Choo, knocks head and worships.-What do you say to the great Moon of poetry, the light of the universe, Kwang Chung, lord of the Celestial Empire, and head of the world, who wrote three hundred volumes of poetry, in the interpretation of which three thousand learned pundits lost their senses? The whole universe is filled with his verses."

"We never heard of him before," cried they all.

"What a set of foreign barbarians !" said the Chinese.

"And what think you of our great prophet Mahomet?" asked the Turk. "Mashallah! his sword was invincible against the enemies of the faith, and his wisdom more invincible than his sword. All knowledge is contained in the Koran."

"It may be, but we have never read it," said they all, with the exception of the true believers.

"Dogs!" cried he, "may your beards be converted into shoe brushes, and your eyes become blind as your understandings !"

As is usual in these cases, contention succeeded argument, and abuse was answered by recrimination. Each being unable to establish his own claim to superiority, made himself amends by detracting from the claims of his opponents; and if all had been true which they said of each other, their heroes and great men would have been a parcel of miserable creatures, unworthy the gratitude, or even the remembrance of posterity.

66

"And this is Universal Fame!" exclaimed an old dervice, who sat smoking his pipe quietly in a corner, without taking part in the debate, to be adored as a prophet in one quarter of the world, and abhorred as an imposter in the others ;-to be a hero in one nation, an oppressor in the eyes of its neighbors; to be held an oracle of wisdom on one side of a river, an apostle of error on the other;-to be venerated in one place as the champion of liberty, and stigmatized in another as a rebel and traitor;—and to be either unknown to, or hated and despised by more than one half of mankind. This, this is UNIVERSAL FAME !"

SONG.

THERE is a feeling in the heart concealed,

Sacred within its holiest shrine,"

Which,-like the flower,-whose beauties are revealed

Only when genial summers shine,-

Its depth and hallowed power will not display,

Till warmed by genial love's enkindling ray.

There is a mystic tone, which meets the ear,
And thrills mysterious in the heart,
Which others may not heed, if they should hear,
Though purest joy to one it may impart,

Waking a chord harmonious, that will own
The magic touch of one, and one alone.

Limerock, June 12, 1833.

G. W. H.

ON THE POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF EUROPE:-
LYCANTHROPY.

AMERICA is new. She is a bright shining penny fresh from the mint, without a speck of that precious green ærugo which medallists so highly prize upon a head of Otho or Pescennius Niger. She has no antiquities. The want of them is a loss to her poets; but to the politician or man of business, the deficiency has not hitherto been found an evil. Whether, as our numbers increase, and their relations with each other, and with the foreigner, become more complicated, it will ever be so felt, time will reveal to our grandchildren. Meanwhile, there is nothing in which it is more apparent, that we were born to-day, and not last night, than in the paucity of our superstitions. That word is not here employed to denote the opinions or practices, which enter into the regular religious creed of any given sect. Many such do, no doubt, exist, which are sufficiently erroneous, to deserve this epithet. But what we allude to are vulgar or popular traditions, legends, and superstitions. It may be amusing to examine one of these, which has been of long and extensive prevalency in the antiquated societies of Europe.

The wolf is an animal well known on our continent. But he is only known in his natural shape and condition. In Europe, on the contrary, the inhabitants of those countries, in which he abounds, have been in the habit of supposing that the fiercest wolves are men, transformed by magic into that shape for the purpose of devouring their fellows, or, at least, their flocks and herds.

Herodotus mentions that such an idea exists in Scythia. "The Neuri," he says, "are very little better than conjurors. For the Scythæ, as well as the Greeks who are settled in Scythia, say of them, that every Neurian is turned into a wolf for some days in each year, after which days he returns to his former state." The belief of similar transformations found its way into the more refined nations of Greece and Italy. "That men are ever changed into wolves," says Pliny, "we must either confidently disbelieve, or make up our minds to believe all the things, which long experience has shown to be fabulous; but I will explain by what means that notion has become so inveterate, that a turnskin (versipellis) is become a common term of reproach. Evanthes, a Greek author of some estimation, reports upon the authority of Arcadian writers, that it is the custom in a tribe descended from a certain Anthus, to choose one man by lot out of each family, who is led to the shores of a lake in that country, where he takes off his clothes and hangs them upon an oak tree, swims across, betakes himself to the wilderness, and is transfigured into a wolf; and for the space of nine years he associates with a herd of others such as himself. But if during those nine years he abstains from devouring men, he may return to the lake, swim back again, recover his human shape, and become such as he was before, except being nine years older. Fabius goes further and says, that he resumes his former clothing. It is wonderful what lengths Grecian credulity will go! There is no lie however barefaced but has its witness; Agriopas, for instance, who wrote the book called Olympionicæ, relates, that Demænetus, the Parrhasian, at a sacrifice, which the Arcadians at

