ページの画像
PDF
ePub

cable to Bern, the Bear's) fkin while the beast lived, or, in other words, the fpirit of the Swifs, depreffed by the Proclamation, revived; upon the exigence of the moment, they fummoned their hardy bands, and gave him battle on the plain of Morat, near a town of that name, in the Earldom of Romant, and Canton of Friburg; in which encounter, the greater part of his army was destroyed, and himself obliged to make a precipitate retreat, with a few followers, towards his own Country *.

Upon the plain where this battle was fought, the victors erected a monument with this infcription: "Invictissimi atque fortiffimi Caroli Ducis Burgundiæ exercitus Muratum Obfidens, contra Helvetios pugnans hic fui Monumentum reliquit, An. 1476.”

This Charnel houfe or (as it is termed by Philip de Comines, in his Memoirs, and Guichenon, in his Hift. de Savoye,) Chapel ftands, or rather ftood, near the bank of the Lake of Morat, in the before-named Canton. The doors were compofed of iron bars, through the spaces betwixt which, the Skulls and bones of the unfortunate Burgundians might be feen piled up in fomewhat of a regular order, and bleached by time; but it is faid, that the number of thefe Vestiges of the vanity, temerity, and indifcretion, of their Duke was, even at the beginning of this century, much diminished, from the cuftom of the Swifs, who travelled that way (and indeed fome that, ftimulated by their parents, who, in relating the warlike deeds of their ancestors, had not forgotten to display this monument of their prowess, made a journey on purpose), picking out pieces of them with the points of their fwords: thefe pieces they used to have tipped with, or fet in, copper, filver, and fome times in gold; they were frequently fold at their Fairs, and commonly worn, both by Calvinists, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics, pendant to their watches, fword hilts, nay, it has been faid, to their rofaries, as military relicks.

It has been stated, that after this decifive victory the Conquerors became

more intimately acquainted with the use of filver and gold, as the medium of traffick, from the circumftance of the large quantities of both thefe fpecies of coin which they found in the baggage of the officers of the flain, and which they carried away by cap-fulls. Whether this acquifition has been ultimately advantageous to them? let moralits determine.

How the Skulls of thofe warriors, who at the latter end of the last century attempted, upon the plan of the Duke of Burgundy, and I fear with far greater fuccefs, to illuminate the minds and enflave the bodies of the Swifs, have been difpofed of, it is inpoflible for me to ftate; with respect to their own carcaffes, it is known even to a proverb, that, upon certain condi tions, they have been at the service of almost every Prince in Europe; and have been left upon almost every field of battle upon the continent for these laft four hundred years.

As the Swifs have been fo prodigal of their Skulls, one would naturally have fuppofed that they confidered them but of fmall value; yet this is by no means the cafe; for it is equally well known, that a very extraordinary price has at times been paid for them, though I never heard that in this kind of traffick any diftinction was ever made with respect to their gibbofity, length, thickness, convexity, concavity, denfity, or fragility; but that, like turnips, they were taken in lots, one with another; and, confequently, the Skull of a peafant was as highly appreciated as that of a philofopher.

Having, at least for the prefent, done with exotic Skulls, I must confider briefly (for a folio would not fuffice to difcufs the point minutely) thofe of our own country; and, as two oppofite examples will tend to the elucidation of the fubject as well as two hundred, I fhall therefore firft obferve, that in the city of Coventry (as it must have occurred to many of my readers) ftand two ancient Churches, near, as if they were built to rival, each othert. In the vaults under one of these, I fome years fince difcerned, from the Church yard in which they are both erected, a great number of Skulls, piled

This Duke of Burgundy fell in a battle which he fought against the Duke of Lorrain the year after, viz, the 5th of January 1477; his body was honourably buried at Nancy, which he had befieged.

† One is dedicated to the Holy Trinity; the other to St. Michael,

4

to

[ocr errors]

to the very roof in a tolerable metho dical arrangement. The operation of time upon thefe was as confpicuous as upon thofe of the Burgundians; they being, like them, bleached to a con fiderable degree of whitenefs. Affum. ing that this large collection of human veitiges was the last remains of fome of the former inhabitants of the City, I could not help revolving in my mind, how quietly the beads of males and females, old and young, friends and enemies, were laid together! I could not indeed carry my ideas fo far back as to fuppofe that any of thefe Skulls bad ever belonged to the heads of the Parliamentum Indoctorum *, once held in this City, and fo termed from the exclufion of Lawyers from its debates; or that which was likewife held here, which had, if poffible, an object ftill more mischievous in view, namely, the attainder of the Duke of York, with the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, and which, from its effects, obtained the epithet of Parliamentum Diabolicum ; but I did conceive, what I think will be fcarcely called in queftion, that the Skulls, now fo quiet and harmlefs, had once contained brains and tongues that had at times contrived, both in municipal and military contests, to fet the whole neighbourhood in confufion; that they had acted, at different periods, capital parts in the attack or defence of the City; that they had given energy to the arms of rebels, and to the pens of addreflers! What a variety of countenances, it then occurred to me, had been moulded upon thofe blocks! With what a variety of paffions had they been brightened, animated, agitated, and deformed! Looking upon this great mafs of mortality, and tracing, in idea, the fituations and circumftances of the bodies to which thefe veltiges had once belonged through the active periods of their existence; who, it ftruck me, could avoid moralizing upon their prefent quiefcent ftate? and properly

