Chapter 4

When calamity or pestilence visits a place, the village oracle is consulted as to the cause of the anger of the goddess Devee, and the responses are given forth by her inspired waren, amidst a cloud of incense, strongly reminding us of the oracle of Delphi. When the sins have been pointed out which have caused the particular scourge, some sacrifice is prescribed, chiefly that of goats and cocks; sometimes the inspired waren desires a certain number of goats to be let loose, and driven beyond the boundary, and that he, the incarnation of the evil, will go with them. Of course, the scourge diminishes from that day. Several who have witnessed this practice in India, have been struck with the remarkable analogy it bears to the scape-goat of the Mosaic dispensation, sent into the wilderness burdened with the sins of the congregation.

The word waren signifies a dual possession--the one beneficent, and the other malignant. One curious instance is given of a man speaking _in_ the person of Devee, and _of_ himself as a third person, saying to a Brahmin: 'You are going to the Concan: take _this fellow_ with you. _He_ was happy and pure, performing _my_ worship,' &c. Under the influence of waren, mild persons have become so infuriated as to die under the visitation; and it is related that, during a procession in honour of the flagellating waren, the infection spread, the waren was propagated through the whole multitude, who became so excited by the beating of drums, tom-toms, horns, great brazen trumpets, and other instruments, that, with dishevelled hair, and backs streaming with blood from their own flagellations, they danced forward with a measured convulsive motion, bellowing out and shaking their heads; and so terrific was the excitement, that a Portuguese servant who was passing began making the same frantic gestures, and could only be recovered after repeated cuts with the horsewhip--the Hindoos, meanwhile, exulting that their goddess had entered into a Christian! That such powers are made a matter of merchandise follows of course; and, like the woman who brought her master much gain by soothsaying, so there are persons who make a trade of going about with some waren, who is consulted on secret affairs, who foretells the future, and whose utterances are sold for money. Extraordinary instances are also recounted of warens of the necromantic class, especially when they have worldly goods, becoming the dupes of those who foil them with their own weapons, that they may be the more readily despoiled. In the Mahratta country, except in the large towns, there are no physicians; and when simple remedies fail, they say: 'Send for the god,' or magician, just as in the case of our correspondent; and besides the sacrifice of goats and cocks, there is, under the name of religious fasts, a much more telling and significant prescription in the way of regimen.

It were impossible, in a space like ours, to give even an outline of the different species of waren and their strange practices, part of which would seem to be akin to what we call mesmerism and clairvoyance, with the addition of spells and sacrifices. We might write volumes, and search every volume that has been written on the subject, and we could expiscate nothing else than that from the beginning of the world, and we may say in every country in the world, there has been, under different names and forms, a very general belief in some supernatural power walking abroad on the earth, by which, when presuming on its possession, one man may rule over another to his own hurt or benefit, as the case may be. We have as little sympathy with those who pretend to account for everything, and would solve all mysteries by natural causes, as with those who yield implicit belief, and run after every new thing. If such powers are illusive--in their operations they are certainly not always so--and the illusion be mental; if faith be all that is needed, that strong faith which, if able on the one hand to remove mountains, on the other, causes scales to grow on the eyes of the mind, so that a man loses his identity, and is blindly led about by the will of another; or if the result of bodily disease, hysteria, or some other derangement of the nervous system, there still remains enough of mystery to awaken the solemn inquiry of the physician, the psychologist, the Christian, of every thinking man. Contradictions will meet him at every turn. He will find all theories more than usually fallacious. He will see a strictly matter-of-fact person, in seeming health, and of strong mind, so easily acted on as in a few seconds to present the appearance of a doting idiot; and a highly imaginative person, or one driven about by every wind of doctrine, who cannot be touched. He will see the healthy taken, and the sickly left. If, then, it be disease, and whether mental or bodily, such disease and its causes must be latent indeed; and we confess we look for no 'coming man' who is to solve the mystery.

That this power, which we call mesmerism, was also known to the priests of ancient Egypt, is supposed to be proved by carvings on the temples of priests making the passes with their hands, opposite other figures, to produce the sleep; a circumstance which has been recounted as proving a connection between the ancient religion in Egypt, and some unknown faith formerly prevalent in India, at the time the temples of Elephanta, Kennery, and others were built. We greatly admire the philanthropic Major Ludlow, who devoted his energies to the abolishing of the suttee; but whose labours met with very partial success, until, by searching their own Shasters, he discovered that there was a time at which the rite did not exist. A greater than he, however, must arise before the other still more ancient and wide-spread faith can either be explained or abolished.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Running-footmen, who attend the carriage or palanquin, go messages, carry books or letters, or any light thing they can take in their hands.

