Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847

The materials of the Russian traffic are furs, woollens, cottons, linen, &c., with articles in tin, copper, iron, &c.—the whole amounting to about nineteen millions of rubles. The Chinese products are tea, silks, sugar-candy, &c.—nominally to the amount of seven millions of rubles, but probably rising to thrice the value. The chief time of the market is the winter. To the chief Russian merchants this is a species of monopoly, and a most thriving one, some of them being millionnaires, and living in the most sumptuous manner, the "merchant princes" of the wilderness!

We had some curiosity to know the condition of the exiles to Siberia from this intelligent eye-witness. But he gives little more than a glance to a subject on which the public mind of England is at present so much engaged. In Russia corporal punishment is much in use; but criminals are seldom put to death. They are marched off to Siberia for every kind of offence, from the highest political crime to petty larceny. The most heinous offenders are sent to the mines; those guilty of minor delinquencies are settled in villages, or on farms; and those guilty of having opinions different from those of the government—statesmen, authors, and soldiers—are generally suffered to establish themselves in little knots, where they spread refinement through the country. The consequence is, that "all grades of society are decidedly more intelligent than the corresponding grades in any other part of the empire, and perhaps more so than in most parts of Europe."

Many of the exiles are now men of large income.—"The dwelling in which we breakfasted to-day," says the traveller, "was that of a person who had been sent to Siberia against his will. Finding that there was but one way of bettering his condition, he worked hard, and behaved well. He had now a comfortably furnished house and a well-cultivated farm, while a stout wife, and plenty of servants, bustled about the premises. His son had just arrived from St Petersburg, to visit his exiled father, and had the pleasure of seeing him amid all the comforts of life, reaping an abundant harvest, and with one hundred and forty persons in his pay!"

He adds, "In fact, for the reforming of the criminal, in addition to the punishment of the crime, Siberia is undoubtedly the best penitentiary in the world. When not bad enough for the mines, each exile is provided with an allotment of ground, a house, a horse, two cows, agricultural implements, and, for the first year, with provisions. For three years he pays no taxes whatever, and for the next ten, only half the full amount. To bring fear as well as hope to operate in his favour, he clearly understands, that his very first slip will send him from his home and family, to toil in the mines. Thus does the government bestow an almost paternal care on the less atrocious criminals."

Yet with this knowledge before the British Government,—for we must presume that they had not overlooked the condition of the Russian exiles; and with the still more impressive knowledge of the growth of our Australian colonies, and the improvement of the convicts; the new-fangled and most costly plan is now to be adopted of reforming our criminals by keeping them at home! Thus we are to save the national expenditure by building huge penitentiaries, which will cost millions of money, and to secure society from depredation, by annually pouring out from those prisons, as the time of their sentences expires, the whole crowd of villany to live on villany once more;—making the very streets a place of danger, and filling the country with hungry crime.

The only argument on the opposite side is, that the free settlers are offended by finding themselves in a population of convicts. But to this the obvious answer is, that the colonisation of Australia was originally intended as a school of reform—that the convicts have been to a great extent reformed, which they never would have been at home—that the convicts were in the colony first, and that the settlers going there, with their eyes open, have no reason to complain.

We then have a Notice on another subject, which is at present engrossing the speculations of all Europe, namely, the gold-country on the Yenissei. Krasnoyayk, the capital, stands in a plain in the centre of the district, where the mania of gold-washing broke out about fifteen years ago. Some individuals have been singularly lucky in their search. One person, after having laboured in vain for three years, and expending a million and a half of rubles, suddenly, in this very year, had hit upon a depot which gave him a hundred and fifty poods of gold—worth thirty-five thousand rubles each, or five millions and a half of rubles. Gold here measures every thing: a lady's charms are by weight, "a pood is a good girl, and two or three poods are twice or thrice as good as a wife." This province alone has, in this year, yielded five hundred poods of gold.