6th of Henry the Fourth.

appreciating the importance that, în the general fystem, ought to be attached to thofe contentions for fame, fortune, power, or any of the various propenfities which are the frequent ftimulants of the human race; the gales and breezes, the ftorms and whirlwinds, which operate upon hu. man exiftence; and which, like the effect of many of the anomalous eruptions in the phyfical world, when they have spent their force, leave the breath that produced them to mingle with the atmosphere, and the bodies they agitated to fink quietly into that earth of which they were once the dif turbers. :

In the more particular purfuit of the fubject of this fpeculation, I muit fecondly remark, that having had feveral opportunities to hear the late Dr. Hunter explain the theory of his brother, Mr. John Hunter, upon the human Skull, it has always ftruck me that it was one of thofe eccentric, and therefore in many instances favourite, ideas concomitant to men of genius. The Doctor, referring to his brother's hypothefis, did not attempt, like the philofopher whom I have quoted at the beginning of this Article, to form any conjecture refpecting the means by which the cranium was rendered thick or thin, hard or soft ‡; he did not explain to his pupils that it would be more to the advantage of their brains, to have them defended by a bone of an inch in thickness, than one as thin as a leaf of gold; but he infifted that the human genius was to be marked by the elevation or depreffion of the human Skull; as an inftance of which, he used to produce upon the table of the lecture room, the Skull of a White Man, the Skull of a Negro, that of a Monkey, and lastly that of a Dog; thefe were the only examples which the Doctor thought it neceffary, to exhibit, in order to elucidate his brother's hypothefis; but I understand that the latter gentleman had carried

† 37th of Henry the Sixth. It appears that the ads of this Parliament were repealed, and every thing done under its authority reverfed by the 39th of Henry the Sixth, 1460.

Yet the Doctor, in the courfe of this lecture, always exhibited a human Skull, upon which (in confequence of difcafé) an excrefcence had grown of a very confiderable fize, fomething resembling a mushroom. It appeared, upon inspection, to be perforated in many parts, and to be compofed of cells, in fome degree resembling thofe of a honeycomb; the brain was confequently sphaceinted, yet the patient lived!

his ideas upon the fubject much further, and had a variety of fpecimens of each of thefe, and many other human and animal species, eminent either for their fagacity or their ftupidity. Yet this doctrine, ingenious as it certainly was, like every other theoretical fug. geftion, unfupported by facts the refult of experience, is liable to be overturned in a moment by two ancient, and two thousand modern, inftances; of the two former, I need only direct the attention of the Reader to the portraits of Socrates and Æfchylus, the intaglios of which have come down to us in feals. This divine philofopher, and fublime poet, mutt, according to the fyitem alluded to, have been as remarkably stupid as we know that they were ingenious; for it appears that their skulls were depreffed, as if (which is the cafe with thofe of negroes) they had been moulded by the plaftick hand of their mothers, and fo bald that it is well known that an Eagle, which has ever been esteemed a quick-fighted bird, took the head of the latter for a fone. With regard to the modern intances at which I have hinted, the ob fervation or recollection of every reader will furnish him with facts too obvious to require to be pointed out, and too numerous to be here defcanted on, which will completely overthrow the theory of the fpeculator.

Since the writing of the preceding paffage I have feen, in the Gentleman's Magazine, the fame theory of Skulls explained, I will not fay elucidated, by Dr. Gall; extracted from the Clef du Cabinet and the Journal du Soir; in which this learned Gentleman feems to confider the hypothefis of my late ingenious and fcientific friend as a new difcovery: now, although I am of opi

nion that however curious the fuggeftion might have been, it certainly. never was a very ufeful or valuable: one, I must contend that it was indigenous to this climate, and promulgated, as I have obferved, by Dr. Hunter near five-and-twenty years fince; but having, perhaps, for fo long a series of years laid dormant, it is caught up by fome philosophical cormorant, and comes forth, like the fuit of Settle, in the Dunciad,

Old in new state, another yet the fame."

