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11. to 31. The real farthing is held to be worth from 7s. to a guinea, according to its fineness and clearness. It passed for some time, and is supposed to have been originally hoarded for its beauty and peculiarity; it being the only copper coin of Anne's reign, excepting the halfpence, which are all patterns, and were never circulated. The date of the real farthing is 1714;-that of the patterns belongs to the year before or after; excepting the ANNA REGINA, which is of the same year with the real farthing.

The other two varieties, if such they may be called, are similar, the one to the real farthing, and the other to one of the patterns. The pattern farthings of Queen Anne are also met with in fine gold and silver. The above-mentioned copper or bronze coins were executed by an eminent artist, of the name of Croker, and very few of modern date can compete with them in beauty.

It is necessary for us to take notice of a small medal, or token, of brass, of Queen Anne's time, of which there are hundreds. It is about the size of a farthing but thinner. On the obverse side is an execrable bust of the Queen, with a long scraggy neck, unlike that of this sovereign, with the superscription ANNA DEI GRATIA. On the reverse are the royal arms in the shape of a cross; sometimes it is plain, but frequently found with roses between the shields; but all of bad workmanship. Their date is generally 1711. These are for the most part the pieces which have caused such fruitless trouble and vexation to the finders, and such tedium to the medallists, particularly the officers of the medal-room of the British Museum, who have been expected to purchase them. These counters are undeserving of notice, excepting to proclaim them as being of no value at all.

Before we quit these details, we will relate a few anecdotes in point, on the subject of the farthings themselves, and the vile tokens of brass.

A publican, having once procured one of the brass tokens, placed it in his window as the real farthing of Queen Anne. Credulous persons, far and near, came to view this great "curiosity;" and the publican still persisted in making the thing conduce to the advantage of his house, though a distinguished medallist exhibited to him a real, but common, farthing of

Queen Anne.

About the year 1814 a person in Ireland was punished with twelve months' imprisonment for secreting one of these farthings. He was shopman to a confectioner in Dublin, and having taken the farthing in business, he substituted a common one for it; but, not keeping his own counsel, and offering it for sale, his master demanded the treasure as his property; the shopman refused to give it up, was brought into the Recorder's court, and there received the sentence mentioned above.

Some few years ago, a poor labourer and his wife came toiling on foot from Yorkshire to London with one of the brass counters, in the hope of making their fortune by it, and at last found it entirely worthless. Another came all the way from Bedfordshire, with a real, but common, farthing of Anne for the same purpose. In the Numismatic Journal of 1836, we are told that, in the summer of that year, a poor fellow travelled with one from Exeter to London, at considerable expense, thinking to make his fortune by the disposal of it:-he was offered a shilling for it. There are, likewise, pattern half-pence of Queen Anne, of seven different varieties, but none struck for common currency. They are all very scarce; but the most frequent specimens are those, in which we find the Britannia with a rose and thistle.

We trust that all far-famed curiosities, which have a factitious, undeserved value imputed to them, will be brought down to their proper level, and so cease to impose upon ignorant and unthinking people; and that such people, by the cheap and universal diffusion of knowledge, will be less apt to be deluded by their own fancies, or by mere popular errors.

ON POISONS AND SECRET POISONING.
No. II.

THE most remarkable example of secret poisoning, in
recent times, was the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, who
lived at Paris in 1670. An officer named St. Croix, of
good family but ruined reputation, having formed an
intrigue with her, her friends procured his confinement
in the Bastille, where he acquired from some Italians
the art of compounding poison. On his liberation he
hastened to the marchioness, and imparted to her his
acquisition, as a means of revenging themselves and
of bettering their ruined fortunes. She eagerly
entered into his views, and carried on the horrid
brothers, and sister, quickly perished. She is said
trade with a diabolical activity. Her husband, father,
to have disguised herself as a nun, and distributed
poisoned biscuits to the poor, in order to try the
efficacy of her poisons. Her career was cut short
by an accident. A glass mask, which St. Croix wore
while preparing his poisons, fell off, and he was found
suffocated in his laboratory. A casket was also
found there which was directed to Madame Brin-
villiers, but opened by the police. It contained
poisons sufficient to destroy a community, labelled
differently according to their effects, as ascertained
by experiments on animals. St. Croix's servant was
seized, tortured, and confessed the crimes of his
employers, in which he had aided. The marchioness
escaped, but at last was captured, and having under-
gone the torture with inflexible courage, was beheaded.
On her person was found a full confession and detail
of her horrible crimes. This punishment did not put
a stop to the crime of poisoning in France, which
was very common between the years 1670 and 1680.