Ekaterineburg is the centre of the mining district of the Uralian mountains. The population amounts to about fourteen thousand, who are all connected with the mines. The town has an iron foundery, a mint for copper and silver coin, and various establishments for cutting marble, porphyry, and polishing precious stones. The neighbouring mountains appear to be nature's richest repository of minerals, yielding, in great abundance, diamonds, amethysts, topazes, &c.; gold, silver, iron, and platina. These inexhaustible treasures chiefly belong to Count Demidoff and M. Yakovleff. The Count is said to receive half a million sterling a-year from this princely property.

Hurrying now towards England, with the anxiety which every one feels to reach home as the end of a long journey seems to be nigh, the traveller passed through Kazan, second in national honour to Moscow, but found it in ashes from a late fire. He then hurried on to Nishney-Novgorod, the place of the greatest fair in the world, where the traffic brings traders from the ends of the earth, and where the trade amounts to nineteen millions sterling a-year. He then traversed the property of General Sheremetieff, an estate of two days' journey, with a hundred thousand serfs—a comfortable race when under a good master, each head of a family having a farm, and paying its rent, part in produce and part in work. The people appear to be a gay race—singing every where; singing on the roads, singing at work, and singing at cutting up their cabbages for the national luxury of saurkraut.

At length was seen looming in the west, with all its steeples and domes, the queen of the wilderness, Moscow the Magnificent—the most frequently-burned of all cities, and, as Sir George observes, the most retaliatory on the burners—it having been burned to embers four times, and each time having seen the incendiary nation ruined. It must be admitted, however, that the revenge, however sure, was slow, for it seldom occurred in less than a couple of centuries!—Napoleon's fate being the only instance of promptitude on this point.

From Moscow to St Petersburg, a macadamised road of seven hundred versts conveyed the traveller to the northern city of the Czar, where, on the 8th of October, he terminated a journey from Ochotsk, of about seven thousand miles. In eight days from St Petersburg he reached Hamburg, and in five days more arrived in London, having rounded the globe in a period of nineteen months and twenty-six days!

We have given an abstract of this work with the more satisfaction, that it not merely supplies a certain knowledge of vast regions of which the European world knows little; but that it gives a favourable view of the condition, the habits, and the temper, of the multitudes of our fellow men, spread over those immense spaces of the globe. Personally, of course, a man of the official rank and individual intelligence of the writer, might expect the hospitality of the Russian employés. But he seems to have been met with general kindness—to have experienced no injury, no obstacle, and no extortion; and, on the whole, having exhibited the good sense which disregards the inevitable annoyances of all journeys in distant countries, to have escaped all the severer ones which an ill-tempered traveller naturally brings upon himself. But the feature of his volumes on which we place the still higher value, is the honesty of his English spirit. He knows the value of his country; he does justice to her principles; he gives the true view of her power; he vindicates her intentions; and without depreciating the merits of foreign nations, he pays a manly tribute to the truth, by doing deserved honour to his own.

LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS

VI.—RELIGIOUS DELUSIONS: THE POSSESSED: WITCHCRAFT

Dear Archy,—The subjects about which I propose writing to you to-day are, delusions of a religious nature;—the idea of being possessed,—the grounds of the belief in witchcraft. With so much before me, I have no room to waste. So, of the first, first.

The powerful hold which the feeling of religion takes on our nature, at once attests the truth of the sentiment, and warns us to be on our guard against fanatical excesses. No subject can safely be permitted to have exclusive possession of our thoughts, least of all the most absorbing and exciting of any.

"So—it will make us mad."

It is evident that, with the majority, Providence has designed that worldly cares should largely and wholesomely employ the mind, and prevent inordinate craving after an indulgence in spiritual stimulation; while minds of the highest order are diverted, by the active duties of philanthropy, from any perilous excess of religious contemplation.

