Chapter II (4)

If we are to admit mesmerism as a series of facts apparently inconsistent with experience, it is most hasty and unphilosophical to attempt to generalize it by crude hypotheses. To rest its probable truth upon these hypotheses, is to take a totally different ground, and one much lower and more assailable. We have no desire to be hypercritical--to expose minor scientific inaccuracies in the work before us; but we do not hesitate to assert, that, independently of its inconsistency with the previous course of reasoning, the hypothesis or hypotheses of Mr Townshend are most unsatisfactory.

Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, are by some regarded as specific fluids; by others, as undulations of one or more specific fluid; and by a third class, as undulations or polarizations of ordinary matter. Thus, by the first, light would be viewed as a material emanation from the luminous body; by the second, as an undulation of an imponderable ether, existing between the luminous body and the recipient; and by the third, as an undulation of the air, glass, or other matter, placed between the luminous body and the object. The last would regard the ether in the planetary spaces, not as a specific imponderable fluid, but as a highly attenuated expansion of air, gas, or other matter, having all the functions of ordinary matter. Whewell has, indeed, published a _demonstration_ that all matter is ponderable, and that imponderable matter is not a conceivable idea. Be this as it may, the diversity of opinion on this point shows the difficulty the mind finds in departing from the truths of phenomena to the uncertainties of hypothesis; but if hypothesis be justifiable, which it is only on the ground of absolute necessity to link together, and render conventionally intelligible, certain undoubted, undeniable facts, which have been associated together under the terms _electricity_, _magnetism_, &c.--how difficult and dangerous it must be when the facts which it seeks to associate are denied by the mass of thinking men, when they are confessed to be mysterious and irregular by their most strenuous advocates, each of whom differs, in many respects, as to these facts!

These difficulties have by no means been conquered by Mr Townshend. At p. 11, he objects to this mode of theorizing, in the following strong terms:--

"A certain school of German writers especially have theorized on
our subject, after the false method of explaining one class of
phenomena in nature by its fancied resemblance to another. Wishing,
perhaps, to avoid the error of the spiritualists, who solve the
problem in debate by the power of the soul alone, they have
ransacked the material world for analogies to mesmerism, till the
mind itself has been endued with its affinities and its poles. Such
attempts as these have done the greatest disservice to the cause we
advocate. They submit it to a wrong test. It is as if the laws of
light should be applied to a question in acoustics. It is as if we
should expect to find in a foreign kingdom the laws and customs of
our own."--(P. 11.)

And yet, in the subsequent parts of his book, he asserts mesmerism to be capable of "reflection like light"--to have "the attraction of magnetism"--to be "transferred like heat;" to escape from a point like electricity, and to have the sympathetic undulations of sound!--(Pp. 335, 6, 7, and 8.)

Such general resemblances as the following are given:---

"We know that electricity is capable of all that modification in
its action which our case demands. Sometimes its effects are sudden
and energetic; sometimes of indefinite and uninterrupted
continuance. It is 'capable of moving with various degrees of
facility through the pores or even the substance of matter;' and is
not impeded in its action by the intervention of any substance
whatever, provided it be not in itself in an electric state. This
capacity of varied action and of pervading influence, has already
been shown to characterize the mesmeric medium."--(P. 335.)

Why, what is here stated of electricity, may be said of heat, of light, of any force, and its moving through the pores may be denied as easily as asserted; by many it is thought to be a molecular polarization, and not a transmission.

Zinc and silver are said (p. 237) to "produce a taste resulting from the galvanic concussion, and not from any actual flavour." This is incorrect; zinc and silver produce a taste when in voltaic communication, because they decompose the saliva, and eliminate acid and alkaline constituents.

Further on it is said, (p. 237,) "A spark drawn by means of a pointed metal from the nose of a person charged with electricity, will give him the sensation of smelling a phosphoric odour." This is also an erroneous assumption; the electric spark, in passing through the atmosphere, combines its constituents, and forms nitrous acid. This has a pungent smell; probably there are some other physical changes wrought upon the constituents of the atmosphere by the electric spark, which are now objects of anxious enquiry to natural philosophers; yet none of them have any doubt that the electric smell is the result of a physical or chemical action of the spark, by which either the air is decomposed, or fine portions of metal carried off, or both. So again--

"The electric medium is a far more swift and subtle messenger of
vision than is the luminous ether. 'A wheel revolving with celerity
sufficient to render its spokes invisible, when illuminated by a
flash of lightning, is seen for an instant with all its spokes
distinct, as if it were in a state of absolute repose, because,
however rapid the motion may be, the light has already come and
ceased before the wheel has had time to turn through a sensible
space.' Again, some ingenious experiments, by Professor Wheatstone,
demonstrate to a certainty, that the speed of the electric fluid
much surpasses the velocity of light. It is, therefore, a different
medium; yet can it serve for all the purposes of vision, and even
in a superior manner. After hearing these things, shall we start at
the notion of mesmeric sensation being conveyed through another
medium than that in ordinary action? Even should the sleep-waker
perceive the most distant objects, (as some are said to have done,)
can we, from the moment a means of communication is hinted to us,
be so much amazed? If his perception be more vivid, there seems to
be an efficient cause in his abjuring the grosser media for such as
are more swift and subtle."--(P. 272.)

