as I have referred to; and they are rather pic-| Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to turesque to the eye, though far from odorifer- Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the ous to the nose. What a visitor left to his witch. The male inhabitants of the kraal own interpretings and imaginings might suppose these noblemen to be about, when they give vent to that pantomimic expression which is quite settled to be the natural gift of the noble savage, I cannot possibly conceive; for it is so much too luminous for my personal civilization that it conveys no idea to my mind beyond a general stamping, ramping, and raving, remarkable (as everything in savage life is) for its dire uniformity. But let us-with the interpreter's assistance, of which I, for one, stand so much in need see what the noble savage does in Zulu Kaffirland. The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he submits his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and whose whole life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations and friends, the moment a gray hair appears on his head. All the noble savage's wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermination which is the best thing I know of him, and the most comfortable to my mind when I look at him. He has no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and his "mission" may be summed up as simply diabolical. being seated on the ground, the learned doctor, got up like a grisly bear, appears, and administers a dance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls:-"1 am the original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow, yow, yow! No connexion with any other establishment. Till, till, till! All other Umtargarties are feigned Untargarties, Boroo, Boroo! but I perceive here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh, Hoosh, Hoosh! in whose blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo! will wash these bear's claws of mine. O yow, yow, yow!" All this time the learned physician is looking out among the attentive faces for some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given any small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has conceived a spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instantly killed. In the absence of such an individual, the usual practice is to Nooker the quietest and most gentlemanly person in company. But the Nookering is invariably followed on the spot by the butchering. Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin was so strongly interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by rum and small-pox, greatly affected him, had a custom not unlike this, though much more appalling and disgusting in its odious details. The ceremonies with which he faintly diversifies his life are, of course, of a kindred nature. If he wants a wife he appears before the kennel of the gentleman whom he has selected for his father-in-law, attended by a The women being at work in the fields hoeparty of male friends of a very strong flavor, ing the Indian corn, and the noble savage who screech, and whistle, and stamp, an offer being asleep in the shade, the chief has someof so many cows for the young lady's hand. times the condescension to come forth, and The chosen father-in-law - also supported by lighten the labor by looking at it. On these a high-flavored party of male friends occasions he seats himself in his own savage screeches, whistles, and yells (being seated on chair, and is attended by his shield-bearer: the ground, he can't stamp) that there never who holds over his head a shield of cowhide was such a daughter in the market as his in shape like an immense muscle shell-feardaughter, and that he must have six more cows. fully and wonderfully, after the manner of a The son-in-law and his select circle of backers theatrical supernumerary. But lest the great screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that man should forget his greatness in the conthey will give three more cows. The father-in-templation of the humble works of agriculture, law (an old deluder, overpaid at the beginning) there suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. the purpose, called a Praiser. This literary The whole party, the young lady included, then gentleman wears a leopard's head over his falling into epileptic convulsions, and screech- own, and a dress of tigers' tails; he has the ing, whistling, stamping, and yelling together appearance of having come express on his and nobody taking any notice of the young hind legs from the Zoological Gardens; and lady (whose charms are not to be thought of he incontinently strikes up the chief's praises, without a shudder) the noble savage is plunging and tearing all the while. There is considered married, and his friends make a frantic wickedness in this brute's manner demoniacal leaps at him by way of congratu- of worrying the air, and gnashing out "O lation. what a delightful chief he is! O what a deWhen the noble savage finds himself a licious quantity of blood, he sheds! O how little unwell, and mentions the circumstance majestically he laps it up! O how charmto his friends, it is immediately perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage, called an Imyanger or ingly cruel he is! O how he tears the flesh of his enemies and crunches the bones! how like the tiger and the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is! O, row, row, row, row, how fond I am of him!"-which might tempt the Society of Friends to charge at a hand-gallop into the Swartz-Kop location and exterminate the whole kraal. When war is afoot among the noble savages - which is always the chief hol's a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion of his brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be exterminated. On this occasion, after the performance of an Umsebeuza, or war-song which is exactly like all the other songs the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends, arranged in single file. No particular order is observed during the delivery of this address, but every gentleman who finds himself excited by the subject, instead of crying "Hear, hear!" as is the custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life, or crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the body, of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to the orator, that industrious person is rather in the position of an orator in an Irish House of Commons. But several of these scenes of