plomacy present itself with admissible propositions at the conferences, which are about to open, for peace. And if the change of opinion which is just accomplished at Frankfort is serious; if the Assembly will not put at naught all reasonable anticipations, there is reason to hope that peace will be made. From the Spectator of 14 October. It is a mistake to talk of these popular outbursts in Europe as if they were the capricious excesses of a few individuals, wantonly wicked; they are the final explosion of causes long maturing; the immediate actors are themselves the sport of events; some of those now borne along by the torrent of revolution have given, and still would give, all their sympathies to order. But there is no contending against such suicidal obstinacy as that which has possessed the government at Vienna. Twice to be detected in attempting to cajole the people, the second time detected in more criminal conspiracies than before-twice to be defeated, twice to fly-is to shatter every hold on popular respect or traditional affection. A few more such events might be fatal to royalty throughout Europe; might force the statesmen, like those of France, to "adopt the republic;" and by rendering the restoration of monarchy impossible, might plunge the whole of the continent in that sea of By exposing the utter feebleness of the imperial troubles from which France has no rescue-the government, the flight of the emperor casts loose tentative efforts to reconcile republican fancies with the reins of government, leaving each province to the existing monarchical framework of society, and rule itself; the empire is again dissolved into its to construct an enduring commonwealth while the elements, and Vienna ceases to be a great capital. speculative citizens are fighting over disputed theoThe threats conveyed in the proclamation which ries and seeking the bubble conviction in the canthe emperor left behind him add spite to impo-non's mouth. THE new revolution at Vienna will be felt in every part of Europe. It gravely modifies the whole view of continental politics; and although we regard it on the whole with renewed hopes for the development of national energies and liberties, we cannot shut our eyes to the manifest dangers. Assuredly, the sane statesmen of Europe will devise some general congress to take counsel, or the crowned heads will finish the business of royalty without hope of redemption. tence. The intrigues of the anonymous statesmen This is indeed a condition of affairs for the by whom the emperor was surrounded, which had statesmen of Europe to ponder diligently, and on played off party against party in Austria to deceive broader grounds than those of established preceall, had set race against race in the provinces, had dent or diplomatic etiquette. There is no preceoutraged the official usages and decencies of Vien-dent for the emergency, there is no etiquette for na in issuing proclamations signed by the lunatic such a hurricane; forms are blown to the winds; hand of the monarch and countersigned by no minis- and no guide can lead out of the chaos but the unter the intrigues which had disgraced the imperial erring clue of truthful sincerity and hardhanded court, reducing it to the low character of scheme-reality. ing adventurers-which had done all this, and failed-have stamped the imperial government with a character of worthlessness that nothing could retrieve, even under the most triumphant restoration, except a change in the person of the monarch and a thorough weeding of the court. EFFECT OF COLORED GLASS UPON VEGETATION. Violet-colored glass is stated to have been first used in France, for aiding the ripening of grapes; the rationale of the experiment being the partial exclusion of the caloric rays, and the greater encourBut the fall will have its effect beyond the Aus- agement of the chemical rays. In England the extrian empire. In all Germany and Italy, the periment has failed; and French beans and authority of kings is newly shaken by the degrada- glass, but were long, spindly, and tremulous; in strawberry-plants grew rapidly under violet-colored tion of the royal class in the person of so great a short, very unhealthy. A very light green has potentate; a counterpoise, therefore, is removed been found to answer better than a colorless glass from the agitation of the extreme demagogues, to for conservatories; and, by recommendation of Mr. the danger of true political development and free- Hunt, author of "Researches on Light," &c., the dom. In Berlin, the violent classes are gaining new vast conservatory at Kew has been glazed with courage. The Sicilians will know that the Nea- this kind of flat glass, in order to afford the plants protection from the scorching heat of the meridian politan Bourbon has a prop the less. France is sun. A great improvement would be effected by already putting her " army of the Alps" on the the panes being of an arched form, and placed in move for action. The decency of kingly authority such an aspect that the morning and evening rays has been betrayed by its impersonator at Vienna- of the sun would not have a tendency to reflect the has been trampled in the mud, and hunted away rays back again, as is the case with thick flat glass, in ignominious flight; but kingly authority has the irregular thicknesses of which, when the rays been the type of settled order throughout the pass through them at right angles, act as burningglasses; whereas, by the arrangement above suglarger part of Europe, and the possible conse-gested, the rays would pass in a direct course quences of its decline are formidable; in many provinces, the portent means not republicanism, nor communism, but anarchy-a renewal of the dark ages when Rome had disappeared. through the glass, and the condensed "drip" on the inside would be effectually carried off by channels on each side of the interior of the frames.Mr. Apsley Pellatt's Curiosities of Glass-making. SHORT ARTICLES-Indian Arrow Poison; Saltness of Sea Water; Icelandic Plants, 349.Geological Changes; Petrified Forest, 364.