the same force that antipathy turns us from them. As to the reasonableness of the one or the other, that is out of the question, they being quite beyond the influence of the will or the understanding. I shall, however, give sympathy the precedence in my desultory remarks, because it is the most common, and I believe, with all its faults, the most natural to mankind: Material or physical sympathies may be classed under various heads -general and particular, direct and indirect. Among the former are the relative movements of all the parts of the earth, keeping the whole in harmony, and those which act upon human beings in the mass, and are common to all. The latter include the connexion between the sun, the earth, and other planets; persons attached to each other by some violent passion, such as love, et cetera, et cetera. I am not about to inflict on my readers an astronomical or metaphysical treatise, and shall content myself, on the subject of general sympathies, with citing the most extraordinary instance of them that has ever come to my knowledge, either by reading or experience. "The sweating sickness," a remarkable pestilent distemper, which broke out in England in the year 1551, was attended, as we are told, with some symptoms and circumstances, the belief in which requires such a fund of credibility or gullibility, that I beg to quote my authority, and regret that I cannot at this moment confront him with any of the historians but Hume, who is silent on the subject." "What was more particular was, that no foreigners, though conversant in the most infected places, were seized with it; and also that the English in foreign countries were seized with it at the same time that their native country was infected at home." Without commenting on the tautology or the pleonasms of this sentence, I leave to my readers to form their judgment of the veracity of that prince of lexicography, N. Bailey Poλoyos, who thus speaks in his Dictionary, third edition, with additions, 1787. "It is not necessary. nor convenient to dwell on the nature of direct sympathies, passing from one body to another without any intermediate conductor; but of those which may be called indirect, or distant, I am furnished, in the sublime study of animal magnetism, with a valuable instance, gravely cited by a certain Monsieur Tardy de Montravel, in a letter to M. de Puysegur, the celebrated operator in this art. I shall translate the passage. 'About three months ago (the letter bears date Dec. 11th 1785) Mademoiselle M * *** being in a state of somnambulism, I asked her if she could imagine any method for putting herself in sympathy with a sick person at a considerable distance from her, and whom she had never seen. 'I see nothing for it,' said she, but to make the sick person wear, for eight or ten days, a piece of thick glass, about two inches square, on the pit of his or her stomach; then to send it to me, that I may wear it the same length of time, on the same place. I think that will do the business.' Two months afterwards the Duchess of, living twenty-five leagues from the residence of Mademoiselle M****, having heard of the cures which I performed by means of magnetism, asked me some information respecting this science. Having given her some general details on the subject, which I considered useful in all cases, I desired her to place on her stomach such a bit of glass as was indicated by Mademoiselle M ****, and to send it to me in the proper time. On the 8th of last month Madame la Duchesse placed, as was prescribed, a bit of looking-glass, wrapped in linen, with the quicksilver well scraped off. She wore it night and day until the 19th, when I having received it from her, sent it immediately to my patient Mademoiselle M* * * *, who wore it on the pit of her stomach from the 21st until the 29th. She, being in a state of somnambulism on the 30th, detailed to me every particular of the illness of the Duchess, whom she saw almost as perfectly as if she was touching her.'" The letter does not, unfortunately, state the result of this sympathetic communication upon the Duchess; but tells us that poor Mademoiselle M * * * *, in addition to her other symptoms, became, from the moment she put the fatal piece of glass on her stomach, subject to the very same species of sufferings in her nerves and joints that had before afflicted her Grace, -which proves what I stated in the beginning of this paper on the dangers of sympathy, particularly to the sex which is the most fair and most susceptible. But I will not press into the service any more of the manifold aids of animal magnetism. I may on some future occasion return to that particular branch of my subject more in detail; and I will therefore for the present avoid all farther consideration of the embarrassing topic of physical sympathies. There is no knowing where it might lead one; and it would be unwise to go voluntarily into a labyrinth for which, at the best, there is no clew. I therefore turn to those moral wonders, continually exhibiting their self-acted miracles in almost every individual of our species. And here I should have been as much confounded as before, had I been thrown, in the enquiry, entirely upon my own resources; but, luckily for me, I have just stumbled over a book "learned in those mysteries," and attributed to a nobleman whose judgment and acumen have enabled him to write on the subject in a somewhat different style, but in a manner quite as successful as that of Locke himself. Following a train of reasoning, meant to prove that "the imagination of one