This led to the establishment of a tribunal at Paris, called the "chambre ardente" or "chambre de poison," which, soon becoming perverted into a state engine, was abolished in 1680. Among the last persons punished by it were two women named La Voisin, and La Vigoureux, and a priest named Le Sage. These persons, having pretended to the gift of fortune-telling, met with great success, but not content with this, they endeavoured to increase their means by the secret sale of a poison, quaintly termed "poudre de succession." Numbers of persons of high rank were in the habit of consulting them upon their fates, without ever suspecting their dealing in poison. But they, having kept a list of their dupes, on their arrest by the police denounced these persons as having employed them as poisoners. Numbers of the highest rank were imprisoned until they could prove their innocence: the duchess of Soissons, mother of Prince Eugene, was obliged to quit France, and the Marshal Luxembourg was thrown into the Bastille, where he remained many months. Many persons of the commoner sort were executed, as were the pretended fortune-tellers, after suffering cruel torments.

It is

The nature of the poisons employed by these secret poisoners is involved in great mystery. however probable that the ancients chiefly derived theirs from the animal or vegetable kingdoms, as mineral poisons are, for the most part, of compa

poisoned with gloves. A proposal was made to destroy Elizabeth by anointing her saddle, and Lord Essex by anointing his chair. Miss Aikin, in her Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, says "The queen in mounting would transfer the ointment to her hand: with her hand she was likely to touch her mouth and nostrils, and, from the virulence of the poison, certain death would follow." The same author quotes a minute of council in the handwriting of Cecil, "That no manner of perfume, either in apparel, sleeves, gloves, or such like, or otherwise that shall be appointed for her majesty's savour, be presented by any stranger or other person, but that the same be corrected by some other fume."

ratively late discovery. Ancient authors speak | Henry the Sixth and the queen of Navarre were frequently of hemlock, aconite, and poppy, but owing to the deficient and confused botanical descriptions of those times, it is doubtful whether they indicated the same plants as ourselves by those names. Many old authors also bear testimony to the preparation of an active poison from the sea-hare, while they all agree in the poisonous nature of the venom of the toad, which was supposed to form one of the most active ingredients of the poison used by Locusta. The opinion of the poisonous nature of the toad has descended to comparatively recent times, and Sir Thomas Browne treats of it as one of the vulgar errors. Borelli Vallisnerri and others maintain the harmlessness of this animal, and say it is eaten with impunity, and modern naturalists recognise no poisonous species. The circumstance of this reptile possessing the power of occasionally ejecting an acrid secretion from its skin, which creates local irritation to the parts to which it is applied, may have aided in establishing the opinion of its poisonous nature.

There is great reason to believe that the ancients formed their poisons by a combination of narcotic plants: the composition of the "acqua della Toffana," and of the "eau de Brinvilliers," has been much discussed. The former is usually supposed to have been a preparation of arsenic, and the latter to have consisted principally of corrosive sublimate. The celebrated" poudre de succession" was supposed to consist of finely powdered diamond, glass, or enamel, but there has always been much difference of opinion as to whether these substances are poisonous or not. While many experiments are related to show their harmlessness, several modern authors have detailed fatal results which followed their exhibition. Cellini, in his Autobiography, says that his life was attempted by diamond-powder, and the same substance has been supposed to have been used for poisoning Henrietta, duchess of Orleans, in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, and of Sir Thomas Overbury. If it act as a poison at all, it must do so from the irritation its hard particles produce; and upon the same principle the chopped hair, said to be used in Turkey, can only Dr. Oppenheim thinks that corrosive sublimate is the chief poison so frequently employed by the Turks, but Mr. Madden considers it to be, from its tastelessness, arsenic. Professor Beckman says the poison used in the East, called "powst," is prepared from the juice of the poppy.

act.

Dr. Beck states that secret poisoning has penetrated even into the forests of America, for a celebrated chief of the Omawhaws, named Blackbird, gained an immense reputation by thus dispatching all who were opposed to him, by means of arsenic, which the villany of the traders supplied him with. The skill with which the natives of Africa and the American Indians prepare the upas and other deadly poisons is well known, and Beckman says, by the confessions of several culprits, the effects which were supposed by the Africans to result from the Obeah magic are found to result from the influence of poison.

The credulity of former times is manifested in the belief of the manner in which poison might be administered. Thus accounts of poisoned flowers, fruits, and gloves are frequent. Plutarch reports that Parysatis, by anointing only one side of a knife with poison, and dividing a bird with it into two parts, poisoned Statira with the one portion, and consumed the other herself with impunity. Livia poisoned the figs on a tree, whence her husband was accustomed to pluck them. Tipot says that John of Castille was poisoned by a pair of boots prepared by a Turk.