that time still celebrated to Jupiter Lycaeus with a human victim, tasted the entrails of a boy who had been immolated, and converted himself into a wolf. The same Demænetus, ten years afterwards, being restored to the human form, contended as a pugilistic Athlete, and returned victorious from Olympia." The transformations in the tribe of Anthus were known familiarly to Plautus, a Roman much more ancient than Pliny, for his Amphitryon exclaims as follows, "Ye gods! what distemper agitates my family? What strange things I beheld, on my return from abroad! Now I see it was all true, which I have heard in old tales, that the Anthican men in Arcadia were changed, and remained savage brutes, and were never recognized again, even by their own parents." Act. 4, sc. 3.

At the Banquet of Trimalchion (in Petronius Arbiter) Niceros gives the following minute account of the way in which these transformations were effected, in the Emperor Nero's days. "It happened that my master was gone to Capua to dispose of some second-hand goods. I took the opportunity, and persuaded our guest to walk with me to the fifth mile stone. He was a valiant soldier, and a sort of a grim water-drinking Pluto. About cock-crow, when the moon was shining as bright as mid-day, we came among the monuments. My friend began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather in a mood to sing or count the stars; and when I turned to look at him, lo! he had already stripped himself and laid down his clothes near him. My heart was in my nostrils, and I stood like a dead man; but he sprinkled* salt water round about his garments, and on the sudden became a wolf. Do not think I jest; I would not tell a lie for any man's estate. But to return to what I was saying, when he was become a wolf he began howling, and fled into the woods. At first, I hardly knew where I was; and afterwards, when I went to take up his clothes, they were turned into stone. Who died with fear, but me? Yet I drew my sword and when,-cutting the air right and left, till I reached the villa of my sweetheart,-I entered the court-yard, I almost breathed my last; the sweat ran down my throat, my eyes were dim, and I thought I should never recover myself. My Melissa wondered why I was out so late, and said to me, 'had you come sooner, you might at least have helped us, for a wolf has entered the farm and wounded all our cattle, but he had not the best of the joke, for all he escaped, since our slave ran a lance through his neck.' When I heard this, I could not doubt, and now as it was clear light, I ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper; when I came to the place where the clothes had been turned to stone, I could find nothing, except blood, but when I got home, I found my friend, the soldier, in bed, bleeding at the neck like an ox, and the doctor dressing his wound. I then knew he was a turnskin; nor would I ever have broke bread with him again, no, not if you had killed me." The following verses from Dryden's translation of Virgil, are illustrative of the same extraordinary vagary of the human mind;—

These poisonous plants, for magic use designed,
Noblest and best of all the baneful kind,

Old Mocris brought me from the Pontic strand,
And culled the mischief of a bounteous land.

Smeared with these powerful juices, on the plain
He howls a wolf, among the hungry train.

N. B. Circum-minxit vestimenta.

Olaus Magnus, the Swedish Archbishop of Upsala, in his great work on the Condition of the Northern Nations, enlarges upon the subject in the following words:-"Talking of wolves, I may do well to add that, that species of them, who are transformed from men, and which Pliny confidently says we should account false and fabulous, are to be found in great abundance, in the more northerly countries. In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although the people yearly suffer a very great loss of cattle by the rapacity of the wolves, they think but little of that, in comparison with the damage done to them by men converted into wolves. For every year, on the feast of the Nativity of Christ, a great multitude of wolves converted out of men, the inhabitants of various places, assemble by night, in some stated place, which they have agreed upon among themselves; and afterwards upon that same night, they rage so fiercely both against men and all domestic animals, that the people suffer more detriment from them than from true and natural wolves. For it is ascertained that they will attack the houses of men who live in the woodlands, and try to break open the doors, in order to devour both man and beast. They enter the beer cellars, and will drink up several barrels of beer and honey-mead, and then they pile up the empty barrels one on top of the other in the middle of the cellar, in which particular they differ from natural and genuine wolves. The place in which those wolves happen to sleep on that night, is accounted prophetic by the people of the country; for if any one of them suffer any mishap on that spot, such as the overturn of a carriage, or tumbling into the snow, they are fully persuaded that he will die in that year, having experienced the truth of it during a long course of time. There is an old wall, somewhere in Lithuania, Samogitan or Courland, the remains of a ruined castle, to which many thousands of men, turned into wolves, are in the habit of resorting every year at a stated season, to try one another's agility in jumping; and those who cannot jump over the wall, as often happens to the fat ones, are flogged with whips by the prefects of the assembly. Lastly, it is confidently asserted, that the magnates and first noblemen of the country are members of that community-and, in my next chapter, I will explain how they usually arrive at such a point of madness, and at so very terrible a metamorphose, which, after they have once undergone it, they cannot neglect at the stated period...... .Whenever any person, either a German, or a native, being desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law, wishes to become a member of that accursed college, who (when it seems good to them) are turned into wolves,— —so that, at certain seasons of the year, and at appointed places he and his servants should, throughout his whole life, give them the rendezvous, and work mischief, and even death, to other men and to cattlethey use this most unnatural method of transformation. It immediately follows upon drinking a cup of beer, prepared by one who is skilled in such veneficous arts, and who, at the same time uses certain words; provided always that he who drinks it, is a party consenting. From that time forth, he has only to retire into some cellar or dark wood, whenever he is so disposed, and entirely transmute his human shape into the likeness of a wolf. And he can alternately lay it aside, or resume it, as he pleases. To come to examples-A certain nobleman was travelling through a long wood, and with him certain rustic servants, acquainted (as many are in those parts) with this sort of magic. The evening was closing in, there was no lodging

at hand, and they were forced to spend the night in the wood, and were moreover hard pressed by hunger. At last one of them proposed to the others, to remain quiet, and, whatever they might see, to make no disturbance, for that he saw a flock of sheep at a distance, and would very shortly procure one for them to roast, so that they might not be quite supperless. And with that he ran into the thick of the wood, that he might not be seen, and transfigured himself into a wolf. Then he rushed impetuously into the flock, and seized a sheep, and carried it off into the wood; and presently he brought it up to the carriage, being in the form of a wolf; his companions who were privy to his theft, took it from him and hid it in the carriage; and he went back into the thicket and reassumed the human shape. It also happened not many years ago, in Livonia, that a dispute arose between a nobleman's wife and her slave, (for they have more slaves there than in any other region of Christendom,) whether or not men could be turned into wolves. At last he said that, if he were permitted, he would presently show a proof of the fact. He went into the cellar by himself, and shortly came out in the form of a wolf. But as he fled towards the wood, the dogs pursued him and, though he defended himself fiercely, tore out one of his eyes; and the next day he returned to his mistress with one eye. Also it is perfectly certain, that, if a wolf transmuted from a man suffer mutilation of any of his members, he will, as soon as he resumes the figure of a man, be wanting of that member. But if he be killed by dogs or huntsmen, he will never make his appearance as a man again. And it is a fact recorded within recent memory, that the Duke of Prussia, having little faith in such magic, ordered a man, who was proficient in it, into strict confinement, in order that he should turn himself into a wolf, which accordingly he did; but the Duke afterwards burnt him alive, that such idolatry might not go unpunished. For divine as well as human laws severely punish such crimes."-So much saith the Archbishop of Upsala. A similar anecdote of a Grand Duke of Muscovy, is mentioned by Boissard in his book on magic. A man was taken up upon a charge of being a were-wolf, and brought before the prince, who asked him if it were true he could transform himself, and he said it was true enough. "Come then," said the prince, "and let me see that metamorphose." The man went away with his jailors to a sequestered spot, and performed the mysteries which the devil had taught him, and suddenly he became a wolf, with glaring eyes and horrid bristles on his back, but the chains with which he was previously bound, were still on him. Meanwhile, the Grand Duke had sent for two fierce and strong mastiffs, which he set upon the lupine monster, and they tore him to pieces, before he could recover his natural shape. Doctor Hakewill, in his Apology of the Power and Providence of God, quotes from Pomponius Sabinus upon Ovid, a story, which "he tells us of his own knowledge," viz. "that the like are here to be found among the Borussians, of whom one was lately taken and brought by the boors of the country before the Duke of Prussia, whose cattle he was supposed to have devoured. He was indeed a deformed man, and not much unlike a wild beast, having wounds in his face; which he was said to have received from the teeth of dogs, during his change. This fellow being by some examined, (whom the prince deputed to that business,) affirmed that he was twice in the year so changed, namely about Christmas, and again about midsummer. Whereupon, being kept close prisoner in the