man has a direct atmospheric influence upon the imagination of another," the author proceeds in the thread (rather tangled to be sure) of his argument, and exclaims: "An unfortunate person is he who hath come into contact with more persons antipathetic to him than sympathetic, and whose imaginations have worked in a malignant mood towards him. We say we like or dislike such a person, for they have such or such qualities: that is, the love or hatred is in proportion to the harmony which subsists between the parties; and the harmony depends on the degree of sympathy or antipathy they possess for each other, founded entirely upon their respective configurations, their nervous systems, and their inclinations, acting on each other through the medium of the imagination: so that our love or hate is as much out of our power, and as little voluntary, as our catching any other infection. Some men are of such a texture that they are accessible more to the one affection than to the other; but every moral affection may be traced to a physical and necessary cause.”—Life and Opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers, vol. i. pp. 194, 195. Now, without combatting this last assertion, or pretending to understand what precedes it, I will venture to express a wish that Sir Richard had made an effort at explaining the physical cause which governs our arbitrary likings and dislikes, instead of contenting himself with the assertion that such exists. For my part, I confess that the metaphysics of Maltravers leave me as much in doubt and dark ness as ever; but I am naturally glad to fly from the perplexities of sympathy, to bewilder myself awhile in the undefined and undefinable difficulties of its opposite. Were antipathies entirely confined to human nature, it might be more ashamed of itself than it has reason to be, considering the actual state of the case. For, sharing as it does its uncontrollable aversions in common with all things animal and vegetable, as well as with the meaner productions of nature, it may console itself in the certainty that these repugnances are quite inseparable from moral as well as material existence, in its most sublime as well as its lowest gradations. Pliny, at the head of the naturalists, points out the animosity existing between stones, even as well as minerals and metals. The diamond, he remarks, is in dissension with the loadstone; while a particular stone of Ethiopia, which he specifies, repulses iron with as much force as the magnet attracts it. Among minerals and metals, gold and mercury unite together with an ardour equal to human friendships; while others oppose and fly off from their associates in the crucible, with as much sputtering and asperity as might be found among the whist-players of the most romantic and unsophisticated village in England. It is the same with plants. The vine has its peculiar attachments and enmities. It can live on excellent terms with the elm, and twines round the appletree with the most insinuating fondness; but the vicinage of a cabbage is mortal to its comfort, and sometimes even to its existence. It is unnecessary to swell the list of vegetable animosities; but let us look for a moment at animal dislikes. We can all understand the feelings that impel the sheep to shun the wolf, or the dove to fly from the kite. It is as needless to ask why, as to demand a reason for the rich man's shrinking from a doctor, or one in health from an attorney. But how are we to account for the terrible lion trembling at the crowing of a cock-the ponderous elephant waddling off at the sight of the ram-or the valiant war-horse shuddering at the odour of the camel? These are the extraordinary facts that force us into the mysteries of occult research, and the study of natural sympathies and dislikes. There can be no doubt that the secret in these instances, where the antipathy is possessed by the whole of one genus against the whole of another, consists in some mystery of organic construction, that we may indulge a hope of seeing one day discovered by Doctor Gall, for the elucidation and developement of his theories of amativeness and combativeness, and the confusion of the sceptics all over the world. To conquer these antipathies is rather the business of custom than reason, another proof of our imperfection, stamping us too plainly "things of habit, and the sport of circumstance." We should, nevertheless, labour to overcome them, and throw ourselves in the way of the best remedies we can find, meeting as often as possible the persons we dislike on the most unreasonable grounds-as manner and appearance, the cut of their coats, or the colour of their eyes. We should read, too, not exactly treatises or sermons, to prove the absurdity, of which we are all sensible, but powerful delineations in poetry or prose of the dangers attending our malady, as well as overdone exhibitions of its effects for ridicule and caricature are weapons as effective against prejudice, as is wisdom. Who that has read Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" has not shuddered at the possible excess to which he himself might be led by a wanton or irresistible enmity? Or who, on the other hand, has not started back in surprise and indignation to find that the hatreds of men seem to justify a malignant writer like Helvetius in uttering such a sentiment as this: "Men love their grandchildren, because they see in them the enemies of the grandchildren of their enemy." Such writers as the two last cited serve, in their most opposite objects and styles, to help us towards