savage life hear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish election, and I think would be extremely well received and understood in Cork. too soon. In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the utmost possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him to some civilized account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism is one of the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civilized man can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the interchange of ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we should soon have no listeners, and must be all yelling and screeching at once on our own separate accounts; making society hideous. It is my opinion that if we retained in us anything of the noble savage, we could not get rid of it But the fact is clearly otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry question, substituting coin for cows, we have assuredly nothing of the Zulu Kaffir left. The endurance of despotism is one great distinguishing mark of a savage always. The improving world In like has quite got the better of that too. manner, Paris is a civilized city, and the Théâtre Français a highly civilized theatre; and we shall never hear, and never have heard in these later days (of course) of the Praiser there. No, no; civilized poets have better work to do. As to Nookering Umtargarties, there are no pretended Umtargarties in Europe, and no European powers to Nooker them; that would be mere spydom, subornation, small malice, superstition, and false pretence. And as to private Umtargarties, are we not in the year eighteen hundred and fifty three, with spirits rapping at our doors? To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility nonsense. We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a William Shakspeare or an Isaac Newton; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher power than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when his place knows him no more. From the Athenæum. DR. CHALMERS' AUTOGRAPH. Edinburgh, 17th September, 1846. SIR-I received both your letters. The first laid aside, because of my great aversion to any direct application for my autograph; and in virtue of which it is my general practice to leave all such requests unanswered. Your second letter of May 6th, I placed among the letters to which I might reply; because I felt a wish at the time to let you know the grounds of my antipathy to a practice which I think is not in I find, however, accordance with good taste. that I have not time for the full statement of these grounds; and shall only say, in the general, that I feel as if, on the one side, the making of such a request implies a certain degree of indelicacy; and, on the other side, that in the granting of it there must be a certain sense of awkwardness, as the very act involves at least the semblance of vanity. And yet the desire of having autographs is legitimate and natural; but the right way to go about the formation of a collection is to seek, and not from the person himself, but from any of his correspondents, such letters or fragments of his handwriting as can I should imagine that to anywhere be found. every man who feels as he ought, a naked request for his autograph must be extremely distasteful. In sending you this autograph, it is a relief that I should have something to write about; and all the more so, that along with the autograph you have my testimony against the method in which they are sometimes sought after both by individuals and by such public bodies as you represent. With the best wishes for the prosperity of your museum, I have the honor to be, sir, yours truly, THOMAS CHALMERS. From the Economist. CENSUS DETAILS. SOME of the details of the census are at length published. When we see their magnitude we are not surprised at the delay. Two immensely thick folio volumes contain only the number of the people and of the houses at different periods. The tables of ages and occupations, of the civil condition, birthplaces of the population, the numbers of the blind, the deaf, and the dumb, are yet to come. So numerous are the details, that they form a perfectly new study for those who have heretofore attended little to such subjects; and we must say, for ourselves, that it will be a considerable time before we can master most of them. Some of the great features presented to us we may at once indeed seize. They are already, in a great measure, familiar to us; but they are here placed before us with all the confirmation of authority, and the perfect conviction we obtain from a large induction. The RegistrarGeneral, Mr. George Graham, and his two assistants, Mr. William Farr and Mr. Horace Mann, conclude their report by a section containing some of the general results of the inquiry, from which we take this passage: The most important result which the inquiry establishes is the addition, in half a century, of ten millions of people to the British population. The increase of population in the half of this century nearly equals the increase in all preceding ages; and the addition, in the last ten years, of two millions three hundred thousand to the inhabitants of these islands, exceeds the increase in the last fifty years of the eighteenth century. Contemporaneously with the increase of the population at home, emigration has proceeded since 1750 to such an extent as to people large states in America, and to give permanent possessors and cultivators to the land of large colonies in all the temperate regions of the world; where, by a common language, commercial relations, and the multiplied reciprocities of industry, the people of the new nations maintain an indissoluble union with the parent country. In all the ages of the world preceding the commencement of the century, the population of these islands had increased only to 10,917,433, and in the fifty years of the first half of this century they increased to 21,121,967, or there was added in the half-century 10,204,534 people, being very nearly as many as existed at the end of many previous ages. That is a most astounding fact. Is there any reason to believe that this wonderful rate of increase will continue? In the last ten years the increase of 2,300,000 exceeds the increase in the last fifty years of the 18th century, or in the 50 years between 1751 and 1801. But in that period the steam-engine was invented, our cotton manufacture expanded rapidly, and our manufactures and commerce made such great progress as to excite the admiration