Under the influence of constant and concentrated religious thought, not only is the reason liable to give way—which is not our theme—but, alternatively, the nervous system is apt to fall into many a form of trance, the phenomena of which are mistaken by the ignorant for Divine visitation. The weakest frame sinks into an insensibility profound as death, in which he has visions of heaven and the angels. Another lies, in half-waking trance, rapt in celestial contemplation and beatitude; others are suddenly fixed in cataleptic rigidity; others, again, are dashed upon the ground in convulsions. The impressive effect of these seizures is heightened by their supervention in the midst of religious exercises, and by the contagious and sympathetic influence through which their spread is accelerated among the more excitable temperaments and weaker members of large congregations. What chance have ignorant people witnessing such attacks, or being themselves the subjects of them, of escaping the persuasion that they mark the immediate agency of the Holy Spirit? Or, to take ordinarily informed and sober-minded people,—what would they think at seeing mixed up with this hysteric disturbance, distinct proofs of extraordinary perceptive and anticipatory powers, such as occasionally manifest themselves as parts of trance, to the rational explanation of which they might not have the key?

In the preceding letter, I have already exemplified, by the case of Henry Engelbrecht, the occurrence of visions of hell and heaven during the deepest state of trance. No doubt the poor ascetic implicitly believed his whole life the reality of the scenes to which his imagination had transported him.

In a letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury to Ambrose Mark Phillips, Esq., published in 1841, a very interesting account is given of two young women who had lain for months or years in a state of religious beatitude. Their condition, when they were exhibited, appears to have been that of half-waking in trance; or, perhaps, a shade nearer the lightest form of trance-sleep. To increase the force of the scene, they appear to have exhibited some degree of trance-perceptive power. But, without this, the mere aspect of such persons is wonderfully imposing. If the pure spirit of Christianity finds a bright comment and illustration in the Madonnas and Cherubim of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. Yet when we look over an extensive country, and see the spire from its clump of trees rising over each hamlet, or over the distant city its minster tower,—the images find an approving harmony in our feelings, and seem to aid in establishing the genuineness and the truth of the sentiment and the faith which have reared such expressive symbols.

In the two cases mentioned in Lord Shrewsbury's pamphlet, it is, however, painful to observe that trick and artifice had been used to bend them to the service of Catholicism. The poor women bore on their hands and feet wounds, the supposed spontaneous eruption of delineations of the bleeding wounds of the crucifix, and, on the forehead, the bloody marks of the crown of thorns. To convict the imposture, the blood-stains from the wounds in the feet ran upwards towards the toes, to complete a facsimile of the original, though the poor girls were lying on their backs. The wounds, it is to be hoped, are inflicted and kept fresh and active by means employed when the victims are in the insensibility to pain, which commonly goes with trance.

To comprehend the effects of religious excitement operating on masses, we may inspect three pictures,—the revivals of modern times—the fanatical delusions of the Cevennes—the behaviour of the Convulsionnaires at the grave of the Abbé Paris.

"I have seen," says M. Le Roi Sunderland, himself a preacher, [Zion's Watchman, New York, Oct. 2, 1842,] "persons often 'lose their strength,' as it is called, at camp-meetings, and other places of great religious excitement; and not pious people alone, but those also who were not professors of religion. In the spring of 1824, while performing pastoral labour in Dennis, Massachusetts, I saw more than twenty people affected in this way. Two young men, of the name of Crowell, came one day to a prayer meeting. They were quite indifferent. I conversed with them freely, but they showed no signs of penitence. From the meeting they went to their shop, (they were shoemakers,) to finish some work before going to the meeting in the evening. On seating themselves they were both struck perfectly stiff. I was immediately sent for, and found them sitting paralysed [he means cataleptic] on their benches, with their work in their hands, unable to get up, or to move at all. I have seen scores of persons affected the same way. I have seen persons lie in this state forty-eight hours. At such times they are unable to converse, and are sometimes unconscious of what is passing round them. At the same time they say they are in a happy state of mind."

These persons, it is evident, were thrown in to one of the forms of trance through their minds being powerfully worked upon; with which cause the influence of mutual sympathy with what they saw around them, and perhaps some physical agency, co-operated.

