lives
and safeties' were tendered more dearly than those of any other
animal, whether biped or quadruped. 'He who has voluntarily killed a
consecrated animal,' says this writer, 'is punished with death; but
if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is
impossible for him to escape death: the mob drags him to it,
treating him with every cruelty, and sometimes without waiting for
judgment to be passed. This treatment inspires such terror, that, if
any person happen to find one of these animals dead, he goes to a
distance from it, and by his cries and groans indicates that he has
found the animal dead. This superstition is so deeply rooted in the
minds of the Egyptians, and the respect they bear these animals is
so profound, that at the time when their king, Ptolemy, was not yet
declared the friend of the Roman people--when they were paying all
possible court to travellers from Italy, and their fears made them
avoid every ground of accusation and every pretext for making war
upon them--yet a Roman having killed a cat, the people rushed to his
house, and neither the entreaties of the grandees, whom the king
sent for the purpose, nor the terror of the Roman name, could
protect this man from punishment, although the act was involuntary.
I do not relate this anecdote,' adds the historian, 'on the
authority of another, for I was an eye-witness of it during my stay
in Egypt.'[5]
During their lives, the consecrated cats were fed upon fish, kept
for the purpose in tanks; and 'when one of them happened to die,'
says the veracious writer just cited, 'it was wrapped in linen, and
after the bystanders had beaten themselves on the breast, it was
carried to the Tarichoea, where it was embalmed with coedria and
other substances which have the virtue of embalming bodies, after
which it was interred in the sacred monument.' It has puzzled not a
little the learned archaeologists, who have endeavoured to discover a
profound philosophy figured and symbolised in the singular mythology
of the Egyptians, to explain how it is that in Thebes, where the
sacred character of the cat was held in the highest reverence, and
cherished with the greatest devotion, not only embalmed cats have
been found, but also the bodies of rats and mice, which had been
subjected to the same anti-putrescent process. If, however,
Herodotus is to be credited, the Egyptians owed a deep debt of
gratitude to the mice; for the venerable historian assures us, and
on the unquestionable authority of the Egyptian priests, that when
Sennacherib and his army lay at Pelusium, a mighty corps of
field-mice entered the camp by night, and eating up the quivers,
bowstrings, and buckler-leathers of the Assyrian troops, in this
summary fashion liberated Egypt from the terror of the threatened
invasion. Probably the existence of mice-mummies may be accounted
for in this way, and if--resorting to no violent supposition--we
presume in the good work which the tiny patriots so sagaciously
accomplished that their cousins-german the rats were assistant, the
whole matter receives a satisfactory explication. The hypothesis, it
is submitted, is not without plausible recommendations on its
behalf. There is extant a fragment of a comedy, entitled 'The
Cities,' written by the Rhodian poet Anaxandrides, in which the
Egyptian worship of animals is amusingly enough quizzed. A
translation will be found in Dr Prichard's _Analysis of Egyptian
Mythology_. The lines referring to cat-worship are as follow:--
'You cry and wail whene'er ye spy a cat,
Starving or sick; I count it not a sin
To hang it up, and flay it for its skin;'
from which it appears this gay free-thinker was not only somewhat
sceptical in his religious notions, but, moreover, a hard-hearted,
good-for-nothing fellow--one who, had he lived in our times, would
unquestionably have brought himself within the sweep of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Duke of Beaufort's
Humanity Act.
We learn from Herodotus that in his days it was customary, whenever
a cat died, for the whole household at once to go into mourning, and
this although the lamented decease might have been the result of old
age, or other causes purely natural. In the case of a cat's death,
however, the eyebrows only were required to be shaved off; but when
a dog, a beast of more distinguished reputation, departed this life,
every inmate of the house was expected to shave his head and whole
body all over. Both cats and dogs are watched and attended to with
the greatest solicitude during illness. Indeed, by the ancient
Egyptians the cat was treated much in the same way as are dogs
amongst us: we find them even accompanying their masters on their
aquatic shooting-excursions; and, if the testimony of ancient
monuments is to be relied on, often catching the game for them,
although it may be permitted to doubt whether they ever actually
took to the water for this purpose.
In modern Egypt the cat, although more docile and companionable than
its European sister, has much degenerated; but still, on account of
its usefulness in destroying scorpions and other reptiles, it is
treated with some consideration--suffered to eat out of the same
dish with the children, to join with them in their sports, and to be
their constant companion and daily friend. A modern Egyptian would
esteem it a heinous sin indeed, to destroy, or even maltreat a cat;
and we are told by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, that benevolent
individuals have bequeathed funds by which a certain number of these
animals are daily fed at Cairo at the Cadi's court, and the bazaar
of Khan Khaleel.