The electric medium is _not_ a messenger of vision. To call the light produced by the electric spark electricity, would be the same as to call magnetism electricity, heat electricity, motion electricity--for all these are produced by it, and it by them. All modes of force are capable of producing the other phenomenal effects of force. It is an obvious fallacy to call the medium which transmits electric light, an electric medium; this, if carried out, would overthrow natural as well as conventional divisions, would subvert "the pales and forts of reason."

Mr Townshend, accustomed to metaphysical abstractions, shows, in these and many other instances, a want of acquaintance with physical science, and entirely fails when he bases his reasoning upon it. Many of the arguments of Mr Townshend are of such a transcendental nature, that we fear, should we attempt to follow them, our readers would lose their clairvoyance in the mist of metaphysical speculation. The following will give a fair specimen of the conclusion to which such reasoning tends:--

"Indeed, if we lay to heart the deceptiveness and mutability of all
the external species of matter, at the same time considering that
we have no reason to deem it capable of change in its ultimate and
imperceptible particles; if, also, we reflect, that whatever is not
palpable in itself is yet indicated by its effects, forces us on
pure reason by withdrawing at once the aid and the illusion of our
external senses, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that the
Invisible is the only true, exclaiming, with the old Latinist,
'Invisibilia non decipiunt.'"--(P. 355.)

And yet the facts of mesmerism are to be judged of by the very senses which mesmerism proves to be so fallacious. It is because we _see_ that E---- A---- reads when the book is presented to the back of his hand, that we are to believe that he does not perceive with the usual organs. Upon the rule which the author adopts, that "the invisible is the only true," we cannot rely upon our deceptive organs and should disbelieve mesmerism _because_ we see it.

To analyse, in detail, the hypotheses of Mr Townshend would be quite impossible in our limited space. We might, indeed, adopt method sometimes used in controversial writing, and string together a parallel column of minor contradictions. This would however, not only be totally devoid of interest to the reader, but is not the object we have in view. We seek not for critical errors or inconsistencies, but merely to examine if there be any broad lines of truth or probability in his theory. It is summed up as follows:--

"The real nature of vision is as shut to the vulgar as the mesmeric
mode of sight is to the learned.

"By the eye we appreciate light and colour only: the rest is an
operation of the judgment.

"Viewed metaphysically, seeing is but a particular kind of
knowledge: viewed physically, seeing consists in certain nervous
motions, responsive to the motions of a medium. That medium, in our
ordinary condition, is light, the action of which seems cut off and
intercepted in the case of mesmeric vision.

"When, therefore, we hear that a mesmerised person has correctly
seen an object through obstacles which to us appear opaque, we,
conceiving no means of communication between the person and the
object, exclaim that the laws of nature have been violated. But, in
all cases where information is conveyed through interrupted spaces,
show but the means of communication, and astonishment ceases.

"When we know that there is a medium permeating, in one or other of
its forms, all substances whatever, and that this medium is
eminently capable of exciting sensations of sight; and when we take
this in conjunction with a heightened sensibility in the
percipient person, rendering him aware of impulses whereof we are
not cognisant, we are no longer inclined to deny a fact or suppose
a miracle.

"Finally, all sensation has but one principle. All that is required
for its production is, that objects should be brought into a
certain relation with us by something intermediate; and this is
effected by the impulsions of certain media upon nerves, the last
changes in which are the immediate forerunners of completed
sensation."--(P. 279.)

In short, we think we do not unfairly express the author's theory in the following query. As the application of the highest human powers (those of Newton, for instance) have resolved the transmission of light to the sensorium into the vibrations of an all-pervading ether, what is more probable than that a similar ethereal medium may convey sensations of objects through other channels? This may be, but another important ingredient is wanting, viz. organization, or definite molecular arrangement. Prick the eye, and, by the resulting morbid derangement, change the molecular arrangement of its particles, and vision is destroyed; pulverise the glass through which you look, and it is no longer transparent. The ether (if there be an ether) in the pores of these substances, can only convey correct impressions when these particles have a definite arrangement; but the mesmeric ether is dependent upon no such necessity. Density and tenacity, opacity and transparency, homogeneous or heterogeneous bodies, are all equally penetrable. And what is more strange, the mesmeric ether conveys correct, and not distorted impressions. The same perception of form which is conveyed through air, is convoyed through the cover of a book, through the bones of the skull, or the muscles of the stomach. And, still more extraordinary, this impression is identical as to the mental idea it conveys with that conveyed in the normal manner through the eye. The mesmeric ether has, therefore, not only the power of conveying impressions, but of preserving their continuity through any impediment. The formal impressions of a chair or table, which are conveyed by ordinary vision in right lines to the retina, if these lines be distorted by any intervening want of uniformity in the matter, are proportionally distorted. Let striæ of glass of different density intervene in an optical lens, and the objects are distorted; increase the number of striæ, the object is more imperfect; and carry the molecular derangement further, opacity is the result. Transparency and opacity, then, viewed apart from all hypotheses, resolve themselves into organization or molecular arrangement. Yet, by the mesmeric medium, a chair or table is conveyed to the recipient in its distinct form, or, what amounts to the same thing for the argument of conformity, they give to the mind distinct ideas of these objects. If, then, there be a mesmeric medium, which, being a purely hypothetic creation, cannot be disproved, its requisites must be so totally at variance with the requisites of ordinary ethereal media, that none of the rules which can be applied to this can be applied to that. The arguments of Mr Townshend depend on analogy, where there is no analogy.