TRIUMPHS OVER BODILY SUFFERING, INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF THE MANDANS OF NORTH AMERICA.

WE have all admired the practical philosophy of the man, who, when sick of a painful disease, thanked God that he was not subject to a still more painful one; and when under the pressure of the latter, found cause for cheerfulness that he was not visited with both diseases at the same time. Akin to this was the noble fortitude of the mariner, who, when a limb was carried away by a cannon-ball, congratulated himself that it was not his head. I do not say that any one can find cheerfulness in contemplating such Spartan spirits but that there is a religious fortitude which disarms the common ills of life of much of their power, and even enables the sufferer to find enjoyment in the midst of them.

The red men of the North American forests endure, with the most invincible apathy, all the forms of torture which the ingenuity of their enemies can devise; nor can this apparent insensibility to pain and fear be referred to more callous frames, and nerves of obtuser feeling, but to the astonishing result of their institutions, and the influence of their public opinion. Place a sufficient motive, indeed, before a human being, and the proper witnesses around him, and he may be disciplined to endure anything without showing a subdued spirit. The most timid women have gone through the most awful operations of surgery without a groan, while the attendants have been carried out in a state of insensibility, unable even to witness what another could triumph over in silent fortitude.

Innumerable instances prove to us that nature has kindly endowed us with reason and mental vigour to such an extent, that under the influence of right motive and training, no possible form of suffering can be presented, over which this power may not manifest, and has not gained, a complete triumph. Of these examples, let us regard the blessed martyrs of our religion. These prove that this undaunted selfpossession, in every conceivable shape and degree of agony, was not the result of a rare and peculiar temperament, or want of sensibility, or the possession of uncommon physical courage; that it was not because there was no perception of danger, or susceptibility of pain; this magnanimity, this impassibility to fear and pain, and death, has been exhibited in nearly equal people, of every age, each sex, and all conditions. All the shades and varieties of natural and mental difference of character were noted in the deportment of the sufferers; but they were alike in the stern proof of a courage which defied death. The fact is proved by them, as strongly as a moral fact can be proved, that the mind of every individual might find in itself a native self-possession and vigour, to enable

it to display an entire ascendancy over fear, pain, and death.

Nor does this fact rest solely for support on the history of martyrs. We could find examples of it in every department of history, and every view of human character. The timid and effeminate white man shivers, and scarcely credits his senses, as he sees the young Indian warrior of North America, smoking his pipe, singing his songs, boasting of his victories, and uttering his menaces, when enveloped in a slow of fire, apparently as unmoved, and as unconscious pain, as if sitting at his ease in his own cabin.

Mr. Catlin, an American traveller and an artist, who has lately returned from a most successful expedition into the far wilds of the west, confirms all previous accounts of the undying fortitude of the American Indians. Mr. Catlin having become fully convinced that from various causes, which cannot here be touched upon, that these tribes are rapidly declining, and that very many will in a few years become entirely extinct, set out, to use his own words, "alone, unaided, and unadvised, resolved (if my life should be spared), by the aid of my brush and pen, to rescue from oblivion so much of their primitive looks and customs as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of one lifetime could accomplish."

He devoted seven years in visiting forty-eight separate tribes, residing within the United States, and the British and Mexican territories. Besides purchasing an immense number of costumes and domestic native manufactures, he painted 310 portraits of distinguished men and women of the different tribes, and 200 other pictures, descriptive of Indian countries, their villages, games, and general customs, which are at present being exhibited in the Egyptian Hall, London. Four of these pictures represent the voluntary torture which the young men of the tribe called the Mandans endured, so long as that tribe was in existence; but to make the narrative the more distinct, let us devote a few words to their history.

The Mandans, otherwise called the See-póhs-ka-numáh-ká-kee, that is, People of the Pheasants, when visited by Mr. Catlin, were a small tribe of 2000 souls, living in two villages on the great river Missouri, 1800 miles above its junction with the Mississippi. The natives lived in earth-covered lodges, and their villages were defended by strong picquets or stakes, eighteen feet high, and a ditch. The chief wore a splendid costume, with a head-dress of raven's quills, and carried two pipes of peace in his hand; but the second chief, named the Four Bears, was the favourite and popular man of the nation. He wore a head-dress of war-eagles' quills and ermine, extending quite to the ground, and surmounted by the horns of the buffalo and skin of the magpie. Mr. Catlin records a peculiarity belonging to this tribe alone, that about one in twelve, of both sexes and of all ages, had the hair of a bright silvery gray, and exceedingly coarse and harsh, somewhat like a horse's mane. In 1837, three years after Mr. Catlin's visit, the smallpox was introduced by some traders amongst the Mandans, and only thirty-one survived, and these were soon destroyed by their enemies, so that the whole race is now utterly extinct.