But a tender regard for the inferior animals is a prevailing
characteristic of the Oriental races, and is inculcated as a duty by
their various religions. At Fez there was, and perhaps is at this
day, a wealthily-endowed hospital, the greater part of the funds of
which was devoted to the support and medical treatment of invalid
cranes and storks, and procuring them a decent sepulture whenever
they chanced to die. The founders are said to have entertained the
poetical notion that these birds are, in truth, human beings,
natives of distant islands, who at certain periods assume a foreign
shape, and after they have satisfied their curiosity with visiting
other lands, return to their own, and resume their original form.
To return, however, not to our sheep, but our cats, we must remark
that, in modern times, in spite of the kindness the cat habitually
receives in Egypt, his _morale_ is not in that country rated very
high--the universal impression being that, although, like Snug the
joiner's lion, he is by nature 'a very gentle beast,' still he is by
no means 'of a good conscience;' that he is, in short, a most
ungrateful beast; and that when, in a future state, it is asked of
him how he has been treated by man in this, he will obstinately deny
all the benefits he has received at his hand, and give him such a
character for cruelty and hardness of heart as is shocking to think
of. The dog, however, it is understood, will conduct himself more
discreetly, and readily acknowledge the good offices for which he is
indebted to the family of mankind.
Singular anecdotes have been related of the intense repugnance
persons have been found to entertain to these, at worst, harmless
animals. One shall be given in the very words of the Rev. Nicholas
Wanley, who, in his authentic _Wonders of the Little World_, has
recorded a number of other facts quite as marvellous, and sustained
by testimony not one whit more exceptionable:--'Mathiolus tells of a
German, who coming in winter-time into an inn to sup with him and
some other of his friends, the woman of the house being acquainted
with his temper (lest he should depart at the sight of a young cat
which she kept to breed up), had beforehand hid her kitling in a
chest in the same room where we sat at supper. But though he had
neither seen nor heard it, yet after some time that he had sucked in
the air infected by the cat's breath, that quality of his
temperament that had antipathy to that creature being provoked, he
sweat, and, of a sudden, paleness came over his face, and, to the
wonder of us all that were present, he cried out that in some corner
of the room there was a cat that lay hid.' Not long after the battle
of Wagram and the second occupation of Vienna by the French, an
aide-de-camp of Napoleon, who at the time occupied, together with
his suite, the Palace of Schoenbrunn, was proceeding to bed at an
unusually late hour, when, on passing the door of Napoleon's
bedroom, he was surprised by a most singular noise, and repeated
calls from the Emperor for assistance. Opening the door hastily, and
rushing into the room, a singular spectacle presented itself--the
great soldier of the age, half undressed, his countenance agitated,
the beaded drops of perspiration standing on his brow, in his hand
his victorious sword, with which he was making frequent and
convulsive lunges at some invisible enemy through the tapestry that
lined the walls. It was a cat that had secreted herself in this
place; and Napoleon held cats not so much in abhorrence as in
terror. 'A feather,' says the poet, 'daunts the brave;' and a
greater poet, through the mouth of his Shylock, remarks that 'there
are some that are mad if they behold a cat--a harmless, necessary
cat.' Count Bertram would seem to have shared in this unaccountable
aversion. When 'Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist, that had
the whole theory of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice
in the chape of his dagger,' was convicted of mendacity and
cowardice, Bertram exclaimed, 'I could endure anything before this
but a cat, and now he's a cat to me.' The force of censure could no
further go.
If Napoleon, however, held cats, as has been averred, in positive
fear, there have been others, and some of them illustrious captains,
that have regarded them with other feelings. Marshal Turenne could
amuse himself for hours in playing with his kittens; and the great
general, Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of
Gibraltar, at the time of the famous siege, attended by his
favourite cats. Cardinal Richelieu was also fond of cats; and when
we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr Johnson, of Thomas
Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and
meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who
have bestowed on the feline race some portion of their affections.
Butler, in his _Hudibras_, observes, in an oft-quoted passage, that
'Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass.'
And the annotator on this passage, in explanation, adds, that
'Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for
losing his time in playing with her;' but, under favour, this is a
misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiment, and something like a
libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words
are: 'When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her
more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our
play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers.'
