What is Superstition? 66 TO DIE CHILDLESS." THE origin of the word Superstition has been described as some mysterious belief respecting the relations between the Dead and the Living the deceased and those who survive them—the World that is seen, and the World that is not seen. Cicero thus defines the word: "Not only Philosophers, but all our forefathers dydde ever separate Superstition from true Religion; for they which prayed all day that theyr children mought overlyve them, were called superstitious; whiche name afterwards was larger extended."-Old Translation. Lactantius, however, says "the word got its meaning from the worship of deceased parents and relatives, by the Superstites or Survivors; or from men holding the memory of the dead in superstitious veneration." Cicero and Lactantius thus agree in connecting the word with some visionary notion respecting the relation between the Dead and the Living who survive them. The question may be said to turn mainly upon the rites of sepulture. The Ancients believed that the manes of unburied men were restless and unhappy, and haunted the earth; and in this point of view they deemed it unfortunate not to have a child to close their eyes after death, and to perform duly the last solemn rites: accordingly, they even adopted children with this view, rather than die without survivors. This may not seem a very satisfactory solution of the matter, as it might be asked, Why should one's own children be absolutely required? Could not others perform the last rites? The question then still remains: Why was it considered so terrible a misfortune to survive one's children? It is obvious that there was something more at bottom than mere natural feelings. Passing over the use of Prayers to the Dead,* and Prayers for the Dead, among the Ancients, we come to the Doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice. The Ancients believed that the Death of one person might be prevented by that of another. From hence came the custom of those Devotements we read of, made for the life of a friend, a nation, or a prince. We now proceed to illustrate the belief of the Ancients in the importance of securing to themselves the rites of Sepulture by their surviving children. Solomon declares, in Ecclesiastes vi. 3 : If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years. . . and that he have no burial: I say that an untimely birth is better than he. Bishop Pearson, in treating of the Fifth Article of the Creed, in which, arguing that Hades is a place, and not a state, refers "to the judgment of the Ancient Greeks," because there were many which they believed to be dead, and to continue in the state of death, which yet they believed not to be in Hades, as those who died before their time, and those whose bodies were unburied. The souls of the latter bodies were thought to be kept out of Hades till their funerals were performed; and the souls of those who died an untimely or violent death, were kept from the same place until the time of their natural death should come. Bishop Pearson then quotes from Virgil's account of the souls who wander and flit about the shores of Hades for a hundred years. Thus he (Virgil) is understood in the description of the funeral of Polydorus, Æn. iii. 62 : Ergo instauramus Polydoro funus, et ingens Condimus. animamque sepulchro Not that anima does here signify the body, as some have observed, but that the soul of Polydorus was at rest when his body had received funeral rites,—ad quietem inferni, according to the petition of Palinurus. And that the soul of Polydorus was so wandering about the place where his body lay unburied appeareth out of Euripides in Hecuba; and in the Troades of the same poet this is acknowledged by the Chorus. And when their bodies were buried, then their souls passed into Hades, to the rest. So was it with Polydorus, and that man mentioned in the history of the philosopher of Athenagoras, whose umbra or phasma, (according to Pliny,) walked about after his death. * "When a father mourned grievously for his child that was taken away suddenly, he made an Image of him that was then dead, and worshipped him as a god, ordaining to those under him Ceremonies and Sacrifices. Thus, in process of time, this wicked custom prevailed, and was kept as a law." A curious illustration of the wide prevalence of those ideas which lie at the root of Superstition, occurs in the narrative of the sufferings of Byron and the crew of H. M. Ship, Wager, on the coast of South America. The crew had disgraced themselves by rioting, mutiny, and recklessness, in the island upon which they were thrown, after a most tempestuous navigation. Long before they left the bay, the body was found of a man, supposed to have been murdered by some of the first gang who left the island. The corpse had never been buried, and to this neglect did the crew now ascribe the storms which had lately afflicted them; nor would they rest until the remains of their comrade were placed beneath the earth, when each (says the narrative) evidently felt as if some dreadful spell had been removed from his spirit.* "Few would expect to find many points of resemblance between the Grecian mariners of the heroic ages, who navigated the galleys described by Homer, to Troy, and the sailors of George II.; yet here, in these English seamen, was the same feeling regarding the unburied dead which prevailed in ancient times." The Desire for Posterity, though it seems, perhaps, hardly sufficient to account for the acts of the Superstitiosi, is so deeply implanted in the human heart, and is so connected with Man's instinctive longing and striving after Immortality, that, after all, it may possibly have been their ultimate and only motive. Hooker has forcibly said: It is the demand of nature itself,-" What shall we do to have Eternal Life?" The Desire of Immortality and the Knowledge of that whereby it may be attained, is so natural unto all men, that even they which are not persuaded that they shall, do, notwithstanding, wish that they might know a way how to see no end of life. A longing, therefore, to be saved, without understanding the true way how, hath been the cause of all the superstitions in the world.