Many of the objects of vision, all indeed by which reading is effected, are purposely constructed to suit the peculiar organization of the eye--they are artifices specially appropriated to given sensations; thus _black_ letters are printed on _white_ paper, because experience has told us that black reflects no light, while white reflects all the incident light. If we wish to read by another sense, we adapt our object to such a sense; thus, for those who read by the finger, raised letters are prepared, differing from the matrix in position but not in colour; if we read by the ear, we address it by sounds and not by forms or colours; and it would be far from impracticable to read by smell or taste, by associating given odours or given tastes with given ideas.

In all this, however, each sense requires a peculiar education and long training--it is only by constant association of the word _table_ with the thing _table_, that we connect the two ideas; but mesmeric clairvoyance not only conveys things as things in all their proper forms and colours, (p. 164,) without the intervention of the usual senses, but it also dispenses with education or association, or instantly adapts to a new sense the education hitherto specially and only adapted to another.

Thus the mesmeric medium should, and does, according to Mr Townshend, (pp. 97, 99, 101,) convey to the person accustomed to read by the eye, ideas and perceptions which he has hitherto associated with the sight--to him accustomed to read by touch, ideas associated with touch--and so of the rest, and that not of sight or touch of the object itself, but of a mere arbitrary symbol of the object.

_Table_ of five letters or forms--_table_ of two sounds, bearing no resemblance to these letters or forms, or to the thing--_table_ but a mere conventional substitute for the purpose of human convenience, yet by the all-potent mesmeric medium, for which they have not been previously framed, are definitely conveyed, and produce the require perception and the required association.

We trust we need go no further to show that mesmeric clairvoyance has, at all events, no conformity with general experience; and that, if it be true, the proofs of its truth cannot be based on its analogy with other sensations. To sum up our arguments, we say--1st, That without undervaluing testimony, mesmeric clairvoyance is not sufficiently proved by competent witnesses to be admitted as fact: 2d, The reasoning in support of it is insufficient, and, in most cases, fallacious.

Perhaps the best arguments employed by Mr Townshend in favour of the possibility of clairvoyance, are the authenticated cases of normal sleepwalking; these have been very little examined, but appear, in one respect, strikingly to differ from mesmeric coma. The eyes of the somnambulist are said to be open, and therefore there is every optical power of vision, and an increase of ordinary visual perception is all that is requisite. The acts performed by the sleepwalker are, moreover, generally those to which he is habitually accustomed; and, when this is not the case, he fails, as many disastrous accidents have too fatally testified.

At the close of Mr Townshend's book is a short appendix, containing some testimonials to the verity of mesmeric effects. Several of these are anonymous, and the value of their authority cannot therefore be judged of. Others are testimonies to mesmeric effects produced upon the patients, E---- A---- or Anna M----. None of these are from persons of very high authority; and they are, certainly, not such as would induce us to rest our faith upon them. We grant to them their full right to be convinced; but their testimony is not of sufficient force to produce conviction in others. The two last testimonials, however, are of a very different character. One of these is by Professor Agassiz, and the other by Signor Ranieri of Naples. Both these are testimonials, not to any effect produced upon an accustomed patient, but upon the testifiers themselves; and the former, coming from a man of high distinction, and accustomed to physical research, is undoubtedly of great weight. We therefore give it in full.

"Desirous to know what to think of mesmerism, I for a long time
sought for an opportunity of making some experiments in regard to
it upon myself, so as to avoid the doubts which might arise on the
nature of the sensations which we have heard described by
mesmerised persons. M. Desor, yesterday, in a visit which he made
to Berne, invited Mr Townshend, who had previously mesmerised him,
to accompany him to Neufchatel, and try to mesmerise me. These
gentlemen arrived here with the evening courier, and informed me of
their arrival. At eight o'clock I went to them. We continued at
supper till half past nine o'clock, and about ten o'clock Mr
Townshend commenced operating upon me. While we sat opposite to one
another, he, in the first place, only took hold of my hands, and
looked at me fixedly. I was firmly resolved to arrive at a
knowledge of the truth, whatever it might be; and therefore, the
moment I saw him endeavouring to exert an action upon me, I
silently addressed the Author of all things, beseeching him to give
me power to resist the influence, and to be conscientious in regard
to myself, as well as in regard to the facts. I then fixed my eyes
upon Mr Townshend, attentive to whatever passed. I was in very
suitable circumstances; the hour being early, and one at which I
was in the habit of studying, was far from disposing me to sleep. I
was sufficiently master of myself to experience no emotion, and to
repress all flights of imagination, even if I had been less calm;
accordingly it was a long time before I felt any effect from the
presence of Mr Townshend opposite me. However, after at least a
quarter of an hour, I felt a sensation of a current through all my
limbs, and from that moment my eyelids grew heavy. I then saw Mr
Townshend extend his hands before my eyes, as if he were about to
plunge his fingers into them; and then make different circular
movements around my eyes, which caused my eyelids to become still
heavier. I had the idea that he was endeavouring to make me close
my eyes; and yet it was not as if some one had threatened my eyes,
and, in the waking state, I had closed them to prevent him. It was
an irresistible heaviness of the lids, which compelled me to shut
them, and by degrees I found that I had no longer the power of
keeping them open; but did not the less retain my consciousness of
what was going on around me; so that I heard M. Desor speak to Mr
Townshend, understood what they said, and heard what questions they
asked me, just as if I had been awake; but I had not the power of
answering. I endeavoured in vain several times to do so; and when I
succeeded, I perceived that I was passing out of the state of
torpor in which I had been, and which was rather agreeable than
painful.