-The Pulque of Mexico; Action of the Sun, 370.-Metals in the Human Blood, 374.-Coral Formation; Alexander Brougniart; Vegetation and Climate, 378.-Effects of Colored Glass on Vegetation, 383. PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit cf | now becomes every intelligent American to be informeu Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favor- of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And ably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is this not only because of their nearer connection with our twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, spirit and freshness to it by many things which were ex- through a rapid process of change, to some new state of cluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, or foresee. are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader. The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies. The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very ully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own. While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified. We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff" by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste. TERMS.-The LIVING AGE is published every Satur- Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangements day, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Brom-in all parts of North America, for increasing the circula field sts., Boston; Price 124 cents a number, or six dollars tion of this work-and for doing this a liberal commission a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves thankfully received and promptly attended to. To in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be subject with any agent who will send us undoubted referaddressed to the office of publication, as above. Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows: Complete sets, in fifteen volumes, to the end of 1847, handsomely bound, and packed in neat boxes, are for sale at thirty dollars. Any volume may be had separately at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. Any number may be had for 12 cents; and it may be worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. ences. Postage. When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet, at 4 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (1) cts.) We add the definition alluded to: A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than one month, conveying intelligence of passing events." Monthly parts.-For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in Binding. We bind the work in a uniform, strong, and each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. good style; and where customers bring their numbers in But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and good order, can generally give them bound volumes in ex-fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 change without any delay. The price of the binding is cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume 50 cents a volume. As they are always bound to one containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in pattern, there will be no difficulty in matching the future eighteen months. volumes. WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845. Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 237.-2 DECEMBER, 1848. From the Dublin University Magazine. PYTHONIC AND DEMONIAC POSSESSION IN INDIA AND JUDEA. [At the end of the second part of this article is the following postscript, with which we think it well to duce the subject to the readers of the Living Agc.] able was this-whether the daimons or pneumata expelled, were really and objectively [and not merely subjectively in the minds of the patients and spectators] Satanic spirits; or whether they ought not rather to be regarded as peculiar forms of physintro-ical disease, which, owing to the convulsive action, mental derangement, and temporary loss of proper consciousness which attended them, had assumed, SINCE the foregoing was in type, our eye has in the popular superstition of the later Jews, this fallen upon a critical notice of the first part of this supernatural character; as among the Greeks and paper, which describes it as having for its scope and Romans they were regarded as the visitations of object, "to explain the miracles of the Redeemer Apollo and Dindymene. And this view of the on natural principles, and to limit his power by the question we considered not only as strongly pressed faith of those on whom it was exercised." A upon our examination by the system of possession judgment thus pronounced upon an isolated portion and exorcism which we encounter in Hindoo life, of a very extensive and complicated argument, and the ideas which we find stereotyped in the Hinwhich referred for its completion to an antecedent doo languages, classic as well as vernacular; but and a succeeding part, must necessarily be