It will, however, be proper to hear the fubftance of what thefe two celebrated literary productions, which I have mentioned, fay upon the fubject. In thefe papers it is ftated, "that the doctrines of this learned German are not only curious by the celebrity that has been given to them, from their being prohibited from being publickly taught at Vienna +, but are remarkable for their refults: As the brain, the Doctor thinks, is moulded by the Skull, he alfo imagines that he has found, in the conformation of the cerebram and cerebellum, an explanation of the moral and intellectual faculties of Man; and, for a rule deduced from this general principle, eftablishes the convexity or depreffion of the Skull as a criterion upon which he founds his judgment. He therefore (like Dr. and Mr. Hunter) contends that the greater the convexity of the Skull, the greater is the capacity of the individual, and vice versa with refpect to its depreffion; this argument hefupports by the examples of the Skulls of many celebrated men ; but (continues Dr. Gall) hand fome men, whose heads are more round and gracefully formed, have feldom much genius §."

It is a curious circumftance, though I think it has hitherto escaped obfervation, that the formation of the head and countenance of Peter the Wild Boy, who could never be brought to articulate a single word, and was evidently an Idiot, refembled this Philofopher.

† One would fuppofe, though for what reafon it is impoffible to divine, that there was upon the Continent a defire to spread thefe doctrines, as the prohibition of them muft certainly be attended with this effect: every one knows the advantages of perfecution; it immediately raises a party in favour of the fufferer; prohibition is the next best thing; damn a play, or fupprefs a pamphlet, you, in many inftances, confer immortality upon, and make the fortune of, the author, however itupid., Io fact, it is like burning finuggled goods at the door of a milliner; you fend all the Town to the fhop.

There might, as this is a fubje&t of the imagination, be quoted in of pofition to it an imaginary fubject, namely, the Spectator; the gibbofity of whole counte. nance, Addison has contrived to immortalize.

§ How the learned Doctor makes the diftinction betwixt a femi globular and a convex form, I should be delighted to hear him explain.

[blocks in formation]

This

This great philofopher who, whether his cranium be elevated or depreffed, feems to poffefs full as much credulity as genius, believes, though I do exceedingly doubt his propofition, that he is able to determine the place of each of our mental faculties in the brain. The faculty of obfervation, fo obvious in children, he states to be "juft behind the forehead, which is, in thefe, very convex, but which diminishes, and becomes a concave, except in great obfervers." I fuppofe, as they approach toward maturity; from this he fagely concludes, that liberty and cuftom may produce great changes in

the faculties of man!"

He (Dr. Gall) is in poffeffion of the Skulls of many celebrated perfons, particularly thofe of Bulmaner, Alexinger, and Wurmfer; but he does not tate whether thefe celebrated craniums are depreffed or elevated. In the brain of the latter he pretends to have difcovered the organ of coinage! (Sure, "this is the very coinage of the brain," or he ought to have hinted his difcovery to the folicitor of the Imperial mint,) which he ftates to have its place above the ear. The Skulls of animals furnith him with new and important difcoveries: he has found in the Skulls of finging birds, in thofe of celebrated musicians, and particularly in that of Mozart, the organ of mufic! Whether, if he had had the opportunity of diffecting the Skulls of fome exquifitely-enchanting vocal performers, he would have difcovered the organ, by the means of which they attracted from the pockets of their admiring auditors (who may with propriety be deemed, from their being turned to notes, Paper-skulls) large fortunes in fhort periods, we yet remain to be informed?

The Doctor finally states, as the very acme of difcovery," that the wily brains of the Fox, as well as thofe of men remarkable for their craft and fubtlety, point out to him the organ of cunning."

[ocr errors]

"It is but juftice(fay the French Editors, whofe countrymen have made

[blocks in formation]

PAULET, MARQUIS OF WINCHESTER.

Two fhort anecdotes of this Noble man, and of his fifth fucceffor in the Marquifate, are introduced to show a contrat in their difpofitions, as strong as it is remarkable: The former, who (to ufe the bold metaphor of Shakefpeare) feems, in many inftances, "To have o'er-walk'd a current, roar. ing loud,

"On the unfteadfast footing of a spear," was, by Henry the 8th, advanced from the rank of a Baronet to that of a Baron, Mafter of the Wards, Knight of the Garter, and finally Executor of the King. The mode in which he balanced himself, in times when it was fo difficult to preferve a proper equilibrium, it is certainly curious to trace, as, to the weight of his other places, upon the removal of the Earl of Southampton, was added that of the Cuftody of the Great Seal. In the fhort period of Edward the Sixth, honours were heaped upon him that might have funk an Atlas; for, in the third year of this reign, he was created Earl of Wiltshire, Lord Treafurer of England, and, in the fifth, Marquis of Winchester; foon after which he fat as Lord High Steward at the trial of the Duke of Somerfet.