In reference to the four pictures above mentioned, Mr. Catlin observes that the subsiding of the Flood was commemorated at an annual ceremony by the Mandans, and that at the same time all the young men that had arrived at manhood during the preceding year went through an ordeal of voluntary bodily torture, after which they were entitled to the respect of the chiefs and to the privilege of going on war-parties.

The first picture represents the interior of the Medicine, or Mystery-Lodge of the Mandans, during the first three successive days of the annual ceremony. The young men are seen lying around the sides of the lodge, their bodies covered with clay of different colours, and their respective shields and war-weapons hanging over their heads. The floor and sides of the lodge are ornamented with green willow-boughs. In the middle lies the old medicine-man, or mystery-man, who cries to the Great Spirit all the time, and watches these young men, who fast and thirst four days and nights preparatory to the torture.

The second picture describes the Buffalo Dance, which took place at the same time, outside the lodge, and to the strict observance of which the natives attributed the supply of buffaloes for food during the following season. The third picture represents the interior of the mystery-lodge, as it appeared to Mr. Catlin on the afternoon of the fourth day. A number of young men are seen reclining and fasting, as in the first picture; others of them have undergone the torture, and taken out of the lodge, and others yet are seen in the midst of the most horrid cruelties. A scalpingknife, hacked so as to render its edge like that of a saw, is passed through the muscular parts of the body, through the soft parts of the legs and arms, and underneath the muscles of the breast and back; wooden splints, or large flat skewers made of a strong wood, are passed through these holes in the flesh, and the young men are hung up to the roof of the lodge by ropes attached to the splints in the upper part of their bodies, while heavy weights, as buffaloskins, war-weapons, &c., are hung upon the splints in the arms and legs, so as to add to the agony of the sufferer. While thus suspended in the air, by means of their own flesh, each young man is swung round by another with a pole, till he faints, and then he is let down. One is seen who has been let down, and got strength enough to crawl to the front part of the lodge, where he is offering to the Great Spirit the little finger of his left hand, by laying it.on a buffaloskin, while another chops it off with a hatchet. In the right of this picture are all the chiefs and dignitaries of the tribe, looking on.

As a great favour, Mr. Catlin was admitted within this lodge to witness these excruciating scenes; he painted the whole from life, and says that not so much as a groan was heard to come from the tortured, but that the silence was so painfully intense, that he could hear the rasped scalping-knife tearing rather than cutting through the flesh of the young men, and that while tears were rolling down his face, and he felt almost too sick to paint the dreadful ceremony, the young men were anxious to attract his attention, that he might represent them with the calm smile upon their features, which reigned triumphant over all these terrible trials. So far, however, were the Mandans from being essentially a cruel and a savage race, that they received Mr. Catlin with every kindness and hospitality, and that enthusiastic traveller is eloquent in behalf of the better qualities of this annihilated tribe of our fellow-creatures.

The fourth picture represents what was called the Last Race. After they had all been tortured in the above manner in the mystery-lodge, the young men were led out with the weights, buffalo-skins, &c., still hanging to their flesh. A circle was formed, and each of the sufferers, taken by two athletic and fresh young men, one on each side, was forced to run round and round, till he fainted away. He was then dragged with his face in the dirt until all the weights were disengaged from him, by tearing the flesh out, when they dropped him and he lay to all appearance a

corpse, until the Great Spirit, as they said, gave him strength to rise and walk home to his lodge.

All that has been found necessary, says Mr. Flint, when speaking of other tribes, to procure this heroism, is that the children from boyhood should be constantly under a discipline, every part and step of which tends directly to shame and contempt at the least manifestation of cowardice, in view of any danger, or of a shrinking consciousness of pain in the endurance of any suffering. The males so trained never fail to show the fruit of their discipline. Sentenced to death, they almost invariably scorn to fly from their sentence when escape is in their power. If in debt, they desire a reprieve, that they may hunt, until their debts are paid: they then voluntarily return and surrender themselves to the executioner. Nothing is more common than for a friend to propose to suffer for his friend, a parent for a child, or a child for a parent.