Nobody who has read the striking essay in which these words appear
could for a moment misconceive their author's meaning. He is
vindicating natural theology from the objections of some of its
opponents, and in the course of his argument he takes occasion to
dwell on the wonderful instincts, and almost rational sagacity of
the inferior animals. We must, however, lament that, although he
does full justice to the 'half-reasoning elephant,' to the aptitude
and fidelity of the dog, to the marvellous economical arrangements
of the bees, and even to the imitative capacity of the magpie, he
pays no higher tribute to the merits of the cat than that she is as
capable of being amused as himself, and like himself, too, has her
periods of gravity when recreative sports are distasteful. Her
social qualities he does not allude to, though he, so eminently
social himself, could scarcely have failed to appreciate them.
In this country, at this time, cats have superseded parlour
favourites decidedly less agreeable in their appearance, and
infinitely more mischievous in their habits. Writing in the
seventeenth century, Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, remarks
that 'Turkey gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed
up according to the custom of the place, have little else, beside
their household business or to play with their children, to drive
away time but to dally with their cats, which they have _in
delitiis_, as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and
little dogs.' It is not the least merit of the cat that it has
banished from our sitting-rooms those frightful mimicries of
humanity--the monkey tribe; and as to the little dogs Tray, Blanch,
and Sweetheart, although we are not insensible to their many virtues
and utilities, we care not to see them sleeping on our hearth-rug,
or reposing beside our work-tables.
* * * * *
[Footnote 5: In the matter of fanaticism, the modern Egyptians, or
rather the inhabitants of Alexandria, seem hardly to have
degenerated from their ethnic 'forbears,' as we read in Mr J.A. St
John's travels the account of a serious insurrection which broke out
some years ago in that city, in consequence of certain Jews having
taken up the butcher's trade, and having slain the meat with a knife
having _three_ instead of _five nails_ in the handle!]
BEGGARS IN THE FAR EAST.
Bengal is blessed with a mild climate and a fertile soil. Provisions
are consequently cheap; and as neither substantial houses nor
expensive clothing is there essential to comfort, we might naturally
expect to see less of misery and destitution than in this country.
Such, however, is not the case. Our severe winter engenders habits
of industry and forethought, which are unknown in India. The ease
with which in most cases their few wants are supplied, renders the
inhabitants of that country in the highest degree improvident; and
nowhere do we see a greater number of beggars, and misery and
destitution paraded through the streets in more revolting forms.
There are no poor-laws in any part of India. Relief, however, is not
withheld, nor indeed sparingly bestowed. Many can afford to give a
little; and where nothing is exacted, many give willingly. Little
charity is bestowed by Europeans in the streets, as they generally
ride in palanquins or carriages, and as, besides, they feel the
weight even of a purse too much on a hot day. However, let it not be
supposed that they, like Dives, wallow in wealth, and close their
ears to the importunities of the heathen. The Baboo or Sircar gives
weekly or monthly pensions to some patronised beggars; and on a
Saturday in some large towns, the blind, lame, and halt come to the
gates of the grandees, and receive from the trusty _durwan_ or
doorkeeper a handful of cowries and coarse rice, of which one, two,
or three rupees' worth are mixed up, according to the circumstances
of the master. But it is not to ordinary beggars I now propose to
draw the attention of the reader--the infirm or the lazy, with whom
we are all tolerably familiar. But in India there is another class
of beggars--_religious_ and _professional_ beggars--who are proud of
their calling. I do not mean that there are no religious mendicants
to be found at home; but although the object to be attained in both
countries may be similar, the agents employed in the East are so
different, that a description of them will to many European readers
have all the gloss of novelty.