"In this state I heard the watchman cry ten o'clock; then I heard
it strike a quarter past; but afterwards I fell into a deeper
sleep, although I never entirely lost my consciousness. It appeared
to me that Mr Townshend was endeavouring to put me into a sound
sleep; my movements seemed under his control, for I wished several
times to change the position of my arms, but had not sufficient
power to do it, or even really to will it; while I felt my head
carried to the right or left shoulder, and backwards or forwards,
without wishing it; and, indeed, in spite of the resistance which I
endeavoured to oppose, and this happened several times.

"I experienced at the same time a feeling of great pleasure in
giving way to the attraction, which dragged me sometimes to one
side, sometimes to the other; then a kind of surprise on feeling my
head fall into Mr Townshend's hand, who appeared to me from that
time to be the cause of the attraction. To his enquiry if I were
well, and what I felt? I found I could not answer, but I smiled; I
felt that my features expanded in spite of my resistance; I was
inwardly confused at experiencing pleasure from an influence which
was mysterious to me. From this moment I wished to wake, and was
less at my ease; and yet on Mr Townshend asking me, whether I
wished to be awakened, I made a hesitating movement with my
shoulders. Mr Townshend then repeated some frictions, which
increased my sleep; yet I was always conscious of what was passing
around me. He then asked me, if I wished to become lucid, at the
same time continuing, as I felt, the frictions from the face to the
arms. I then experienced an indescribable sensation of delight, and
for an instant saw before me rays of dazzling light, which
instantly disappeared. I was then inwardly sorrowful at this state
being prolonged--it appeared to me that enough had been done with
me; I wished to awake, but could not, yet when Mr Townshend and M.
Desor spoke, I heard them. I also heard the clock, and the watchman
cry, but I did not know what hour he cried. Mr Townshend then
presented his watch to me, and asked if I could see the time, and
if I saw him; but I could distinguish nothing. I heard the clock
strike the quarter, but could not get out of my sleepy state. Mr
Townshend then woke me with some rapid transverse movements from
the middle of the face outwards, which instantly caused my eyes to
open, and at the same time I got up, saying to him, 'I thank you.'
It was a quarter past eleven. He then told me, and M. Desor
repeated the same thing, that the only fact which had satisfied
them that I was in a state of mesmeric sleep, was the facility with
which my head followed all the movements of his hand, although he
did not touch me, and the pleasure which I appeared to feel at the
moment when, after several repetitions of friction, he thus moved
my head at pleasure in all directions."--(P. 385 to 388.)

This we think a most interesting and valuable document, and the best key we have ever seen to the _facts_ of mesmerism. It is the production of a resolute, religious, and philosophic mind, and bears all the impress of truth; it proves that there are facts worthy of the most careful investigation--it proves a power of inducing a comatose or sleep-waking state--an influence exercised by one mind over another--and it goes far to prove a physical attraction subsisting between two persons in mesmeric relation. But, on the other hand, how strikingly do the phenomena here described differ from those exhibited by the other patients. In those cases, to use the general proposition of Mr Townshend, "the sleep-waker seems incapable of analysing his new sensations while they last, still more of remembering them when they are over. The state of mesmerism is to him as death."--(P. 156.) Here, on the other hand, the patient analyses all the sensations he experienced, and recollects them when they are over; here, notwithstanding the efforts of the mesmeriser, the production of the mesmeric effect, and no resistance on the part of the mesmerisee, the latter does not become clairvoyant; "_je ne distinguais rien_," are the emphatic words of Professor Agassiz.

Precisely similar is the testimony of Signor Ranieri, the historian--

Having been mesmerised by my honourable friend Mr Hare Townshend, I
will simply describe the phenomena which I experienced before,
during, and after my mesmerisation. Mr Townshend commenced by
making me sit upon a sofa, he sat upon a chair opposite me, and
keeping my hands in his, placed them on my knees. He looked at me
fixedly, and from time to time let go my hands, and placed the
points of his fingers in a straight line opposite my eyes, at an
inch, I should think, from my pupils; then, describing a kind of
ellipse, he brought his hands down again upon mine. After he had
moved his hands thus alternately from my eyes to my knees for ten
minutes, I felt an irresistible desire to close my eyelids. I
continued, nevertheless, to hear his voice, and that of my sister,
who was in the same room. Whenever they put questions to me, I
always answered him correctly; but the whole of my muscular system
was in a state of peculiar weakness, and of almost perfect
disobedience to my will; and, consequently, the pronunciation of
the words with which I wished to answer had become extremely
difficult.

