A World of Wonders, with Anecdotes and Opinions Concerning Popular Superstitions

In the winter of 1758, the sacristan of Polliac expired, after a few hours' illness, of a fright produced by the sight of a large white rabbit seated on the grave-stone of a fam...

Two important questions present themselves with regard to negroes: first, the lawfulness or expediency of slavery; and secondly, the comparative equality of the whites and black...

The world and its inhabitants are still exposed to a variety of grievous afflictions and visitations in spite of the infallible nostrums for preventing them, in general use; whi...

There are instances in which it may be fairly said that seeing is not believing. In the case of a variety of persons who have exhibited themselves, in different times and countr...

What is popularity? By what indications is it known? Who ratifies its titles? And do those titles, conferred by favoritism, error, influence, prejudice, interest, or flattery, p...

The record of similar phenomena has, however, been handed down to us by the ancients; for we are told of a shower of stones which, in the days of Tullus Hostilius, fell upon the...

Most scholars are familiar with the quotation "cervi dicuntur diutissime vivere," which has rendered proverbial the longevity of the stag. Among birds, crows and parrots have al...

Ventriloquists are a better order of jugglers than the Incombustibles. The feats of the latter are doubtless more surprising--the former, far more amusing. To behold a man expos...

No individual of the human race, but at the bottom of his heart is ambitious to please! But the charm is not more unequal in distribution than the means are various. So various,...

It is surprising how many of the facts of history have been reduced into fictions by the careful investigations of modern enlightenment. For centuries, it was established as an...

A popular error of the most fatal kind was the idea formerly prevalent that a drowned person, being overpowered by the quantity of water he had swallowed, was susceptible of res...

For instance, no one will deny that swallows skim the surface of the earth on the approach of a storm. But it is simply because insects then swarm in the lower regions of the at...

It might form an important matter of inquiry for naturalists, whether the fruits appropriated by Providence to certain climates, do not become unwholsome when transferred to oth...

The following anecdote is contained in one of the letters of Pliny, the younger, which we select from many which figure in the annals of antiquity as a type reproduced in variou...

The tarantula is a spider about the size of a nut; the head being surmounted by two horns charged with venomous matter. It has also antennæ which become violently agitated at th...

The title of "Talisman" might be fairly prefixed to this chapter; but we will content ourselves with the word nostrum. Considering the number of these specifics, and the blind c...

Stability is not the characteristic of man or his works. The discovery of perpetual motion has long been the object of our ambition; the sole approach to which appears to be our...

We have already alluded incidentally to the Jews. But the children of Israel have been too long and too perseveringly an object of persecution to all Christian nations, not to d...

In the year 1248, the Emperor William of Holland arrived at Cologne on the anniversary of the festival of the Epiphany; when Albertus the Great, invited him and his whole Court...

Among the most popular delusions of mankind, in earlier ages, were the deductions drawn from the stars, under the name of astrology; a science so long sustained by men of superi...

How was the world ever brought to believe that students, in rags, possessed the power of producing gold, when the misery of their personal condition was so apparent? How could i...

The subject before us is too closely connected with the prejudices of mankind not to call for consideration. The question is delicate, but we hazard the argument, though at the...

Of the numerous family of impostors, composed of mountebanks, gypsies, chiromancers, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers; the gypsies date from the fifteenth century, and were first...

When the learned Spaniard, Feijoo, was about to decide upon the comparative power and merit of the two sexes, he invoked an angel to descend from Heaven to enlighten his mind; s...

Innumerable are the auguries which the remnants of ancient superstition have attached to certain animals. To meet a flock of sheep, is considered a lucky omen. To overtake one w...

"Only so long as no traveller penetrated the countries they were supposed to inhabit," would be the reasonable reply. For since the globe has been explored in all directions, an...

The superstition of the divining rod prevailed only a century and a half ago. The following story concerning it, is too curious to be omitted. In the year 1692, a vintner of Lyo...

The title of this chapter seems to promise a fable rather than a dissertation; and a very amusing one might be grounded on the attributes of the two animals, considering the per...

It is a common observation respecting children, "that such or such a child is too clever to live;" and though abundance of precocious children have grown up, and into very ordin...

The prevailing weakness of the French, collectively and individually, is to esteem themselves the type and model of perfection; the standard by which the universe ought to be re...

The existence of one or more Sybils in the ancient world has been distinctly proved. Classic authors are unanimous upon the subject. Suidas tells us that there were fourteen; Va...

Dull must be the blockhead, who could reproach La Fontaine with ignorance of Natural History, and pronounce the fable of the "Ant and the Grasshopper" bad, because the fabulist...

The attachment existing betwixt animals of different kinds is an undoubted fact. Dogs have been known to take kittens under their protection during the absence, or after the dea...

The first ambition of mankind is to be happy. To the brute creation, and to man in a state of nature, happiness consists in sensual gratification. To this, succeeds the factitio...

There is no species of supernatural power to which some impostor or other has not pretended; some to incombustibility; some to insubmergeability; some to invulnerability; some t...

In the works of St. Augustin, we are informed that there existed in his time in Italy, women possessed of the power attributed by the poets to Circe, who transformed men into be...

Condillac, the mathematician, when surprised by sleep in the midst of his abstruse calculations, often found that, on awaking, the solution of a problem presented itself spontan...

In the history of the world a variety of imaginary personages have found a place, whom it has become difficult to dislodge. Created in the first instance by the blunders of some...

In modern times, dreams have become a gratuitous affair; but in the time of lotteries they possessed the greatest value with the votaries of Blind Fortune. At the French offices...

It is not uncommon to hear people reply when some particular dish is offered to them: "Thank you, I have never eaten any, and nothing could persuade me to touch it." Such a prep...

It is a gratifying thing when popular prejudices are overcome by the progress of public enlightenment. The existence of the antipodes was formerly disbelieved. Before the spheri...

Comets played a leading part among the omens of the olden time; and the appearance of one in the heavens was the signal for popular panic. The unlooked for appearance of a comet...

In the reign of Louis XVIII., an oration was made in the French Chamber of Deputies, complaining of the vileness of certain parties employed by the police. The Duc Decazes, then...

There are certain words which appear to offend public delicacy more than the very objects they designate; till it might almost be inferred that all the sensitiveness of human na...

Science has long demonstrated the folly of ringing church bells during a storm. The vibration of the air, produced by the movement of a bell, was formerly supposed to disperse t...

If any thing could excuse the exercise of arbitrary power on the part of a Government, it would surely be in the act of compelling parents to vaccinate their children; but the a...

Are the last words of the dying to be considered prophetic? Is a supernatural intelligence vouchsafed to the last efforts of expiring nature? Examples are cited in substantiatio...

From the stars in general to the moon in particular, there is but a step; nor will we separate the midnight luminary from the company in which we usually find her. Lovers and po...

No age has been exempt from popular delusions; but there are certain prejudices peculiar to certain localities. One of the characteristic superstitions of Germany subsisted so l...

Neither the illustrious preceptor of Alexander, nor the amiable preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy, nor all the professors of the universities of England and France, ever effecte...

Buffon assumes that the Ichneumon has been brought to a state of domesticity. But he probably generalized from a single instance. The Pacha of Egypt has a tame lion; and many ot...

One of the most prevalent minor superstitions has its origin in a religious influence. Friday is regarded as the most unlucky day of the week, from being that of the crucifixion...