precipi- perfectly warranted, and almost forced upon our tate, and could hardly fail of proving unjust. But acceptance by the peculiar phraseology of the New it is very evident, that even the brief fragment thus Testament itself, as already pointed out. We have characterized was either read very hastily, or very presented this, not as the sole, but as one of the imperfectly comprehended. Of the power of faith views which may be taken of these daimoniacal to triumph over matter, and the necessity of its affections by believers; as one which has already presence to such triumph, not representing that been openly adopted by several Christian commenpower as independent of the divine will, or that tators in regard to some, at least, of these cases, necessity as a limitation of the divine power, but and is very widely diffused among medical men ; both as laws of the spiritual universe, and the di- and one which our daily increasing acquaintance vine action-the miraculous itself, the suspension with the facts of Eastern life, and the language and of the natural laws of the material world, being ideas of Eastern nations, is likely to force still furonly the result of other higher laws of the spiritual ther upon our attention, however unwilling. And world, with which we are imperfectly acquainted, this view, the consideration of which is thus, at no but according to which laws, flowing as they do distant day, inevitable, we have presented, for the from the attributes of his own perfect and unchange- first time, we believe, fully developed, and develable nature, the Deity must ever be supposed to oped from a Christian point of view, fully harmoact, and not, as man, from passion, caprice, or ex-nized with the most entire and undoubting belief in pediency of this power and necessity of faith we have said nothing but what is to be adduced from the words of our Lord himself and his disciples, as quoted by us. And, so far from attempting, or wishing, to explain the Redeemer's miracles on natural principles, we expressly pronounced the power which wrought those miracles to be a power as mysterious, and as far removed from human comprehension, as the dominion which Satan had obtained in the world through sin. We especially appealed to our Lord's restoring the dead son of the widow, calling back the tainted Lazarus from the tomb, and commanding the winds and waves to be still, in proof of his omnipotence, and his consequent power to command homage and acknowledgment, even from the shattered intellect of the maniac. We maintained these cures of the the daimoniacs to be rightly selected as triumphant evidence of the power and mission of Him, who came to destroy the works of the devil. We placed them in the same category as the cure of the paralytic, the cleansing of the lepers, the raising of the dead, the pardon and restoration of the penitent sinner; as exertions of a divine power, manifestly above nature, which rebuked Satan, and drave him out of his usurped dominion over man. In all this there is surely no attempt to deny or explain away the miracles of our Divine Redeemer. The one sole point which, either in the former or the present portion of the paper, we have suggested as debatLIVING AGE. VOL. XIX. 25 CCXXXVII. our Lord's divinity, and with every difficulty of 66 suffered you to Moses, bethe beginning it more perfect dispensation. And if this adaptation | the sons of Sceva, abound; that the phenomena to the capacity of his people, this condescending re-thus regarded by the common people, and even by gard to their weakness, and unwillingness to break the higher classes, who have not come into much too rudely and suddenly through ideas, which were contact with Europeans, are, when encountered by the result of their social condition, characterize the our medical practitioners there, looked upon and teaching of Divine wisdom in the moral education treated simply as cases of physical disease, madof the human race, how much more so in regard to ness, or epilepsy, or nervous affections, or the rematters of natural or speculative truth, of medical sult of obstructed functions; and many of the Hinand psychological inquiry? Our Lord expressly doos themselves who attend our medical schools, or tells his disciples, "I have yet many things to say whom an English education has taught to think for unto you, but ye cannot bear them now," (John xvi. themselves, are beginning to take the same purely 12.) Thus also St. Paul, "I have fed you with medical view of them. It is difficult, perhaps, for milk and not meat, for hitherto ye were not able to one who has not himself come into contact with bear it, neither yet now are ye able," (1 Cor. iii. 2.) it, to realize the extent of the difficulty which the And to him who does not see throughout the whole evangelical demoniac narratives, as commonly and Scripture, and will not admit as necessary elements literally understood, present to the Hindoo mind. for understanding and interpreting it, these two Thus literally understood, they are to the orthodox great principles, the sacred volume will present Hindoo, who believes in his own dual system of difficulties far more insuperable than any which possession, only a confirmation of his own creed; their concession, or the theory which we have they strengthen his belief in the daimons and the based upon them, would involve. We humbly divinities, and the exorcists of his own land; and conceive, that in endeavoring to illustrate this diffi- to him, therefore, our Lord is only one