The following extract from the same journal portrays another kind of nervous seizure, allied to the former, and produced by the same cause, as it was manifested at the great revival, some forty years ago, at Kentucky and Tennessee.

"The convulsions were commonly called 'the jerks.' A writer, (M'Neman,) quoted by Mr Power, (Essay on the Influence of the Imagination over the Nervous System,) gives this account of their course and progress:—

"'At first appearance these meetings, exhibited nothing to the spectator but a scene of confusion, that could scarcely be put into language. They were generally opened with a sermon, near the close of which there would be an unusual outcry, some bursting out into loud ejaculations of prayer, &c.

"'The rolling exercise consisted in being cast down in a violent manner, doubled with the head and feet together, or stretched in a prostrate, manner, turning swiftly over like a dog. Nothing in nature could better represent the jerks, than for one to goad another alternately on every side with a piece of red-hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head, which would fly backwards and forwards, and from side to side, with a quick jolt, which the person would naturally labour to suppress, but in vain. He must necessarily go on as he was stimulated, whether with a violent dash on the ground, and bounce from place to place, like a foot-ball; or hopping round with head, limbs, and trunk, twitching and jolting in every direction, as if they must inevitably fly asunder,' &c."

The following sketch is from Dow's Journal. "In the year 1805 he preached at Knoxville, Tennessee, before the governor, when some hundred and fifty persons, among whom were a number of Quakers, had the jerks."

"I have seen all denominations of religions exercised by the jerks, gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, without exception. I passed a meeting-house, where I observed the undergrowth had been cut away for camp meetings, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left, breast high, on purpose for the people who were jerked to hold by. I observed where they had held on, they had kicked up the earth, as a horse stamping flies."

Every one has heard of the extraordinary scenes which took place in the Cevennes at the close of the seventeenth century.

It was towards the end of the year 1688 a report was first heard, of a gift of prophecy which had shown itself among the persecuted followers of the Reformation, who, in the south of France, had betaken themselves to the mountains. The first instance was said to have occurred in the family of a glass-dealer, of the name of Du Serre, well known as the most zealous Calvinist of the neighbourhood, which was a solitary spot in Dauphiné, near Mount Peyra. In the enlarging circle of enthusiasts, Gabriel Astier and Isabella Vincent made themselves first conspicuous. Isabella, a girl of sixteen years of age, from Dauphiné, who was in the service of a peasant, and tended sheep, began in her sleep to preach and prophesy, and the Reformers came from far and near to hear her. An advocate, of the name of Gerlan, describes the following scene which he had witnessed. At his request she had admitted him, and a good many others, after nightfall, to a meeting at a chateau in the neighbourhood. She there disposed herself upon a bed, shut her eyes, and went to sleep; in her sleep she chanted in a low tone the Commandments and a psalm; after a short respite she began to preach in a louder voice, not in her own dialect, but in good French, which hitherto she had not used. The theme was an exhortation to obey God rather than man. Sometimes she spoke so quickly as to be hardly intelligible. At certain of her pauses, she stopped to collect herself. She accompanied her words with gesticulations. Gerlan found her pulse quiet, her arm not rigid, but relaxed, as natural. After an interval, her countenance put on a mocking expression, and she began anew her exhortation, which was now mixed with ironical reflections upon the Church of Rome. She then suddenly stopped, continuing asleep. It was in vain they stirred her. When her arms were lifted and let go, they dropped unconsciously. As several now went away, whom her silence rendered impatient, she said in a low tone, but just as if she was awake, "Why do you go away? Why do not you wait till I am ready?" And then she delivered another ironical discourse against the Catholic Church, which she closed with a prayer.

When Boucha, the intendant of the district, heard of the performances of Isabella Vincent, he had her brought before him. She replied to his interrogatories, that people had often told her that she preached in her sleep, but that she did not herself believe a word of it. As the slightness of her person made her appear younger than she really was, the intendant merely sent her to an hospital at Grenoble, where, notwithstanding that she was visited by persons of the Reformed persuasion, there was an end of her preaching,—she became a Catholic!