-Hooker, Serm. ii. The erudite correspondent (Eirionnach) who has contributed to Notes and Queries the very interesting papers whence these details have been selected, proceeds to illustrate the subject from "the intense humanity and domesticity of minds such as Dr. Arnold's," whose tastes and feelings were strongly domestic: he thought, and he taught, and he worked, and he played, and he looked at Sun, and Earth, and Sky, with a domestic heart. The horizon of family life mixed with the skiey life above, and the Earthly Landscape melted by a quiet process of nature, into the Heavenly one."-(Christian Remembrancer, 1844.) Dr. Arnold himself declared: * "Yet, in Christian England, (but the other day,) we remember more than one unseemly squabble about the liability to bury a corpse-turning upon some obscure point of parochial law ! I do not wonder that it was thought a great misfortune to die childless in old times, when they had not fuller light-it seems so completely wiping a man out of existence. . . The anniversaries of domestic events-the passing away of successive generations and the entrance of his sons on the several stages of their education-struck on the deepest chords of his nature, and made him blend with every prospect of the Future, the keen sense of the continuance (so to speak) of his own existence in the good and evil fortunes of his children, and to unite the thought of these with the yet more solemn feeling, with which he was at all times wont to regard "the blessing of a whole house transplanted entire from Earth to Heaven, without one failure."-Dr. Arnold's Life. This reminds one of what the Son of Sirach says: He that teacheth his son grieveth the enemy; and before his friends he shall rejoice him. Though his father die, yet he is as though he were not dead, for he hath left one behind him that is like himself. While he lived, he saw and rejoiced in him; and when he died, he was not sorrowful. He left behind him an avenger against his enemies, some that shall requite kindness to his friends.-Ecclus. xxx. 3—6. Bacon (Essays, xxvii.) uses similar language with regard to Friends: It was a sparing speech of the Ancients to say "That a Friend' is another himself;" for that a Friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, and die many times of some things which they principally take to heart; the bestowing of a Child, the finishing of a Work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. In the same Essay, Bacon mentions that Septimius Severus had such a friendship for Plautianus, that he preferred him to his own son, and wrote to the Senate, in the words of the Superstitiosi: "I love this man so well, that I wish he may outlive me." The domesticity of character to which we have just alluded would appear to be concentrated, as it were, in the oneness of conjugal life. How often do we read in the newspaper obituary lists of the death of a husband in a few days following that of his wife, and a wife that of her husband. These remarkable instances are in our recollection. On October 29, 1817, died Lady Romilly; and on November 2, following, Sir Samuel Romilly, in an aberration of mind, induced by grief for the loss of his wife, committed suicide. It is a singular coincidence, that in the church of St. Bride, Fleet Street, is a tablet with an inscription to the memory of Mr. Isaac Romilly, F. R. S., who was the uncle of Sir Samuel, and who died in 1759, of a broken heart, seven days after the decease of his beloved wife. There is still another coincidence connected with Sir Samuel Romilly's death: he had just been returned to Parliament for Westminster, after a severe contest, principally with the supporters of Sir Francis Burdett, who, twenty-seven years later expired of grief for the loss of his wife -Lady Burdett having died thirteen days previously! High Spirits a Presage of Evil. 111 HIGH SPIRITS A PRESAGE OF EVIL. Among the minor perplexities which beset life's thorny path, is this curious psychological question-Whether high spirits do not often forebode evil, and fancied good fortune prove the forerunner of adversity. Shakspeare, (Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 3,) has: How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry; which their Keepers call This phenomena has, however, a physiological explanation; but it may have favoured the popular notion of high spirits presaging calamity. This historical incident has been pressed into the illustration of the above feeling: upon the morning of the day of the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham by Felton, his Grace "did rise up in a well-disposed humour, out of his bed, and cut a caper or two."-Howell's Fam. Lett. Tytler, in his History of Scotland, tells us of the death of King James I.: "On this fatal evening, (Feb. 20, 1436,) the revels of the Court were kept up to a late hour. The Prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the contemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a King should that year be slain." In Guy Mannering, chap. 9. "I think," said the old gardener to one of the maids, "the gauger's fie," by which words the common people express those violent spirits which they think a presage of death. In the evidence given at the inquest upon the bodies of four persons killed by an explosion at a firework manufactory in Bermondsey, Oct. 12, 1849, one of the witnesses stated: "On Friday night, they were all very merry, and Mrs. B. said she feared something would happen before they went to bed, because they were so happy." We return to Shakspeare, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. Act iv. Sc. 2: Westmoreland. Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray. For I am, on the sudden, something ill. Archbishop of York. Against ill chance, men are ever merry ;' But heaviness foreruns the good event. West. Therefore, be merry, cos; since sudden sorrow Serves to say thus-some good thing comes to-morrow. Mow. So much the worse, if your own rule be true. In the last act of Romeo and Juliet, Sc. 1, Romeo comes on, saying: |