of many cult and obscure subject, from analogies of fact divine men. The educated Hindoo, on the conand language, never before made available, and trary, who sees these cases treated in our hospitals hitherto accessible to few, and to reconcile with as disease, not by thaumaturgists or clergymen, Christian belief that view of it, which so many con- but by surgeons and apothecaries, draws from siderations seem to suggest, but which hitherto thence an argument against our Lord's divinity, might seem at variance with faith, we have done a and against the inspiration of the New Testament. service to the cause of Christian truth. To har- We believe that in the two principles we have laid monize faith in those great divine truths, which down is to be found the best, if not the only, must ever be held unchanged and unchangeable, answer to such objections. The very paper now with the advances which knowledge is daily mak-concluded owes its origin to the remarks made to ing in the realms of nature, of history, and of us upon the case of the Gadarene daimoniac, by a science, is a task, the performance of which is in- well-educated Hindoo gentleman, who was familiar dispensable to the church. For, unless faith ever with the demoniac system prevalent among his own permanent, and science ever advancing, ever widen- people, on returning to us a copy of Warner's ing its intellectual views, and changing its intellec- Diatessaron. He and many of his friends are, we tual formulas, be continually brought into concord, know, readers of this magazine; and we trust, absolute infidelity must ere long be the result. that in the very views which have elicited the hasty Who, let us ask, best serves the cause of religion censure of our fellow-countryman and co-religion-the ecclesiastical authority, who issues a decree ist, our Hindoo readers will discover some of their against the motion of the earth, "decretum summi greatest difficulties removed, and find our Lord's Pontificis contra motum terræ," as a Jesuit mathe-divinity and wisdom vindicated in perfect harmony matician significantly terms it, or the commentator with the facts and the ideas, in the midst of which who humbly confesses the fact which he finds writ- they are themselves living. We must here, howten in one revelation, the heavens which declare the ever, repeat emphatically, what we have before glory of God, and the firmament which showeth said, that we have presented the physical theory his handiwork; and endeavors with earnestness of possession as one side of the question only; as and reverence, to reconcile it with the forms of one meriting great consideration, and fully reconcilexpression employed in another revelation of a able with Christian faith; but not as excluding the different character, and having a different object-spiritual view. Between these two views we leave the law of the Lord which is perfect, converting the every one to select that which best consorts with soul; the testimony which is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes which are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment which is pure, enlightening the eyes? The same holds good in regard to the discoveries in geological science; to unforeseen but well-established results of historic esearch; and to these daimoniac cases, which, always a difficulty, our recent advances in ethnograpical knowledge begin to place in quite a new light. And if any one should object," But why moot unecessarily this difficult question," our answer is that we have not done so unnecessarily. Our readers should remember that translations of the Gospels are now widely diffused, and frequently discussed, through that land where the dual system of demoniac and divine possession obtains, where men or women possessed with daimons, or with divinities, damsels with spirits of divination, and vagabond exorcists or "perambulators," [&Qozoμeroi,] like his own convictions and mode of thinking. But this we consider as undeniable, that whatever view be taken of the Jewish, must be taken also of the Hindoo daimoniac cases, and of the analogous phenomena, lunacy, epilepsy, chorea, hysteria, &c., among ourselves. These may be all, as Schlegel seems to hint, the result of demoniac action. Such a view would be more consistent and harmonious and one we could far more readily embrace, than that which characterizes the same class of facts, as spiritual in one country and epoch, and physical in another. In conclusion, as the investigation of truth, and not the triumph of particular opinions is our object, we cheerfully commit our ideas to a candid examination, and the test of time; well assured, that, if founded on truth, they will ultimately prevail; contented, that, if erroneous, they should encounter that failure, which is the due meed of error. PART I. pagan nations, of the notions of a dual possession, ical phenomena; which duality in the notion, is in connection with certain physical and psychologobviously false; for all Christians, at least, will deny the possibility of the alleged possession of genuine divine possession; and will, therefore, the Hindoos by Devee or Shivu being, in truth, a agree with us, that both possessions are intrinsically of the same radical character, whatever that character may be; which duality, therefore, being false, really antagonist powers, and not being, on the not being dependent on, or proceeding from two other hand, attributable, at least the antagonism of its character and operations, to a