"Whilst I experienced to a certain point the effects of sleep, not
only was I not a stranger to all that was passing around me, but I
even took more than usual interest in it. All my conceptions were
more rapid; I experienced nervous startings to which I am not
accustomed; in short, my whole nervous system was in a state of
perfect exaltation, and appeared to have acquired all the
superabundance of power which the muscular system had lost.

"The following are the principal phenomena which I was able to feel
distinctly. Mr Townshend did not fail to ask me occasionally if I
could see him or my sister without opening my eyelids; but this was
always impossible, and all that I could say I had seen was a
glimmering of light, interrupted by the black and confused images
of the objects presented to me; a light which appeared to me a
little less clear than that which we commonly see when we shut the
eyelids opposite the sun or a candle.

"Mr Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to
make elliptical movements with his hands, the reverse of those
which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes
without any kind of effort, my whole muscular system became
perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get up, and was
perfectly awake; but I remained nearly an hour in a kind of
stupefaction very similar to that which sometimes attacks me in the
mornings, if I rise two or three hours later than usual."--(P. 388
to 390.)

Similar, as to the general conclusions, are the reports of the French Academy and the testimonies of all rigorous and well-conducted scientific examination. These testimonies apply to facts which it is the duty of those experimentalists and physiologists, who have time and opportunity at their disposal, fairly to investigate.

The insensibility to pain, and to the effects of the galvanic shock, are also within the limits of the credible--and the latter is the more easy of proof, as being incapable of simulation. As we stated at the commencement, so we repeat here; mesmerism has been too little investigated by competent persons, and is too much mystified by charlatanism, to enable us accurately to define the limits of the true and false, far less to predict what may be the discoveries to which it may lead. With regard to the facts of clairvoyance, we are at present entirely incredulous. Mr Townshend says, p. 91--

"Let, then, body after body of learned men deny the phenomena of
mesmerism, and logically disprove their existence; an appeal may
ever, and at any moment, be made to the proof by experiment; and
even should experiment itself fail a thousand times, the success of
the thousandth and first trial would justify further examination.
Till the authority of observation can be wholly set aside, the
subject of our enquiry can never be said to have undergone its
final ostracism."

This is certainly a strong proposition; nevertheless it is with the hope that observation may be directed to the _facts_ of mesmerism, that we have written the preceding pages. In reasoning on a subject, we can use only those lights which experience has given us. The efficacy of logical disproof, somewhat contemptuously treated by Mr Townshend in the above passage, is yet fully vindicated by the latter half of the book itself, which is an endeavour, logically, to bring home mesmerism to the understanding of men of experience. It is vain to make light of logic, when the parties who set it at nought are themselves obliged to use it to prove its own worthlessness. You must not exalt _reason_, and we will give you the _reason_ why--this cuts their own ground from under them. We so far agree with the last quoted sentence, as to admit that, when experiments fairly tried by competent parties have and do succeed, mesmerism will be established--hitherto they have _not_ succeeded. The alleged proofs are not brought home to the observation of cautious, thinking men; and reason, thus at once derided and appealed to, is unsatisfied. Time "may bring in its revenges," may show things which would be to us marvellous; and we deny no future possibilities. At present, we admit some very curious phenomena, which we would willingly see further examined; but we are unconvinced of those facts of mesmerism enounced by its professors, which wholly contradict our previous experience. Upon what we consider the only safe grounds for the general admission of newly asserted facts, the evidence in support of these should more than counterpoise the evidence for their rejection. Up to the present time, balancing, as we have endeavoured to do, impartially, the evidence in favour of clairvoyance, and the preternatural powers of mesmerism, against those of an opposite tendency, the former seems to us inordinately outweighed. On the other hand, the production, by external influence, either of absolute coma or of sleep-waking, whether resulting from imagination in the patient, or from an effort of the will on the part of the mesmeriser, or from both conjointly, has been too lightly estimated and too little examined. This alone is in itself an effect so novel, so mysterious, and apparently so connected with the mainsprings of sentient existence, as to deserve and demand a rigorous, impartial, and persevering scrutiny.

* * * * *

Since this article was written, the letters of Miss Martineau have appeared. Had these been published earlier, we should undoubtedly have noticed them at some length; they have not, however, induced us to alter any thing we have written; they have, indeed, confirmed one remark made above. The effects described by Miss Martineau as produced upon herself, are credible and not preternatural, while the second-sight of the girl J---- is preternatural and not credible; _i. e._ not credible as preternatural, otherwise easily explicable.

In this, as in every mesmeric case, the marvellous effects are developed by the uneducated--the most easily deceived, and the most ready to be deceivers.