Gabriel Astier, who had been a young labourer, likewise from Dauphiné, went in the capacity of a preacher and prophet into the valley of Bressac, in the Vivarais. He had infected his family: his father, mother, elder brother, and sweetheart, followed his example, and took to prophesying. Gabriel, before he preached, used to fall into a kind of stupor in which he lay rigid. After delivering his sermon, he would dismiss his auditors with a kiss, and the words: "My brother, or my sister, I impart to you the Holy Ghost." Many believed that they had thus received the Holy Ghost from Astier, being taken with the same seizure. During the period of the discourse, first one, then another, would fall down; some described themselves afterwards as having felt first a weakness and trembling through the whole frame, and an impulse to yawn and stretch their arms, then they fell convulsed and foaming at the mouth. Others carried the contagion home with them, and first experienced its effects, days, weeks, months afterwards. They believed—nor is it wonderful they did so—that they had received the Holy Ghost.

Not less curious were the seizures of the Convulsionnaires at the grave of the Abbé Paris, in the year 1727. These Jansenist visionaries used to collect in the church-yard of St Médard, round the grave of the deposed and deceased Deacon, and before long the reputation of the place for working miracles getting about, they fell in troops into convulsions.

Their state had more analogy to that of the Jerkers already described. But it was different. They required, to gratify an internal impulse or feeling, that the most violent blows should be inflicted upon them at the pit of the stomach. Carré de Montgeron mentions, that being himself an enthusiast in the matter, he had inflicted the blows required with an iron instrument, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, with a round head. And as a convulsionary lady complained that he struck too lightly to relieve the feeling of depression at her stomach, he gave her sixty blows with all his force. It would not do, and she begged to have the instrument used by a tall, strong man, who stood by in the crowd. The spasmodic tension of her muscles must have been enormous; for she received one hundred blows, delivered with such force that the wall shook behind her. She thanked the man for his benevolent aid, and contemptuously censured De Montgeron for his weakness, or want of faith and timidity. It was, indeed, time for issuing the mandate, which, as wit read it, ran:

"De par le roi—Defense à Dieu,De faire miracle en ce lieu."

Turn we now to another subject:—the possessed in the middle ages,—What was their physiological condition? What was really meant then by being possessed? I mean, what were the symptoms of the affection, and how are they properly to be explained? The inquiry will throw further light upon the true relations of other phenomena we have already looked at.

We have seen that Schwedenborg thought that he was in constant communication with the spiritual world; but felt convinced, and avowed, that though he saw his visitants without and around him, they reached him first inwardly, and communicated with his understanding; and thence consciously, and outwardly, with his senses. But it would be a misapplication of the term to say that he was possessed by these spirits.

We remember that Socrates had his demon; and it should be mentioned as a prominent feature in visions generally, that their subject soon identifies one particular imaginary being as his guide and informant, to whom he applies for what knowledge he wishes. In the most exalted states of trance-waking, the guide or demon is continually referred to with profound respect by the entranced person. Now, was Socrates, and are patients of the class I have alluded to, possessed? No! the meaning of the term is evidently not yet hit.

Then there are persons who permanently fancy themselves other beings than they are, and act as such.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there prevailed in parts of Europe a seizure, which was called the wolf-sickness. Those affected with it held themselves to be wild beasts, and betook themselves to the forests. One of these, who was brought before De Lancre, at Bordeaux, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a young man of Besançon. He avowed himself to be huntsman of the forest lord, his invisible master. He believed, that through the power of his master, he had been transformed into a wolf; that he hunted in the forest as such, and that he was often accompanied by a bigger wolf, whom he suspected to be the master he served—with more details of the same kind. The persons thus affected were called Wehrwolves. They enjoyed in those days the alternative of being exorcised or executed.