single demoniac influence, for this were to array Satan against Satan In a former number* we laid before our readers the theory of demoniac possession prevalent among the Hindoos, and pointed out the resemblance which its actual phenomena present to a class of symptoms, that, throughout Europe, in the present age, are regarded as manifestations of physical disease; as varieties of lunacy or mania; forms of epilepsy, hysteria, chorea; or anomalous consequences of nervous derangement, or functional irregularity. We next noticed the kindred, though in theory the antagonist, state of divine possession, known by the name of uvusuru, the season of divine visitation; or, still more popularly, by that of Waren, the living, moving, wind, pneuma, must be sought for in purely natural and philoor afflatus of deity; and, finding in the practical sophical causes-in the history of the human mind exemplifications of the latter, that, though there in the appearance of certain natural phenomena exists some difference in the accompanying circumstances, and in the supposed causes, immediate or of man's advancement, these latter present to the -and in the impression which, at certain periods remote, and a very great difference in the moral medium through which the possessed and the spec- So far only, to afford some solution for this mys. former, as evidence or indicia of the spiritual world. tators behold the occurrence, and the consequent terious duality of possession among pagan nations, language which they hold regarding it, the radical this curious distinction between the demoniac and phenomena in the person, and the consciousness of the individual supposed to be divinely possessed the divine, among those to whom the true divine -cases of clear imposture, or mere self-excitement, if they had any spiritual existence at all, we must was unknown, and all whose worshipped Numina, and self-delusion, excepted-present no essential difference, though often less intense in degree, and regard as alike demoniac; philosophical reasoning less painful in character, from those exhibited in far it does not in any way trench on the religious is admissible, nay, is absolutely necessary; and so demoniac possession; being still, apparently, identical or analogous with what we encounter in some question, i. e., on the real nature of these possesof the varieties of phrenetic, convulsive, or nervous duced to one category. But the religious question sions, now stripped of their false duality, and redisease; a few of the higher and more rare ex-is not far off; nay, it was this which originated, amples, affording a parallel to what has been ob- and lent its main interest to the whole inquiry, and served in cases of theomania and mesmeric exalta- it must, eventually, be encountered. For in truth, tion, whatever the real nature of these conditions be; finding, moreover, that the same possessions are viewed by different classes, and by the same classes, at different stages, in opposite lights: the demoniac, frequently brightening into the divine and the divine, detected by some Ithuriel touch, or, by the test of time alone, casting off the counterfeit garment of light, in which they had exacted homage, and standing forth confessed, angels of darkness-demoniac tabernacles; finding this essential identity of phenomena amidst two opposite modes of moral judgment, and these two moral ory of demons laid down in our former paper, was judgments themselves often melting into each other, we ventured to propose a theory, which would explain the difficulty, and account for the confusion; and, ascending beyond the present dual form of possession to the unity of the original idea, suggested the mode in, and the causes from which, the first notion of possession by deity, at a time when all deity was synonymous with malignant, supernatural power, became, in man's onward pro-as Girja Baee, &c.; all varieties, be it observed, gress, modified, and divided into two opposing notions, of a possession, evil and demoniac, and a possession, benignant and divine. That theory, it must be remembered, is intended to account philosophically for the existence, among it is, in the first place, difficult to witness, or be sions of the Hindoos, without being convinced that cognizant of the facts which occur in the possesof the demoniacs of the Gospel-Hindoo associthe cases belong precisely to the same class as those ations merely superseding Jewish or Chaldean. Who, for example, hearing a man subject to epileptic fits, declare that, as he was passing along an esthis devil (who, by the way, conformably to the thetuary, a jhupalé or devil-blast, entered him, and that described as the spirit of a wicked Mussulman dedrive him into the sea, to which "ipsissima verba" ceased) would often throw him into the fire, or we can attest from our own knowledge-could fail Mark ix.; or who could listen to one, subject to to recall the demoniac mentioned in Matt. xvii. and the supposed divine possession-also, an epileptic. -asserting that he was possessed by seven divine powers at once, and proceeding to enumerate them, of the ever-recurring Hecate Devee-who could hear this, as we with our own ears have heard it, and not recall the demon whose name was "Lexvi. 9" Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had gion," or fail to remember that passage in Mark *Vide Dublin University Magazine for March-"The-cast seven devils." ory and Phenomena of Possession among the Hindoos." On the other hand, no person having any ex |