the demon Sabulon, who rolled her through the chapel with horrible convulsions. Five or six times he carried her left foot up higher than her shoulder; all the while her eyes were fixed, wide open, without winking; after that he threw out her limbs till she touched the ground, with her legs extended straight on either side, and while in that posture, the exorcist compelled her to join her hands, and with the trunk of the body in an erect posture, to adore the holy sacrament.' (Calmiel, vol. ii. p. 29, citing Histoire des Diables, p. 231.) We seem to read the proceedings of an electrobiologist, rather than of a pastor of the church but the parallel is not yet at an end. "The same nun," says Calmiel, "towards the close of her exorcism, executed a command which the Duke imparted secretly to her exorcist." Then follows this remarkable admission of the learned and cautious physiologist:-" On hundreds of occasions one might believe, in effect, that the Energumenes read the thoughts of the ecclesiastics who were charged with the combating of their demons. It is certain that these young women were endowed, during their excesses of hysteria or nervous exaltation, with a penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies, spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular propriety. The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the Pythian priestess.

66

Though it cannot be divined," says Plutarch, in his "Inquiry," "why the Pythian priestess ceases to deliver her oracles in verse;" "but that her parentage was virtuous and honest, and that she always lived a sober and chaste life, yet her education was among poor, labouring people, so that she was advanced to the oracular sect rude and unpolished, void of all the advantages of art or experience. For, as it is the opinion of Xenophon, that a virgin, ready to be espoused, ought to be carried to the bridegroom's house before she has either seen or heard the least communication, so the Pythian priestess ought to converse with Apollo illiterate and ignorant almost of everything, still approaching his presence with a truly virgin soul."

We might here, without any stretch of imagination, suppose we are reading a commentary on the birth and character of Joan of Arc, or of any of the prophetesses of the Swiss Anabaptists. But to return to the possessions recorded by Calmeil.

The biological relations alleged by the mesmerists appear in still stronger development in the case of the nuns of Auxonne in 1662. The Bishop of Chalons reports, speaking of the possessed, "that all the aforesaid young women, being in number eighteen, as well seculars as regulars, and without a single exception, appeared to him to have obtained the gift of tongues, inasmuch as they accurately replied to the matters in Latin, which were addressed to them by their exorcists, and which were not borrowed from the ri. tual, still less arranged by any preconcert; they frequently explained themselves in Latin-sometimes in entire periods, sometimes in broken sentences;" "that all or almost all of them were proved to have introvision (cognizance de l'interieur) and knowledge of whatever thought might be secretly addressed to them, as appeared particularly in the case of the internal commands which were often addressed to them by the exorcists, and which, in general, they obeyed implicitly, although without any external signification of the command, either verbal or by way of sign; as the said Lord Bishop experienced in many instances, among others, in that of Denise Pariset, whom the exorcist having commanded, in the depths of his own mind, to come to him for the purpose of being exorcised, she came incontinently, though dwelling in a remote part of the town; telling the Lord Bishop that she had received his commands and was come accordingly; and this she did on several occasions; likewise in the person of Sister Jamin, a novice, who, on recovering from her fit, told him the internal commandment which he had given to her demon during the exorcism; also in the case of the Sister Borthon, to whom having issued a mental commandment in one of her paroxysms to come and prostrate herself before the Holy Sacrament, with her face to the ground and her arms stretched forward, she executed his command at the very instant that he willed it, with a promptitude and precipitation altogether

Sister Denise Parisot, one of those who exhibited these singularities, also displayed a further and very remarkable manifestation of what would now be called biological influence. "Being commanded by his Lordship to make the pulse of her right arm entirely cease beating while that of the left continued, and then to transfer the pulsation so as to beat in the right arm while it should stop in the left, she executed his orders with the utmost precision in the presence of the physician (Morel), who admitted and deposed to the fact, and of several ecclesiastics. Sister de la Purification did the same thing two or three times, causing her pulse to beat or to stop at the command of the exorcist" (Calmeil, vol. ii. p. 139).