At the demife of the King, it appears that he was one of the firft, and confequently of the Chief, of thofe that proclaimed Queen Mary, in op. pofition to Lady Jane Gray; he was therefore in great favour with that Princefs, who, very foon after the obtained the Crown, confirmed his patent of Lord Treafurer, but who, whether from religious motives, or what other caufe is uncertain, did not raife him a step higher than the found him.

*If the Doctor had read Dr. Tyfon's curious obfervations on a tone found in the brain (Philos. Tranfactions, No. 228, p. 553), I fhould have been gald to have been informed of which of our mental faculties he believes the faid ftone to have been the organ?

I understand that, upon the principle of Dr. Gall, fome discoveries, of the utmoft importance to the Philofophical World, have been made by diffecting the Skull of Col. O'Kelly's celebrated Parrot, who died a few days fince.

Having

Having been a friend to the Refor mation, of which the honours he attained under Henry and Edward are fufficient evidence; a friend to the zealous restorer of the ancient fytem, which the confirmation of his patent evinces, the Marquis appeared in the Court of Elizabeth. With what part of his character fhe was fafcinated it is impoffible to fay. That fagacious and penetrating Princefs viewed it, unquestionably, in every light in which it could be placed either by his friends or his enemies; and the refult was, that, after mature confideration, the allo confirmed his patent of Lord Treasurer, which, if we confider how tardily the conferred honours, is fufficient to convince us that the approved of his conduct.

This very extraordinary Nobleman died on the 10th of March, 1571, in the 14th Eliz. at the very great age of ninety-feven having lived to fee one hundred and three perfons of his own generation, his immediate defcendants. He was more than thirty years Lord High Treasurer of England; and, it is ftated, that, upon being asked how he had preferved himself in that elevated and confequently dangerous ftation, in fuch critical and turbulent times? he answered, " By being a Willow; not an Oak." A reply that perhaps does more honour to his wit, then either to his difcretion or integrity.

It is ufual (to allude to Trade) to draw a fmall quantity of a commodity, as a fample of the whole: it has, in like manner, been frequently feen, that a fmall, a fingle, trait has afforded a key to the general character of a man. This

I think was obvious in the inftance of the Marquis of Winchester, if we ufe that key which he has put into our hands to develope it. If we confider him as a Willow, bending to every gale, bowing his head to every ele mentary viciffitude, we fhall no longer wonder that he furvived and flourished in ftorms which levelled many of the ftrongest and nobleft Oaks of the Forelt.

In the character of this Nobleman we find an initance of that fuccessful verfatility in the upper rank of fociety, of which I think History affords but few examples; but although the principle, or rather the want of principle, to which he owed his honours and ftability in office, have been much admired by Statesmen in more modern times and particularly by one who to his other talents combined that of being one of the most elegant writers of his age, 1 much doubt whether Moralifts would hold it up as an object of imitation.

Of a far different difpofition was, as I have obferved, the fifth lineal defcendant of the Marquis. Such was the feady loyalty of this excellent Nobleman, and fuch his attachment to his Monarch, the amiable but unfortunate Charles, that in the year 1645, a period when Rebellion was at its height, he, after refolutely refufing every overture that was made to him by the Parlia ment, the leaders of which would have exulted if they could have perfuaded fo eminent a character as himself-a man whofe example would have had fuch influence to fwerve from his duty; after having been three times befieged in Bafing Houfe, in the county of Hants,

Baker, whofe authority I by no means think decifive, in his Chronicles, ftates the Marquis to have been only Eighty-feven. To difpure about the age of a man, who has been dead almost two centuries and a half, would be abfurd; perhaps the truth lies betwixt the two extremes.

inftance of versatility of and suffering the form When we contider his what he had done, and

In the character of Nevill, Earl of Warwick, we see an another kind. This Nobleman, inftead of bowing his head to pass over, chefe to ride on the whirlwind and direct it. talents, his undaunted courage, his unlimited generofity; what he had endured, to promote a caute in which he at firft confcientiously engaged; we lament that such a man should be stung by those whom he had nurtured, and die a Martyr to wounded fenfibility, valiantly fighting in fupport of a family which it had been the business of his former life to endeavour to destroy.

It appears from Dugdale (Bar. V. I. P. 463,) that Hugh de Port, who held of the King (William the Conqueror) fifty-five Lordships in this county (Hants), was the Lord of Baling, the principal. In the 9th of W. Rufus, difgufted with the world, or induced by the fanctity annexed to the Monaftic character, which the ignorance and prejudice of the times fo highly favoured, he took the habit of a Monk at Hhha

Win

« 前へ次へ »