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adventurer. But as it was, he felt a positive relief in the alliance; and on the day of the marriage, surrounded by the bold and cheerful Scots, he enjoyed a feeling of security which he thought had been lost for ever.

But the most singular marriage was that of the cool, quiet, sagacious Andrew-with the peasant Marie! The first time he saw her, he was struck in a remarkable manner both with her beauty, and her thoughtful, collected air; and when circumstances, which it is unnecessary to detail, made them better acquainted, he felt justified in the opinion he had then instinctively formed. His first mention of the projected match exposed him to some good-humoured raillery, especially from Nigel, who had determined to follow the fortunes of David "without encumbrance."

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"And then," continued he, after some mock objections had been answered, What is the Venus of the proverb to do without Ceres and Bacchus? Suppose Marie brings you children?

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"Silence, young man!" interrupted the master scholar, with indignation. "Since he loves, let him marry her; and God, and his own industry, to say nothing of David Armstrong, will take care of his family. The children of Marie shall be provided for, if she had as many as Eutyche -and she had thirty!"

Andrew was the only one of the comrades who settled at Nantes; where he rose, assisted by the influence of Douglas, into a station of profit and honour in the service of the Duke. Three years after the date of our story, in the month of September, 1440, a procession, of which Gilles de Retz was the hero, passed his house. This weak-minded and strong-passioned nobleman had at length been taken and condemned to the death which his crimes deserved. To these, the superstition of the age added SORCERY; and he who had been only a dupe, was burned for a wizard! Marie, on that dreadful morning, caused the doors and windows of the house to be shut up; and retiring to the room most distant from the street, she fell upon her knees, and remained there, with pale cheek, and mute yet moving lips, till the procession had passed by, and the sound of the death-hymn died away upon her ear.

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NOTE.

A FRENCH critic is surprised that in so many romances there should be a MAGICIAN, while in not one is there any MAGIC. The reason

is, no doubt, that the authors capable of opening the mystic book have been withheld by those associations which connect the superstitions of infant science with the miraculous stories of our boyhood. The other subjects of vulgar credulity were believed to be less dangerous ground. The dread of spectres, for instance, even in this educated age, is not confined to the professedly ignorant, but exists, in a greater or less degree, in all classes of society; and therefore no cruple was made, either to withdraw boldly the curtain which separates the two worlds, or, after working upon the imagination through its instinctive and involuntary fears, to explain frankly the illusions that had governed it.

But, when referring incidently to the operations of ENCHANTMENT, or the popular belief in them, our romancers cautiously abstained from entering into details. The Magician was either a miserable juggler, whose tricks were unworthy of serious explanation, or a grand and shadowy personage, whose sublime pursuits would have become ridiculous if too closely examined. They did not introduce the Circle, nor afford him more than a peep of the smoke of the Cauldron; and when interrogated, with indiscreet curiosity,—

"What is't ye do ?"

they replied, with the Witches of Shakspeare,

"A deed without a name!"

It seems to me, however, that the influence exercised, in the middle ages, upon the human mind by a belief in Magic-to say nothing of its earlier history—would warrant something more. I have even thought, that in describing the manners of the French nation in the fifteenth century, it was necessary to afford a large and important space to the superstition which delivered up the immortal Virgin of Dom-Remi to the flames. I considered that a delusion operating so deeply upon the destinies of man, even when treated in its most grotesque details, could not be looked upon as contemptible. In the history of the too famous Gilles de Retz, I found unoccupied ground, and all the materials I could desire for my conjurations; and, in the shadowy portrait it was my business to draw of the personage who really governed the fate of that remarkable criminal, I thought I should not offend probability by mingling with his own individuality the historical features of his class.

What these features were may be discovered with very little research.

It is needless to repeat the arguments which have been so fre

quently used to prove that Magic, in early times, was nothing more than a knowledge of the natural sciences. Moses was a still better magician than the priests of Pharaoh. Even without the divine assistance he could have beat them at their own arts; or, in the poetical phraseology of his history, the rod of Aaron would have swallowed up theirs. This, however, would have gained him nothing but the crown of martyrdom; for the king himself was of the adverse sect, and was by no means dismayed at the occasional success of the strangers. It was the God of Israel who assisted the "enchantments" of the Hebrew sage by miracles, and thus drew forth the chosen people out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage.

In those days, and long before and after, the sciences were hidden in the temples, and that god was the greatest whose priests were the most learned. The whole progress of the Israelites is a religious struggle; and the first and greatest commandment given to this fickle and ignorant people is, "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me." Their frequent disobedience, notwithstanding the magnitude of the miracles of God, as compared with the juggleries of the pagan priests, can only be explained by supposing, what was no doubt the case, that the latter were expressly and skilfully adapted for the purposes of delusion and imposition. Moses himself was too well acquainted with the men he had to deal with to disdain the use of artifice. The column of flame, for instance, seen by night, and of smoke by day, arose, in all probability, from the sacred fire carried before the ark; and it could not have been intended to serve as a pilot through the wilderness, since Hobab was entertained expressly for this purpose"to be to them instead of eyes."

The knowledge of the priesthood was carefully retained within their own body. In general, it was guaranteed by tremendous oaths; and their secrets were written in unknown tongues, in ciphers inexplicable without a key, in languages composed of emblems. Their books were kept in the innermost recesses of the temple, and hedged round from curiosity by mysterious denunciations.