the cure of unprovoked personal antipathies, respecting which alone it is worth while to take any trouble-and with them, after all, not half so necessary as with ill-regulated sympathies. Once again, then, I beg to warn my fair readers, who have gone with me thus far, against every yearning they may feel towards such general objects of sympathy with their sex as red coats, ogling eyes, pieces of poetry, Waterloo ribbons, fine speeches, and mustachios. We have all our weaknesses; and who may tell how many of the ten thousand lovely girls, ascertained by nice calculation to read monthly every line of this work, are at the moment of cutting open this identical page, on the point of yielding to some one of those treacherous sympathies just now enumerated? Who knows that this warning against these perilous sappers and miners may not make her repulse their next approach, "Like the plant whose closing leaves do shrink At hostile touch {" Aware of the efficacy of a sly hint, in cases where many a set discourse may fail, I shall not farther press the topic, always liking to do good, as it were, by stealth. And to remove every thing like gravity from the minds of readers, gentle or simple, I will wind up the whole by mentioning the most profoundly ludicrous point connected with the subject, in its most extended meanings and applications. This is the theory of national antipathies,-a monstrosity gravely contended for in "the good old times," and affording matter to a sapient writer in the seventeenth century, for a goodly treatise on the delectable doctrine. This worthy was a Spanish doctor, by name and title Don Carlos Garcia, who published, at Rouen, in 1627, a book entitled Antipatia de los Franceses y Espagnoles. This furnished materials, some time afterwards, for a tract on the same subject by La Mothe le Vayer, whose object was to nourish the dislike then subsisting in France against Spain; and he hoped, by arguments or assertions like the following, to convince his countrymen that this feeling was not less national than natural. "The Frenchman is tall, the Spaniard short; the one has the skin generally fair, the other dark; the Frenchman eats much and quickly, the Spaniard sparingly and slow; the Frenchman serves the boiled meat first, the Spaniard the roast; the Frenchman pours the water on the wine, the Spaniard the wine on the water; the Frenchman speaks freely at table, the Spaniard does not say a word; the Frenchman walks after dinner, the Spaniard sits still or sleeps. The Frenchman, in order to make a sign to any one to come to him, raises his hand and brings it towards his face, the Spaniard, for the same object, lowers his, and motions it towards his feet; the Frenchman kisses a lady on saluting her, the Spaniard looks on such a liberty with horror; the Frenchman esteems the favours of his mistress in proportion as they are known, the Spaniard values nothing so much as secrecy in love. The Frenchman wears his clothes of one fashion, and the Spaniard of another, which, taken from head to foot, are totally unlike. The first puts on his doublet after all the rest, the second commences to dress himself by that; the Frenchman buttons himself from the collar to the waist, the Spaniard begins at the bottom and finishes at the chin. The Frenchman reduced to want sells every thing but his shirt; it is the first article that the Spaniard disposes of, keeping his sword and his cloak till the last extremity." Such is the serio-comic absurdity by which the French and Spaniards were taught to believe in national antipathies two hundred years ago. By means as criminal and still more monstrous are those two gallant nations spurred up to enmity to day. But I must avoid the serious mood; and in place of the outpourings of my own indignation, give the opinion of Bayle on such atrocious doctrines as this. "All those antipathies which are pretended to arise from diversities of temperament and customs, and which their apologists endeavour to represent as incurable, are mere chimeras. Leave to neighbouring nations their differences of manners as of climate, but give them a reciprocity of interests and institutions, and you will soon see how closely they will sympathize together!" And now I bid adieu to my subject and my readers, by asking in the words of honest Jack Falstaff" Would you desire better sympathy?" ITALY TO SPAIN. FOR Spain! that crush'd the infidel Beneath her mountain war, That in her fearless strength stood up, On Saragossa's walls— The hour that shall be kept for aye In freedom's festivals: Now draw your sword again! and cast The scabbard far away, As naked as the day: Naked as the right it guards, Or as the wrong it braves; As the hearts of true freemen, G. For home and hearth, and children's For renovated mind, For Spain, and all mankind! And oh! for me, the trampled one! A slave beneath my own blue skies, The love and laugh, the grace and And pity of the world. For me, for me! I raise myself Stand close, stand close, and fear Alas! through wrong and slavery, them not! Remember where you stand Upon the 'vantage of your cause, Upon your native land! you Remember what stand for there, And all it yet should be. For all it clothes in bliss and bloom Unto your hearts and eyes; I have my couch of flowers. I raise myself, and look to you, When first it comes o'er cloud and And they are tempest-worn. Strike-smite! and though I can but give My prayers and curses now, The smiles and tears, the hopes and Be victor!-—and I yet may wear, fears, It shades and sanctifies ; Resumed, iny classic bough. |