The two principal sects in Bengal are known as _Soneeassees_ and
_Byragees_. The former _exclusively_ worship Mahado. 'They are not
to inhabit houses or temples,' say their scriptures; 'but to live in
woods and forests, under the wide expanse of heaven, _there_ to
meditate upon the greatness of the Creator, and contemplate his
beautiful works.' An infant who is to become a Soneeassee has from
his birth the badge of Sheva upon him: no razor ever touches his
hair, and his locks are matted and dishevelled, when other
children's are neatly combed and anointed. When he approaches
manhood, he takes the vow of celibacy, he receives from the hand of
the Brahmin the _muntra_ or mystical creed, the dried skin of an
antelope, and a piece of coarse, unbleached cotton, stained yellow
with ochre, which he can use as a plaid, it being seven feet long;
upon the skin he is supposed to sit and sleep, and the cloth
overshadows the shoulders of the young enthusiast. Even after these
are worn out, as it is supposed that the devotee is pretty well
broken in to the hardships of his situation, they on no account may
be renewed. These Soneeassees seldom adhere to the letter of their
religion in the present day, although it is said that in times gone
by some of their class have sat absorbed and abstracted until their
spirit held communion with the great god--their bodies wasting away
from neglect, and their nails growing like claws. In the present
day, prayer and meditation are given to the winds, and they may be
seen fat and sleek, perambulating the streets of the towns and
villages, smeared over with ashes and ochre, and great coils of
matted hair, which some tastefully wind like a turban round their
head. They take care also to display, in glaring red and white
paint, upon their foreheads and arms, the various insignia or marks
of Sheva, such as the trident. Occasionally one also flourishes
about a _steel_ trident, which the figure of Mahado always wields in
his hand, and which is also placed on the summit of his temple. The
Soneeassees are the most impudent and importunate of beggars. There
came under my notice a band of three, who used regularly to visit
the town twice a week. These men had made a vow to collect a certain
number of rupees to build a temple, and for this purpose infested
the doors of the wealthiest of the Hindoo community, and followed
and persecuted them even in their drives with continued cries. It is
astonishing how soon superstition enabled them to fulfil their vow,
and how the extortioners were allowed to escape the punishment their
impudence deserved.
The Byragees are not so intrusive a sect. They frequently live in
the open air, though not prohibited from seeking other shelter.
Their heads are differently treated from those of the Soneeassees,
for both men and women have the crown shaved quite smooth. Both
sexes wear a piece of cloth checked like shepherd's plaid. They have
great strings of wooden beads, or _malahs_, turned out of the stalks
of the holy toolsie, round their necks; and they generally collect
their rice and cowries in a dried gourd-shell. Persons of this sect
at their death are placed in an upright position in a deep grave,
and so consumed with fire. In former times, the widows used to burn
themselves with their lords. The Byragees, when they attain years of
discretion, may choose their wives from any caste they please. Some
of the Byragins, therefore, are said to be far cleverer than the
everyday Hindoo women, having been selected from a class which are
looked down upon by the others, but who are taught high
accomplishments, and are devoted to the temples of the gods. In his
begging excursions the Byragee carries a pair of cymbals or a small
gong; and singing the songs of Krishna, and his courtships among the
milkmaids, he delights the hearts of his Hindoo hearers, and makes
them lavish of their gifts.
The English reader perhaps has never heard of a beggar such as I
shall now depict. One may happen to be in a reflective mood, and
aroused from his meditations by what he supposes to be a cow lowing
close to his ear. He starts up and goes to the window, but instead
of that quadruped he finds a man standing with a rope round his
neck, and a woful countenance, holding out his palms, indicating
that he wants charity. This man has had the misfortune to lose his
cow; and as it died tethered, his religion imposes on him the
penalty of begging from door to door without speaking, but imitating
the cow, till he has realised enough to purchase one of these sacred
animals, and to give something besides in charity to the Brahmins.
This provision was perhaps made by the religion of the country in
favour of the cow, to preserve so useful an animal from
ill-treatment; and it is astonishing to see how implicitly the
Hindoo submits himself to a mere convention, which he might easily
evade.
A LATE PRISON REPORT.
In the Sixteenth Report on the state of the Prisons, by Mr Frederic
Hill, lately laid before parliament, will be found some passages
worthy of general attention. While speaking favourably of the system
of discipline now ordinarily pursued towards prisoners, Mr Hill is
obliged to admit that certain prisons are rendered much too
attractive; in fact, that they create crime. It is important that
this condition of affairs should be known. Good food and medical
attendance are, it seems, the attractions. The following are Mr
Hill's words, with the quotations he makes from the statements of
prison officials:--
'Several of the prisons continue to be attractive, to certain
classes of persons, instead of repulsive; owing, apparently in some
instances, to the better dietary of the prison as compared with that
of the workhouse; in others, to the good medical treatment generally
provided in prisons; and in others, to a practice of giving
prisoners clothing on their liberation, a practice which, did the
law permit, might be replaced by a rule enabling prisoners to earn
clothing by extra labour.
'The governor of the borough prison at Cambridge stated that many
persons were reckless about committing offences, because they
preferred being sent to the prison to going to the workhouse, owing
chiefly (according to their statements) to their getting better food
at the prison.
'The chaplain of the prison at Spilsby stated as follows:--"I am
sorry to observe that the present system of discipline here does not
deter people from the commission of crime. Several have said that
they would rather come here than go to the Union workhouse." ...