Men thus set apart from their fellows imbibed a peculiar character. They were themselves the god: for it is not to be supposed that they believed in an idol in whose service they were every day employing the truths of science for the purposes of deception. Elevated far above the ignorant crowd by whom they were surrounded, their chief characteristic was a disregard of human life and human feelings. They trampled upon the ties by which they were not bound themselves. They poured blood upon their altars like water. Human sacrifices are common to almost all the early religions; and Abraham himself was neither surprised not horrified at the command to slay his only son for a burnt-offering.

At the gradual intermingling of the East with the West, of the unstable with the stable form of civilization, magic necessarily declined in importance. The massacre of the magi, after the fall of Smerdis, scattered abroad the secrets of the temple. The integrity of the pontifical order in Egypt was broken up by the consequences

of the Roman conquest. Christianity, while as yet undebased by the juggles of the clergy, had no mysteries but moral ones, and all men were invited to enter within its pale without money and without price.

The mystic union of the magi, however, still lived for a while in the various secret societies of Europe; and the wandering priest of Egypt, who had fled from his impoverished country with no other riches than his manuscript of occult science, became the ancestor of the modern sorcerer and his magic book.

The portrait I have desired to draw of a magician, in the foregoing work, comprehends, as I have said, the general historical features of the class, although the individual is a real personage. His magical tricks I have rendered few and unimportant; because the very best I could describe might be performed as well by any natural philosopher of the present day. His moral power, however-and in this I have exaggerated nothing-could only have been acquired and preserved by the union I have assumed to exist, of the highest qualities of intellect with the utmost depravity of mind.

The odours made use of in the magician's study were well known to the miracle-workers. Jamblichus informs us that certain perfumes rendered the mind more fit to receive the inspiration of the Deity; and Proclus describes a composition of this kind, made up of the amalgamation of various different odours, which was used by the institutors of the ancient priesthood. The property of the fumes of henbane, as disposing to strife and anger, it may be mentioned by way of illustration, is well known to modern medicine. A husband and wife, as is recorded in a French work of science, supposed themselves to be under the influence of witchcraft; because, although agreeing perfectly well on other occasions, they never could remain long at work together without a violent quarrel. On a packet of the troublesome grains being removed from the stove where it lay, peace was instantaneously restored in the family.

Of all the magical agents, fire is the most common. A box of phosphorus-or, still better, of lucifer-matches, now in the hands of every old woman, would have terrified half the ancient world. Zoroaster, according to Hermippus (in Arnobius), possessed a fiery girdle as well as Orosmandel; but this, with the aid of any of the pyrophoric substances, might be manufactured in the next street. If Horace had lived in our day, he would not have refused to believe in the miracle operated in the sanctuary of Gnatia, when the incense kindled of its own accord.

Spontaneous combustion sometimes produces as disastrous effects as if it had been the work of sorcery. Some years ago a man was tried in London for setting fire to a floor-cloth manufactory; which, there was as good reason to believe, had set fire to itself, by the casual -meeting of different chemical substances. The jury, however, if the thing had occurred to them at all, would have been ashamed to be thought more credulous of impossibilities than a heathen poet; and the poor wretch (who was hanged), it is hardly uncharitable to believe, fell a victim to the ignorance of the nineteenth century, and

the stupid brutality still remaining in the criminal laws of England. The flame that does not burn, and the artificial earthquake, are well known to the readers of different little treatises on chemical recreations.

The time of the story, it will be remembered, was the epoch when the glorious Virgin of Dom-Remi was burned for sorcery; but the peculiar character of the prevailing superstition is shown so clearly in a contemporary oration of a doctor of the Sorbonne, that I may be excused for adverting to it here.

"Superstition was so universal in France at this time, that in the oration pronounced before the Dauphin and the Court in justification of the Duke of Burgundy, by Master John Petit, professor of theology in the University of Paris, one of the principal charges made against the Duke of Orleans was, for having conspired against the life of the king by sorcery, charms, and witchcraft.

"His agents, according to the learned professor, took up their abode in the lonely tower of Mont Zay, near Laigny-sur-Marne, and their principal, an apostate monk, performed there numerous invocations to the Devil. At length, on a Sunday, one grand invocation was made on a mountain near the tower, and the priest of darkness, stripping himself naked to the shirt, kneeled down. He stuck the points of a sword and dagger belonging to the Duke of Orleans in the ground, and near them laid the Duke's ring. Whereupon, two demons appeared to him, in human shape, and clothed in a brownish green, one of whom was called Hermius, and the other Estramain; and the monk paid them the same honour and worship which is due to our Lord.

"The demons, then seizing the weapons and the ring, vanished; but the monk soon after found the sword and dagger lying flat upon the ground, the point of the former being broken off and laid in the midst of some powder. In half an hour, the second demon reappeared with the ring, which was now of a red colour, and presenting it to the monk said to him, 'Thou wilt put it into the mouth of a dead man, in the manner thou knowest,' and then vanished. The whole oration, which is highly curious throughout, is embodied by Montstrelet in his Chroniques."*

The impositions of Orosmandel, if more refined, would have been less true, both to the manners of the epoch, and in fact; for, after the above extract, even the least informed reader will not be surprised to hear, that there is ample foundation for the wildest pages

in the book.

The following is an account of Gilles de Retz, taken from a memoir of an excursion I made some years ago, among the localities of the story. It appeared in a publication which is now only to be found in the cabinets of the lovers of the arts; and which was discontinued, because the taste of the "general public," was not sufficiently refined to appreciate justly the drawings of Turner.

"The bay of La Verrière, beyond the Cens, exhibits, in its tracts

* "Romance of French History." By the Author of the "Magician." 2 B

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