Instead of exorcist we may, without much apprehension of offending either the reason or the belief of any candid person, read "Mesmerist." The passes seem similar, the phenomena identical. Again, in the case of the girls of the parish of Landes, near Bayeux, in 1732, the orders given by the exorcists in Latin appeared to be well understood by the patients. "In general," says Calmeil, quoting the contemporaneous account of their possession, "during the ecstatic access, the sense of touch was not excited even by the application of fire; nevertheless the exorcists affirm that their patients yielded immediate attention to the thoughts which they (the exorcists) refrained from expressing, and that they described with exactness the interior of distant houses which they had never before seen" (vol. ii. p. 413).

This long and varied survey of different forms of physical and mental malady brings us to a point where we may, with some confidence, take our stand on inductive conclusions.

It seems evident, then, that all the phenomena of animal magnetism have been from an early period known to mankind under the various forms of divinatory ecstacy, demonopathy or witchmania, theomania or fanatical religious excitation, spontaneous catalepsy, and somnambulism.

That, in addition to the ordinary manifestations of insensibility to pain, rigidity, and what is called clairvoyance, the patients affected with the more intense conditions of the malady

have at all times exhibited a marvellous command of languages; a scening participation in the thoughts, sunsations, and impulses of others; a power of resisting, for some short time at least, the action of fire; and, perhaps, a capacity of evolving some hitherto unknown energy counterac tive of the force of gravitation.

That the condition of mind and body in question can be induced by means addressed to each and all of the senses, as well as involuntarily by way of sympathy or contagion.

That the fixing of the eyes on a par. ticular point, as a wafer, or the umbilicus, or on a polished ball or mirror, is one of the most general and efficacious means of artificially inducing the condition of clairvoyance. That it may also, on those prepared for its reception by strong mental excitement, be induced by tumultuous music, as by the sound of drums and cymbals, by odours, and, perhaps, by unguents; and that the same condition also fre quently supervenes on long-continued and intense emotion, as well as on those hysterical and convulsive movements of the body which sometimes attend on excessive religious excitation.

are

That, induced by the latter means, clairvoyance has a tendency to become contagious, and has often afflicted whole communities with the most dangerous and deplorable epidemic hallu cinations, as in the fancied witchsabbaths of the demonomaniacs, and prowling excursions of lycanthropes and vampyres; but that, although in these demotic frenzies, the prevailing ideas and images presented to the minds of the sufferers merely illusory, they possess the capacity of being put in such a relation with ideas and images derived from actual existences in the mind of others, as to perceive and appropriate them. Beyond this it would be difficult to advance our speculation with any degree of certainty; but if speculation may be at all indulged in such a question, it might, perhaps, be allowed to a sanguine speculator to surmise that, possibly, the mind in that state

may

be put en rapport with not only the ideas and emotions of another par ticular mind, but with the whole of the external world, and with all its minds. Another step would carry us to that participation in the whole scheme of nature, pretended to by divinators

and scers; but it must be owned that, in the present state of the evidences, there is no solid ground on which to rest the foot of conjecture in taking either the one step or the other.

In the meantime, many practitioners are playing with an agency, the dangerous character of which they little suspect. In ancient exorcisms, it sometimes happened that the exorcist himself became the involuntary recipient of the contagious frenzy of the patient. If such an event happened now, it would not be more wonderful than when it befel the Pere Surin, at Loudon, in 1635, as he has himself described his disaster in his letter to the Jesuit Attichi:-"For three months and a-half I have never been without a devil in full exercise within me. While I was engaged in the performance of my ministry, the devil passed out of the body of the possessed, and coming into mine, assaulted me and cast me down, shook me, and traversed me to and fro, for several hours. I cannot tell you what passed within me during that time, and how that spirit united itself with mine, leaving no liberty either of sensation or of thought, but acting in me like another self, or as if I possessed two souls; these two souls making, as it were, a battleground of my body. When I sought, at the instigation of the one, to make the sign of the cross on my mouth, the other suddenly would turn round my hand and seize the fingers with my teeth, making me bite myself with rage. When I sought to speak, the word would be taken out of my mouth; at mass I would be stopped short; at table I could not carry the food to my mouth; at confession I forgot my sins; in fine, I felt the devil go and come within me as if he used me for his daily dwellinghouse." (Calmiel, vol. ii. p. 61.)