The clairvoyant writers have greatly the advantage of the sceptics in one respect, viz. the public interest of their communications. Every one reads the description of new marvels, few care to examine the arguments in contravention of them.

"Pol, me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait, cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: For an account of one of the most notorious of the public exhibitions of mesmeric clairvoyance, we refer the reader, who may feel sufficiently interested in the matter, to the papers of Dr Forbes in the _Lancet_, New Series, Vol. i. p. 581, and to the counter statement in the _Zoist_, Vol. ii. No. 7.]

[Footnote 4: P. 316.]

ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS.

NO. II.

ABOUT A BONNET.

So then, having "put down" hats, we come to bonnets; this is the due order of things--hats should be taken off before bonnets always; "common politeness makes us stop and do it." And here, as the immortal Butler found it necessary in olden times to lament the perils that environed a man meddling with a hard subject, so we might well indulge in an ejaculation at what may be our fate if we presume to take liberties with the head-dress of the ladies. Actæon, when he contemplated Diana _simplicem munditiis_, paid a severe penalty in the transformation of his own head; and so, perhaps, we may incur--but never mind; the task, worthy of a Hercules, (for the hydra of female fashion is more than hundred-headed,) must be gone through with, and the _scrivano umillimo_ must push his pen even under the pole of a lady's bonnet.

The best-dressed woman in the world was our great-great-great progenitrix; we really cannot trace up the pedigree, but you all know whom we mean--your common mother and ours: we have the highest authority among our own poets for saying so. There can be no doubt that her _coiffure_ was perfect. It is a law of nature--it was true then--it has been true ever since--it is indisputable at the present day--the expressive beauty of a woman lies in her face: whatever, therefore, conceals the face is a disfigurement, and inherits the principle of the ugly. Ye who would study the æsthetics of human habiliments, look at the lovely lines of the female face; contemplate that fairest type of the animated creation; observe the soft emotions of her gentle soul, now shooting forth rays of tender light from between her long enclasping eyelashes, now arching her rosy lips into the playful lineaments of Cupid's mortal bow; or gaze upon the subdued and affectionate contentment of the maternal countenance--remember, while you were yet young, your mother's look of love, that look which was all-powerful to master your fiercest passions in your wildest mood--who will say that the female face ought to be concealed? As far as we, the more powerful, though not the better, portion of the human race are concerned--off with the bonnet! off with the veil! say we. But there are others to be consulted in settling this preliminary dogma of taste--the feelings and the inclinations of woman herself are entitled to at least as much regard as the imperious wishes of man. She, who possesses the bright but fleetly fading gift of beauty, has also that inestimable, indefinable accompaniment of it--modesty. Beauty is too sensitive a gem to be always exposed to the light of admiration; it must be ensheathed in modesty for its rays to retain their primitive lustre; it would perish from exposure to the natural changes of the atmosphere, but it would die much sooner from the incomprehensible, yet positive, effects of moral lassitude. To use a commonplace simile, gentle reader, woman's beauty is like champagne, it gets terribly into a man's head: do not, however, leave the cork out of your champagne bottle--the sparkling spirit will all evaporate; and do not quarrel with your sweet-heart if she muffles up her face sometimes, and will not let you look at it for a week together--her eyes will be all the brighter when you next see them. There is a good cause for it; man is an ungrateful, hardly-pleased animal; every indulgence that woman grants him loosens her power over him. Women have an innate right to conceal their heads!

We arrive, then, at the foundation of taste for a lady's head-dress. Her face, her head, is naturally so beautiful, that the less it is concealed--as far as the mere gratification of the eye is concerned--the better; but the necessity for veiling and protecting this precious object is so inevitable, that a suitable extraneous covering must be provided; let that covering be as consonant to her natural excellence as it is possible to make it.

Now, we are not going to write a history of all the changes of female head-dress that have taken place since the world began: nothing at all of the kind. We refer the curious amateur to the work of that learned Dutchman--we forget his name, 'tis all the same--_De Re Vestiaria_; or he may look into Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_--there is a pretty considerable variety of bonnets or caps to be seen therein, we calculate. If he be a decided _cognoscente_, let him rather go to the Attic gallery in the British Museum, and examine the Panathenaic procession, where the virgins are in the simple attire of the best days of Greece: but here, or in any of the monuments of that foster-country of art, and in all the series of Roman sculpture and coins, he will find no head-dress for a female beyond that of the veil. The great artists and the great conquerors of the world never tolerated any thing beyond this flowing drapery of the veil, as the covering for their wives' or daughters' heads. They were satisfied with the beautiful contrast given by the curving lines of its graceful folds; they admired its simplicity; and they saw the perfect suitableness of its nature to its purpose. The veil could be hastily drawn over the head, so as to conceal every feature, and protect it from the gaze of man or the roughness of the seasons--and it could as easily be withdrawn partially to allow of "a sidelong glance of love," or wholly to give "a gaze of welcome," to a relation and a friend. Happy men those old Greeks and Romans! they had no bills for milliners--whatever their jewellers' accounts might have come to! When they travelled, their slaves were not pestered with bonnet-boxes and similar abominations--a clean yard or two of Phoenician gauze, or Asian linen, set up Mrs Secretary Pericles, or Mrs General Cæsar, with a braw new veil. There was little caprice of fashion--the veil would always fall into something like the same or at least similar folds; and we do believe that, for a thousand years or more, the type of the _mode_ remained fixed. Whether the ancient Asiatics made their women wear precisely the same mask-veils as those jealous rascals the Turks and Arabs do at the present day, we do not know, and we are not now going to enquire: we only wish to protest, _en passant_, against these same modern Eastern veils; they are the most frightful, unclassical, unbecoming things ever invented as face-cases. Our present purpose is with the head-dress of modern British ladies--let us look into their bonnets.