and wonder of Mr. Pitt. Not merely a more rapid increase has latterly taken place in relation to remote ages, but in relation to the few flourishing years towards the close of last century. It is not now announced for the first time- it has been stated over and over again, perhaps to unwilling ears that the increase of population was taking place in an accelerating ratio; and in the comparison drawn by the Registrar-General and his assistants between the increase in the last 50 years and in the many preceding ages, and between the increase in the last 18 years and the increase in the last 50 years of the last century, lies the proof drawn from the history of our country through all time that this is the fact. Can it increase in this accelerating ratio? The Registrar-General shows us that, in fact, the wonderful increase above noticed is but a small part of the whole increase. From the population of these islands has sprung the bulk of the population of the United States and of many great colonies. It is now too plain also to need any illustration, with some three or four millions of bushels of grain and flour annually brought from America, and some 70,000,000 lbs. of wool, and we know not how much gold annually brought from Australia, that in proportion as the people in these other countries increase and of their increase in an accelerating ratio there can be no doubt the people here may increase. Nor does it now require any proof, however much the statement may have been slighted or neglected, that the productive power of man depends on his knowledge and his skill, and that these increase as his numbers inThe Registrar-General states: crease. It is one of the obvious physical effects of the increase of population, that the proportion of land to each person diminishes; and the decrease is such that, within the last fifty years, the number of acres to each person living has fallen from 5.4 to 2.7 acres in Great Britain; from four acres to two acres in England and Wales. As a countervailing advantage, the people have been brought into each other's neighborhood; their duced in the ratio of 3 to 2; labor has been diaverage distance from each other has been revided; industry has been organized in towns, and the quantity of produce either consisting of, or exchangable for, the conveniences, elegances, and necessaries of life, has, in the mass, largely increased, and is increasing at a more rapid rate than the population. One of the moral effects of the increase of the people is an increase of their mental activity; as the aggregation in towns brings them oftener into combination and collision, Here is another startling fact. While the population has increased in this wonderful manner, there has been a still more rapid increase in the conveniences, elegances, and 66 necessaries of life." With this is conjoined population are one, and all the new phenomeanother fact, that the "mental activity," na of society are subordinate to the increase which implies an increase in skill and knowl- of population. The vast relative increase in edge, which again implies an increase in population in this century explains at once productive power, "is a consequence of the those greater political changes that have taken increase of the people." The question, place in it than in several previous centuries. therefore, which the Registrar-General raises, Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Rewhether the population can be sustained at form, religious and commercial freedom, are the present rate of emigration, and whether a few of the leading changes in the last thirty the increasing population can be profitably years, which in themselves and their conseemployed, or rather will be able profitably to quences surpass all the previous political employ themselves, are surely and clearly changes that were made from the Revolution answered in the affirmative by the facts he to the close of the century. As population has stated. The reproductive spring of popu- was comparatively stationary before the comlation, provided food can be obtained, is pow-mencement of this century, so were our instierful enough, as our offspring in America tutions; and as population has increased, so prove, to fill up all the vacancies of emigra- have our institutions necessarily undergone a tion; and the increase of mental activity, of change. It is palpable enough that the same skill and knowledge, which are the main cause which forced Manchester and Birmingsources of productive power, will undoubtedly ham and Leeds into Parliament, is still in be great enough to supply the increasing active operation, and is forcing other townpeople with ample means of subsistence. ships and other rising homes of people also into Parliament. Where this very rapid progress is to stop no man pretends to know, and he is rather presumptuous than wise who undertakes to predict whither it is to go and where it will reach even in the next twelve months. Let us remember that the first fifteen years nearly of the fifty years in which the population has increased as much as it increased in all the preceding ages, the country was involved in a ruinous and desolating war, such as seems unlikely again to occur; and during the greater part of the other thirty-five years it suffered under corn and other restrictive laws that were more ruinous and desolating that the most exterminating wars. Through the greater part of the period the people were continually complaining of want of room; there was a continual and universal gene; but it was a moral not a physical want; and every successive reduction of taxation and abolition of restrictions, as at the close of the war, as after the Reform Act was passed, as after Sir Robert Peel began his commercial reforms in 1842, and after they were carried out further in 1846 and 1849, the gene, the limits, the want of room disappeared, and periods of prosperity ensued. We cannot, therefore, infer, from the slight retardation in the rate of increase which has certainly taken place in the three last decennial periods through twenty-eight years of which the law shut out food from the people as compared to the decennial period 1811 and 1821, when its malevolent effects were only beginning, that such a retardation is hereafter to be the rule. On the contrary now that the people are at liberty to get food wherever they can, now that their industry is in a great measure free, and that they, in common with nearly all the people of Europe, are anxious to preserve peace and increase