Or, if instead of passing into a single operator, as in the case of Surin, the diseased contagion should suddenly expand itself among a crowd of bystanders, there would be nothing to wonder at, although enough to deplore, in such a catastrophe. It would be no more than has already happened in all the epidemics of lycanthropy and witchmania, of the dancers of St. Vitus, of the Jumpers, Quakers, and Revivalists, of the Mewers, Barkers, and Convulsionnaires. The absence of religious pretensions among the operators seems

as yet to be the chief guarantee against such results. If instead of being made rigid and lucid by the manipulations of a professor, the patients should find themselves cast into that state by contact with the tomb of a preacher, or with the reliques of a saint, society would soon be revisited with all the evils of pseudo-miracles and supposed demoniacal possessions. The comparatively innocent frenzy of the followers of Father Mathew, was the nearest approach to a social disturbance of that kind that our country has been visited by since the barking epidemic of the fourteenth century. In the county of Leicester, a person travelling along the road," says Camden (Brit. vol. ii. p. 636), "found a pair of gloves, fit for his hands, as he thought; but when he put them on, he lost his speech immediately, and could do nothing but bark like a dog; nay, from that moment, the men and women, old and young, throughout the whole country, barked like dogs, and the children like whelps. This plague continued, with some eighteen days, with others a month, and with some for two years; and, like a contagious distemper, at last infected the neighbouring counties, and set them a barking too."

If mesmerism did no more than demonstrate, as it has done, that all the supposed evidences of modern inspiration, as well as of modern demoniacal possession and ghost-craft, are but the manifestations of a physical disorder, capable of being induced by ordinary agencies, it would have done a great service to the cause of social and religious stability. In addition to this, it has furnished surgery with a new narcotic, perhaps with a new antispasmodic. It is not impossible that here, at length, a means may have been found for combating the horrors of hydrophobia. Its higher pretensions of clairvoyance and prevision, if not proved, are at least not yet satisfactorily disproved. Its admitted usefulness may, perhaps, counterbalance its perils; but in every exercise of it, whether curative or speculative, it is never to be forgotten, that the phenomena are those of disease, and that the production of disease, save for the counteraction of other maladies more hurtful, is in itself an evil.

S. F.

IN taking a survey of the contributions to literature during the last fifty years, it may possibly be a surprise to many that Ireland produces, comparatively, fewer poets than the sister isle. While, in the higher walks of the divine art, England, in the age that is just passing, can boast of many a great name Byron and Shelley, Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson-Ireland has added to the foremost ranks but one-that of Moore. The English press, too, has teemed with the works of those who occupy the second place in the aristocracy of poetry-Montgomery and Bayley, Letitia Landon and Elizabeth Barrett; Bulwer Lytton, and Macaulay, and Taylor, and a host of others. Ireland has but her half-dozen names or so, which enjoy a fame beyond the shores of the land that gave them birthWolfe and Anster, Mangan and Ferguson, and a few others, most of whom have written too little to keep themselves permanently before the public, complete the number. Against Bulwer as a dramatist, we may, indeed, place our own Knowles in honourable competition. Miss Hamilton, "Speranza," and others, may take their places beside Mrs. M'Lean and Miss Barrett. Beside the 66 Festus" of Bayley, we shall not fear to put the "Judas" of Starkey. We believe no living writer exceeds Mangan, whom we have but recently lost, in the vigour of his style, the vivid ness of his fancy, his wonderful mastery of language, and exhaustless power of rhyme and versification; while the spirit-stirring ballads of Macaulay do not surpass, in energy, in passion, or in power, the political songs which, within the last few years, some young and ardent spirits (be it for good or for evil, we shall not here discuss) have sent through the length and breadth of the land.

How it happens that we do not contribute in a larger degree to the published poetry of these kingdoms would

be a subject of inquiry not without interest, and perhaps profit, but we fear, too, not without pain. It cer tainly arises from no intellectual inferiority; nor do we think it can be attributed to want of intellectual culture. The genius of the Irish mind we believe to be as capacious, as brilliant, as imaginative, and as keenly susceptible of all poetic influences as that of our neighbours at the other side of the Channel. Whether it has the same amount of energy or an equal aptitude for toilful study, may be perhaps questioned. These last are, after all, important elements in the production of successful literary performance of any kind at the present day, when the rules of composition and artistic power have so largely usurped the place once occupied by genius alone-when the refinement of intellect has gained the superiority over mere native talent, and, as a thoughtful and elegant foreign critic has observed, "everything is matter of observation, even the mode of ob serving, and everything is governed by rules, even to the art of imposing

rules."