And truly a bonnet, taken by itself, without the jewel that often lies under it--a bonnet _per se_--is as bad a thing as a hat; something between a coal-scuttle and a bread-basket; it is only fit to be married to the hat, and, let us add--settled in the country. But it is, nevertheless capricious in its ugliness, just as its possessor is capricious in her prettiness; for, look at it from behind, its lines do not greatly deviate from the circular form of the head; it seems like a smart case;--look at it from before; there it is seen to best advantage as an oval frame, set with ribands, flowers, and laces, for the sweet picture within; but look at it from the side, and the genuine, vulgar, cookmaid form of the coal-scuttle is instantly perceived. It serves in this view evidently as blinkers do to a horse in harness, just to keep the animal from shying, or to guard off a chance stroke of the whip. But it is uncommonly tantalizing into the bargain. You walk along Regent Street some fine day, and for a hundred paces or more you are troubled by the crowd keeping you always in the rear of an old, faded, frumpy bonnet, that hinders you from watching a sweet little _chapeau-de-soie_ immediately beyond. Your patience is exhausted, and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety; you make a desperate stride, push by the old bonnet, and look round with indignation to see what beldam had thus been between you and the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes:"--whew! 'tis the pretty young shop-girl that served you with your last pair of gloves, and measured them so fascinatingly along your hand, that your heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. You pocket your indignation, exchange one of your blandest smiles, and pass on, still striding to see what lovely features grace that exquisite _chapeau_. Half afraid, of course--for she is a lady evidently, and you pique yourself on being a perfect gentleman--you venture, as you pass, to let your eye just glance within the sacred enclosure of blonde and primroses;--pshaw! it's old Miss Thingamy, that you had to hand down to dinner the other day at Lady Dash's; and instantly catching your eye, she gives you a condescending nod, and you're forced to escort her all the way up to Portland Place! It's enough to make a man hang himself; and, to say the truth, many a poor fellow has been ruined by bonnets before now--even Napoleon himself had to pay for _thirty-six_ new bonnets within _one month_ for Josephine!

Bonnets, however, have more to do with women than with men; and we defy our fair friends to prove that these articles of dress, about which they are always so anxious, (a woman--a regular genuine woman, reader--will sacrifice a great deal for a bonnet,) are either useful or ornamental. And first, for their use; if they were good for any thing, they would protect the head from cold, wet, and sunshine. Now, as far as cold is concerned, they do so to a certain degree, but not a tenth part so well as something else we shall talk of by and by; as for wet--what woman ever trusted to her bonnet in a shower of rain? What woman does not either pop up her parasol, or green cotton umbrella, or, if she has not these female arms, ties over it her pocket-handkerchief, in a vain attempt to keep off the pluvious god? Women are more frightened at spoiling their bonnets than any other article of their dress: let them but once get their bonnets under the dripping eaves of an umbrella, and, like ostriches sticking their heads under ground, they think their whole persons safe;--we appeal to any man who has walked down Cheapside with his eyes open, on a rainy day, whether this be not true. And then for the sun--who among the ladies trust to her bonnet for keeping her face from freckling? Else why all the paraphernalia of parasols? why all these endless patents for sylphides and sunscreens of every kind, form, and colour? why can you never meet a lady in a summerwalk without one of these elegant little contrivances in her hand? Comfort, we apprehend, does not reside in a bonnet: look at a lady travelling, whether in a carriage or a railroad diligence--she cannot for a moment lean back into one of the nice pillowed corners of the vehicle, without running imminent risk of crushing her bonnet; her head can never repose; she has no travelling-cap, like a man, to put on while she stows away her bonnet in some convenient place: the stiffened gauze, or canvass, or paper, of which its inner framework is composed, rustles and crackles with every attempt at compression; and a pound's worth or two of damage may be done by a gentle tap or squeeze. Women, if candid, would allow that their bonnets gave them much more trouble than comfort, and that they have remained in use solely as conventional objects of dress--we will not allow, of ornament. The only position in which a bonnet is becoming--and even then it is only the modern class of bonnets--is, when they are viewed full front: further, as we observed before, they make a nice _encadrement_ for the face: and, with their endless adjuncts of lace, ribands, and flowers, they commonly set off even moderately pretty features to advantage. But is only the present kind of bonnet that does so; the old-fashioned, poking, flaunting, square-cornered bonnet never became any female physiognomy: it is only the small, tight, come-and-kiss-me style of bonnet now worn by ladies, that is at all tolerable. All this refers, however, only to that portion of the fairer half of the human race which is in the bloom and vigour of youth and womanhood: those that are still in childhood, or sinking into the vale of years, cannot have a more inappropriate, more useless, covering for the head than what they now wear, at least in England. Simplicity, which should be the attribute of youth, and dignity, which should belong to age, cannot be compatible with a modern bonnet: fifty inventions might be made of coverings more suitable to these two stages of life.

How, then, has it come to pass that women have persuaded themselves, or have been overpersuaded, into the belief that a bonnet is the highest point of perfection in their dress? It has all been done by a foolish imitation of the caprices of French milliners, themselves actuated by millions of caprices and fancies--but at the same time by one steadily-enduring principle, that novelty and change, no matter how useless, how extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down--the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet--as we understand the word in England--is not an article of national costume in any portion of the world except our own island--America and Australia we place, of course, out of the pale of taste. In France itself, the peasantry, and all classes of women immediately under the conventional denomination of ladies, wear _bonnets_. This word does not signify the same thing as with us, gentle reader. The French word _bonnet_ means a snow-white cap, whether rising into an enormous cone, like those of the Norman beauties, or limited to a jaunting frill and lappels, like those of the Parisian grisettes. The real bonnets, the French female _chapeau_, is worn only by those who call themselves ladies; and this difference of costume marks a most decided difference of rank and self-esteem in the various grades of Gallic society. In the Bourbonnois, it is true, and in some parts of Switzerland and Germany, straw-hats of various sizes are worn by the peasantry; but these do not resemble the actual bonnet of the nineteenth century. Who does not know the exquisite national head-dresses of the Italian and Spanish women, from pictorial representation, if not from actual inspection? Who has not read of the Greek cap and veil? Who has not heard of the national caps of Poland, Hungary, and Russia? Not the slightest approximation to the eccentricity of the bonnet is to be found in any of these. In all of them, not caprice, but the more rational qualities of use and ornament, have been studiously regarded. It is in England only that our lower classes of women have abandoned their national costume, and are content to suffer the inconvenient consequences of imitating their superiors. Let any one who has traversed Europe only recall to his mind the appearances of the female peasants as to their head-dress, whether in their houses or in the fields, and comparing them with the tattered, dirty things worn by the labourers' wives and daughters of England, say which are to be preferred in point of taste--which are the cleanest--which are the most becoming.

Not to go too far back into the mist of antiquity, the earliest traces that we can find of hats being commonly worn in England, are to be met with somewhere in the first half of the last century. Previous to that time ladies wore hoods and caps; and in the Middle Ages muffled their heads in wimples and veils; but some time or other--in the reign of the second George, we believe--some lady or other stuck on her head a round silk hat with a low crown and a broad brim, perfectly circular, and the brim or ledge at right angles to the crown or head-piece. This she subsequently changed into a straw one, and this was the root of the evil--_hinc illæ lachrymæ!_ We are aware that, at the gay court of Louis XIV., and even before he had a court, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, when she went to battle or to hunt, wore a gold-laced semi-cocked hat: so did Madame de Montespan when she accompanied the king to one of his grand _parties de chasse_. But then, at the same time, these illustrious "leaders of _ton_" put on gold-embroidered male coats, and evidently endeavoured to transform themselves into men while partaking in manly sports and dangers. Their hunting-hats bore no more relation to the bonnets of their descendants, than do the black beaver hats of the latter, when they mount their horses in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. Indeed this very custom of wearing the male hat, is derived by our modern belles from the times we are speaking of. Plain beaver or felt hats were worn by some of our farmers' wives as early as the reign of Charles I.; but, to judge from the prints of that date, they borrowed them from their husbands. And to a period like this is to be traced the custom, still extant throughout most parts of Wales, for the women to wear the same head-costume as the men. The round ladies' hat, however, of the middle and end of the last century, may be seen in its primitive state in those enormous circles of straw, brought from Tuscany, and sold in our milliners' shops, fit to be pinched and cut into the prevailing fashion. The hats, both of men and women--when once they had quitted the becoming costume of the Middle Ages--arose out of one and the same type; a large circle of stuff with a projecting central cap for the skull. Human invention, in the matter of hats, seems for several centuries to have rested in this solitary idea. When this circular adumbral and pluvial roofing had to be adapted to the female head, it was found advisable to fasten it down to the cranium--not, indeed, by any screw driven therein, nor by any intriguing with the locks of woman's hair, but by the simple expedient of ribands passing under the chin. The difficulty consisted in attaching the upper ends of these ribands; for if they were sewn on under the overlapping brim, the same brim would take liberties on a windy day, and would flap up and down like an Indian punka. If they were sewn outside, they acted like the sheets of a ship's sail, and pulled down the struggling circumference into two ugly projections, bellying out before and behind. However, women, for comfort's sake, having got an awkward article to deal with, preferred the latter alternative--tied down their hats with ribands, (men, be it remembered, at the same time, tied _up_ their brims into the prim, high, cocked shape,) and called these ugly coverings "gipsy hats." We remember something like them, dear reader,

"When first we went a-gipsying, long long ago."