A proof that this is the fruit of training, and not of native insensibility, is that this contempt of pain and death is considered a desirable trait only in the males. To fly, like a woman,-like her to laugh, and weep, and groan, are expressions of contempt which they apply to their enemies with ineffable scorn. The females, almost excluded from witnessing the processes of painful discipline by which the males acquire their mental hardihood, partake not of the fruits of it, and with some few exceptions, are shrinking and timid, like the children of civilisation.

The triumph obtained over bodily suffering is the most serene and sublime ascendancy of mind over matter, of the spirit over the body; it is the most imposing spectacle we can witness, the clearest proof we can contemplate, that we have that within us which is not all clay, not all mortal. The instinctive practices of savage life, as well as the refined cruelties of a heathen civilisation, teach us that man can obtain this triumph over pain for his own sake; but Christianity enables him to triumph thus for the sake of others: and by accustoming the mind to the possibility of being ourselves subjected, from whatever cause, to suffering; to keep the heart in readiness to act its part for the sake of others, as well as for its own, by studying the supreme fortitude evinced by fellow-creatures of every age and nation, may save us from the enfeebling luxuries, the enervating habits, the effeminate and soul-undoing refinements that surround on all sides and would lull asleep the better energies of those young persons, at the present day, who are placed above the "stimulus of necessity."

THE SCYTHIAN PRESENTS.

A FABLE.

WHEN Persia, in her proud estate,
Sat like a queen, with heart elate,
Recounted all her conquests gain'd,
And sigh'd for vict'ries that remain'd;
When Babylon had felt her hand,

And Thrace acknowledg'd her command,
E'en barb'rous Scythia heard from far
The rumours of approaching war!

Then met the scatter'd tribes to form
Devices 'gainst the coming storm;
And ere the sun had set, that day
Their messenger was on his way,
Direct for Persia's court, to bear

THE SCYTHIAN PRESENTS, cull'd with care;-
An offering, curiously design'd
To speak that grim assembly's mind.

High in the royal presence-room,
Bedeck'd from Persia's richest loom,
Flush'd with alternate hope and pride,
With lords and satraps at his side,
Darius sat: his fancy trac'd,
Oe'r Scythia's dry and distant waste,

His gallant army's rich success,
And laurels in the wilderness!

The stranger came with homage meet,
And laid a casket at his feet;
Then rais'd the lid with studious care,
And show'd the living treasures there.
A Bird, a Mouse, a Frog, were found,
And, last, a sheaf of arrows bound.
No message did the herald bring,
Save this "THE SCYTHIANS' OFFERING!"
The startled Bird took instant flight;
The Mouse escaped in wild affright;
The Frog o'erleapt the nearest bar,
Where lay the instruments of war.

Darius turning to the crowd
Of silken courtiers, cried aloud;
"And now, Sirs, let your wisest man
Explain these symbols, if he can."

Ôn bended knee, with downcast eye,
A favourite satrap made reply:-
"O king, rejoice! yon Bird is giv'n
To represent the air, the heav'n:
The Mouse a lively image gives
Of Earth, wherein that creature lives:
The Frog in water finds delight;
Whilst arrows are the men of might!
Thus all the earth, and air, and sea,
Are yielded to thy sovereignty:
And Scythians to that fame of thine
The battle and their arms resign."

Then said the king, with gladden'd brow,
"Well, honest Gobryas, what say'st thou?"
"O King, thy servant shall express
The truth, in words of soberness.
The presents that this Scythian brings
Are types of strange and bitter things.
Dost go to war with Scythia's host?
Then learn the end, and count thy cost!
Mark how yon fowl hath sought the sky:
So, King Darius, thou shalt fly!
The Mouse to yon sly covert fled,
So shalt thou hide thy fallen head!
And like the Frog o'erleap the bar,-
Thine own intrenchments for the war.
Nay more (to own the emblem true)
The Scythians with their darts pursue,
Till wond'ring eyes behold at last,
Thy glory gone, thy victories past!"

That honest Gobryas construed well
The Scythians' gifts, let history tell.

And oh! that wicked men from hence
Would view the gifts of Providence,
Not as rewards, but warnings, given,
Ere yet the way is clos'd to heav'n.

For then, when guilty souls would fly
Far from the Judge's wrathful eye-
Would fain o'erpass, to shun that scene,
The barrier, and the "gulf between,"
And, lest th' eternal Lamb condemn,
Call on the rocks to cover them-
Lo! for the still rebellious heart,
The bow is bent, and fix'd the dart!-M.

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Magazine.

AUGUST, 1840.

PRICE ONE PENNY.

{ONE

[graphic]

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE PORT OF MALTA, AT THE TIME OF THE KNIGHTS.

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