There be those who will tell us that this state of things, to which we have adverted, is in some sort due to the moral and political position of Ireland -that while feuds and heartburnings rend and inflame her; while opposing races and conflicting creeds harass and distract her; while her people are struggling for the full participation of the constitutional privileges of a free people, and are depressed by the weight of unequal burthens, men's minds are not sufficiently free from engrossment or debasement to cultivate with full ardour the higher branches of poetry. There may be some truth in the assertion. The muse of poetry loves tranquillity and repose. Undoubtedly she may be found on the battle-field, and in the dungeon: in every vicissitude of life the light of her divine influence may cheer and illumiBut she is best wooed amid the

nate.

peaceful shades of contemplation; and they woo her most successfully who are in the enjoyment of the full birthright of freedom; whose spirit no wrongs agitate or depress, whose heart feels no bondage. But we shall not here discuss this topic - whether these causes exist in reality, or only in the fantasies of discontented minds. With more pleasure shall we turn to the consideration of that class of poetry in which Ireland stands unsurpassed, we mean that which has its foundation in feeling and passion, rather than thoughtful meditation, and will flourish amid tumult and trial-lyrical poetry. Nor is it surprising that lyrical poetry should abound in Ireland. It is that species of poetry in which a temperament and organisation such as the Irish possess will be ever most ready to find utterance. It is that in which the poet can most freely abandon himself to vivid impressions, and best express his own emotions—an effusion of passion, and an overflow of sentimentand needs for its exhibition a verse of the most harmonious structure, and language of the most melodious sound. Thus music, uttered or understood, is an indispensable element of the lyrical, and a nice sense of the beautiful in sound and cadence is essential to its successful cultivation. They who know Ireland need not be told how thoroughly she is a land of song. The wild and tender melodies which yet linger in her sylvan valleys and her lone mountains attest this; strains which a few sedulous collectors, with a pious love like that of" Old Mortality," have deepened in their tracings on the national heart, and, partially gathering them amongst the homesteads of the older people, have given them permanency and fame, while one great poet has conferred a glory, as wide-spread as it is immortal, upon every melody to which he has sung. Others have followed where he ledand more, assuredly, will still follow, till we trust to see a body of lyrical poetry in Ireland (as there is in Scotland) which shall seize upon and secure all those beautiful melodies as yet unindividualised to our hearts by the spell of language; those airy tenements of sound that are as it were floating about, drifting and purposeless, until the spirit of language shall enter into, and animate them, giving to each the individuality of a new and beautiful

being the soul of poetry in the body of music.

It is time, however, that we should leave these speculations into which we have been seduced to wander, and turn to the consideration of the volume which is in some sort answerable for them. The poems of Mr. M'Carthy, which are now before us, afford as happy evidence of the truth of some of the statements we have been putting forward, and of our boast of Irish lyrists, as we could wish to adduce. Though some few of the poems in the book are, in form, not lyrical, yet in reality even they partake largely of its spirit and its colouring; indeed one can scarce pause at the conclusion of a stanza that the ear does not ring with the fancied tone of the still vibrating lyre-string. The pervading characteristies of Mr. M'Carthy's muse are a vivid fancy, an imagination rich and warm, an intense perception of the beautiful, especially in natural objects; great descriptive powers, and a peculiar felicity in the use of striking and picturesque similes and illustrations, with a vocabulary ornate, classical, and harmonious. These are to be found everywhere in the volume, united often to great vigour of thought and to great depth of tenderness and passion. To the readers of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Some of these poems will be familiar, as having from time to time appeared in our pages, and earned for their author high popularity; and we are much pleased now to find those, together with his other numerous compositions, collected in a volume. The principal poems, in point of length, are four in number, which we shall briefly glance at before we come to the Songs and Ballads. "The Bellfounder," which is based on a legend with which most southerns are acquainted, and in itselfhighly poetic, has been managed by Mr. McCarthy with considerable ability. There is throughout the poem the bold and manly tone of one who understands the dignity of labour and the nobility of virtue, intermixed with some pictures of domestic life that are touched with a fine hand. In the founding of the bell one is naturally reminded of Schiller's magnificent poem, and yet Mr. M'Carthy's description is, we think, very fine, though less minute than that of the great German. We give the passage: