6Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved--Examples from Bayeux tapestry
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS IN VOL. I.
Frontispiece--Gardens of the Hotel de Soissons. (From a print in Mr. Hawkins' collection.)
Vignette--The Bubblers' Arms, Prosperity. (_Bubblers' Mirror, or
England's Folly_.)
John Law. (From a rare print by Leon Schenk. 1720)
The Regent D'Orleans
Old Palais Royal from the Garden. (From a scarce print, circa 1720) Law's House; Rue de Quincampoix. (From Nodier's Paris) Humpbacked Man hiring himself as a Table Hotel de Soissons. (From Nodier's Paris) The Coach upset 7 Murder of a Broker by Count D'Horn John Law as Atlas. (From England under the House of Hanover) Caricature--Lucifer's new Row Barge Procession of Miners for the Mississippi The Chancellor D'Aguesseau Caricature--Law in a Car drawn by Cocks M. D'Argenson Caricature--Neck or Nothing, or Downfall of the Mississippi Company The South-Sea House. (From a print, circa 1750) Harley Earl of Oxford Sir Robert Walpole Cornhill. (Print, circa 1720) Stockjobbing Card, or the Humours of Change Alley. 1720. (From the Bubblers' Medley) Caricature--People climbing the Tree of Fortune. (From the 8 Bubblers' Medley) The Gateway to Merchant Tailors' Hall. (Gateway from old print) Mr. Secretary Craggs Caricature--Beggars on Horseback. (From the Bubblers' Medley) Caricature--Britannia stript by a South-Sea Director Caricature--The Brabant Screen. (Copied from a rare print of the time, in the collection of E. Hawkins, Esq., F.S.A.) Bonfires on Tower Hill The Earl of Sunderland Caricature--Emblematic Print of the South-Sea Scheme. (From a print by Hogarth) Caricature--Bubblers' Arms: Despair. (From _Bubblers' Mirror, or England's Glory_) Conrad Gesner The Alchymist. (From print after Teniers) Albertus Magnus 9 Arnold de Villeneuve Raymond Lulli House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges. (From Sommerard's Album) Cornelius Agrippa Paracelsus Dr. Dee Dr. Dee's Show-stone and Magic Crystal. (Originals in the possession of Lord Londesborough and British Museum) Innspruck. (From Nodier's Paris) House of Cagliostro (Rue de Clery, No. 278), Paris Mother Shipton's House Henry Andrews, the original "Francis Moore, physician" Nostradamus. (From the frontispiece to a collection of his Prophecies, published at Amsterdam A.D. 1666) Serlo clipping Henry I.'s hair Peter the Great 10 Bayeux Tapestry PREFACE. In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the philosopher's stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of 11 stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originated,--that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate them entirely from the popular mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. Some of the subjects introduced may be familiar to the reader; but the Author hopes that sufficient novelty of detail will be found even in these, to render them acceptable, while they could not be wholly omitted in justice to the subject of which it was proposed to treat. The memoirs of the South-Sea madness and the Mississippi delusion are more complete and copious than are to be found elsewhere; and the same may be said of the history of the Witch Mania, which contains an account of its terrific progress in Germany, a part of the subject which has been left comparatively untouched by Sir Walter Scott in his _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, the most important that have yet appeared on this fearful but most interesting subject. Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have lasted so 12 long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would scarcely suffice to detail their history. The present may be considered more of a miscellany of delusions than a history--a chapter only in the great and awful book of human folly which yet remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he would write in five hundred volumes! Interspersed are sketches of some lighter matters,--amusing instances of the imitativeness and wrongheadedness of the people, rather than examples of folly and delusion. Religious matters have been purposely excluded as incompatible with the limits prescribed to the present work; a mere list of them would alone be sufficient to occupy a volume. [Illustration: JOHN LAW.] MONEY MANIA.--THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME. Some in clandestine companies combine; Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line; With air and empty names beguile the town, And raise new credits first, then cry 'em down; Divide the empty nothing into shares, And set the crowd together by the ears.--_Defoe_. 13 The personal character and career of one man are so intimately connected with the great scheme of the years 1719 and 1720, that a history of the Mississippi madness can have no fitter introduction than a sketch of the life of its great author John Law. Historians are divided in opinion as to whether they should designate him a knave or a madman. Both epithets were unsparingly applied to him in his lifetime, and while the unhappy consequences of his projects were still deeply felt. Posterity, however, has found reason to doubt the justice of the accusation, and to confess that John Law was neither knave nor madman, but one more deceived than deceiving, more sinned against than sinning. He was thoroughly acquainted with the philosophy and true principles of credit. He understood the monetary question better than any man of his day; and if his system fell with a crash so tremendous, it was not so much his fault as that of the people amongst whom he had erected it. He did not calculate upon the avaricious frenzy of a whole nation; he did not see that confidence, like mistrust, could be increased almost ad infinitum, and that hope was as extravagant as fear. How was he to foretell that the French people, like the man in the fable, would kill, in their frantic eagerness, the fine goose he had brought to lay them so many golden eggs? His fate was like that which may be supposed to have overtaken the first adventurous boatman who rowed from Erie to Ontario. Broad and smooth was the river on which he embarked; rapid and pleasant was his progress; and who was to stay him in his career? Alas for him! the cataract was nigh. He saw, when it was too late, that the tide which wafted him so joyously along was a tide of destruction; and when he endeavoured to retrace his way, he found that the current was too strong for his weak efforts to stem, and that he drew nearer every instant to the tremendous falls. Down he went over the sharp rocks, and the waters with him. He was dashed to pieces with his bark, but the waters, maddened and turned to foam by the rough descent, only 14 boiled and bubbled for a time, and then flowed on again as smoothly as ever. Just so it was with Law and the French people. He was the boatman, and they were the waters. John Law was born at Edinburgh in the year 1671. His father was the younger son of an ancient family in Fife, and carried on the business of a goldsmith and banker. He amassed considerable wealth in his trade, sufficient to enable him to gratify the wish, so common among his countrymen, of adding a territorial designation to his name. He purchased with this