their wealth-it is to be inferred that the population will increase faster than ever, and that before the close of the present century it is more likely to amount to fifty than not to exceed thirty millions. These facts and these deductions are of the highest practical importance. Society and Some clue to it may be found in the past increase of particular classes of the people, and a better clue will be supplied when the changes in the occupations of the people are ascertained and published. The RegistrarGeneral tells us that calling the detached houses, the villages, and the small towns without markets, the country at the present time the town and country populations differ so little in numbers, that they may be considered equal; 10,556,288 persons live in the towns thus classified, and 10,403,189 in the country. Adopting this classification, although it obviously includes in the country much that belongs to town life and town industry and town-begotten wealth, we all know that the rapid increase in the first half of the century has been almost exclusively of a town population. The population of the towns of all classes was, in 1801, 3,046,371; and in 1851, 8,410,021 an increase of 176.067 per cent.; while the general increase in the same period was 98-177; so that the town population has increased nearly twice as fast as the average increase. "The towns," says the Registrar-General, "have increased most rapidly in which straw-plait, cotton, pottery, and iron are manufactured." Thus, while the average increase of the town population in the century was 176.067 per cent., the percentage increase in the town population engaged in the manufacture of strawplait has been 351-558, of iron 289-918, of cotton 282-391, of pottery 260-972; or, taking another classification between 1801 and 1851, the towns have increased per cent. vistor received a crown of parsley, that herb being fabled to have sprung from the blood of Archemorus. The judges of the games were attired in black as mourners; and, at first, none but military men were admitted to contend at them, because the institution origi -London, 146-358; county towns, excluding London, 122 096; watering places, 254-125; seaports, excluding London, 195 554; manufacturing towns, 224-174; mining and hardware towns, 217 303. Thus, the great increase is in a town population, and of that the great increase is in the seaports, the man-nated with soldiers; hence parsley was reufacturing towns, and the watering places. The increase is of comparatively wealthy and intelligent people, and that progress seems likely to continue. Such, then, will probably be the progress of society, which will give laws to all future lawgivers. That probable progress statesmen ought to study; for to that their policy and their acts, to be at all successful, must conform. We have done enough with these two great books for this occasion, and shall take something more from them hereafter. PARSLEY. garded as funereal, and strewed on graves. The saying, "He has need of parsley," signified a person at the point of death; and a present of parsley implied a wish for the death of the person to whom it was given. Parsley, being accounted sacred, was given by the Corinthians, as the crown of the victor in the Isthmian games; the prize was originally a garland of pine branches, and after some time it was restored, replacing the parsley crown, which, in the Isthmian games, was of the herb withered, but in the Nemean, fresh and green. Plutarch relates, that Timoleon, at the head of the Corinthian troops, ascending a hill, from the top of which the enemy's camp could be discovered, met some mules laden with parsley, which the soldiers took as a sinister omen, because the herb was funereal. But Timoleon, in order to restore their spirits, told them that it was, on the contrary, a favorable augury, prophetic of triumph, as the crowns of the victors in the Isthmian games were of parsley. He then took some of the herb and crowned himself with it; and all his soldiers cheerfully followed his example. It is said that parsley, rubbed upon a glass goblet, will break it. We own we have never made the experiment. Parsley is a native of Sardinia, and came to us about 1548. In Sardinia, grows a plant of the ranunculus species, there called wild parsley, which, when eaten, causes that involuntary convulsive grin, termed the sardonic laugh, from the Sardinian herb. PARSLEY, in the minds of the ancient Greeks, was associated with a tragical event. When the army of Adrastus, king of Argos. was proceeding to besiege Thebes, one day, when passing through Nemen, the troops suffered much from thirst, the springs having been dried up from the heat of the weather. They met with a nurse carrying Archemorus (also called Opheltes), the infant son of Lycurgus, the king of the country, and begged her to show them where they could find water. She readily consented, and laying down the child upon the grass, that she might walk the faster, she brought them to the fountain of Langia; and while they were drinking from it, she related to the leader her own melancholy story. She was the celebrated Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, king of Lemnos, and had saved her father's life when the Lemnian women, by common consent, murdered all the men in the island, during one night, from jealousy of their preference of the female slaves. Hypsipyle, pretending she had slain Thoas (whom she sent privately to Chios), was chosen queen of Lemnos. But the truth being discovered after some time, the Lemnian women drove her into exile. Being taken by pirates in her wanderings, she was sold to Lycurgus, and from a queen fell to the station of a slave - a sad but not uncommon reverse in those fierce and turbulent ages. After re- (091, 410 zooridao dizzтoge, TEU 7201 80125, ceiving the thanks and the commiseration of the Argives, Hypsipyle returned for her " O, bird of Jove! why stand'st thou fiercely young charge, and to her horror found him expiring from the bite of a serpent that had coiled itself round him. The Argives slew the reptile; and in memory of the ill-fated young prince, instituted the Nemean funereal games, to be observed every third year. The * In the Peloponnesus. On account of the united military and funereal recollections associated with the parsley, we shall accompany it with an appropriate translation from the Greek Anthology: ON AN EAGLE STANDING ON THE TOMB OF A YOUNG here, WARRIOR, FROM THE GREEK OF ANTIPATER. Upon this trophied tomb, to honor dear?" |