WHERE DOES LONDON END?

It is not only a well-understood fact, that the Great Metropolis is a sore puzzle to strangers, but even the dwellers therein are wont to give up, in despair, any attempt to define or limit it. What _is_ London? There are two causes, or rather two sets of causes, which throw great doubt on the proper answer to this question. The one is the varying acreage or area comprised under this name, and the other is the natural increase of population over every part of the area. Let us shortly glance at both these groups of disturbing causes.

The original London was the nucleus of that which now constitutes the _City_ of London. The London of the Britons before the Romans landed, is supposed to have been little other than 'a collection of huts set down on a dry spot in the midst of the marshes;' a forest nearly bounded this spot, at no great distance from the Thames; and a lake or fen existed, _outside_ London, at or near the site now occupied by Finsbury Square. The area of London, at this early period, is supposed to have been bounded by--to use their modern designation--Tower Hill on the east, Dowgate Hill on the west, Lombard and Fenchurch Streets on the north, and of course the river on the south--a limited area, certainly, not much exceeding half a mile in length by a quarter in breadth. There are indications that brooks bounded this area on the north and west, and a marsh on the east; but there is no reason to believe that the city had walls. The terrible devastation in the time of Boadicea must have nearly destroyed London, destined to be replaced by one of Roman construction.

The Roman London was evidently of larger size. The ancient city-wall is known to have been of Roman substructure, although surmounted by work of later date. It had many turrets or towers, and seven double-gates, supposed to have been Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and the Tower Postern-gate; and the streets now named from those gates will serve to mark out the included area. Roman London may be said to lie about sixteen feet below _our_ London, over all this area; about two feet being the _débris_ of the Roman buildings, and the rest being subsequent accumulations of rubbish, at the rate, say, of a foot in a century. In the later Saxon and Norman times, the western portion of the wall was extended so as to include a somewhat larger area, the utmost limit of 'London within the walls' being 370 acres.

But London refused to stay within its walls; it walked forth into the country; and even so far back as 1662, London, beyond these limits, was four times as large as that 'within the walls.' Of this exterior portion, 230 acres constituted the 'city without the walls,' subjected to civic jurisdiction by successive grants; it formed a belt nearly around the portion 'within' the walls. These 600 acres, less than a square mile, have ever since constituted the 'city of London,' divided into two portions--'without' and 'within' the walls. There are ninety-eight parishes in the inner portion, and eleven in the outer; but the London which lay beyond the corporate rule had no social or political bounds placed to its extension. There were the ancient city of Westminster and the village of Charing, on the west; and London marched along the Strand to meet them: there were Kensington and Bayswater in the remoter west, and Piccadilly and Oxford Street became links to join them to London: there were Killurn and Hampstead and Highgate, Newington and Hornsey and Hackney, on the north; and London has travelled along half-a-dozen great roads northward to fraternise with them. So, likewise, on the east; and so, likewise, crossing the river to the south, do we find this same process to have been active: villages and hamlets have become absorbed into London, by London going to meet them.

If we now ask, Where does London end? it will be found that this ramification perplexes the subject greatly. Who shall say that such or such a hamlet is _not_ in London? Who is to draw the line, and where? It was said ten years ago, that the metropolis is a _hundred and forty times_ as large as the _city_ of London 'within the walls;' but even this is vague, unless we know where the limit is placed. One mode of grouping, adopted before the appointment of the Registrar-General of births, &c., depended on the 'London bills of mortality,' or the record of deaths preserved by the parish-clerks. London, in this sense, included the city within the walls, the city without the walls, Westminster, and about forty out-parishes. Southwark was not included in these bills originally, but became a component part afterwards. The Registrar-General, under the improved modern system, gives an immense range to London; it includes the City, Westminster, Southwark, all the out-parishes of the former system, and the villages or hamlets of Bow, Bromley, Brompton, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Fulham, Greenwich, Hammersmith, Hatcham, Kensington, Brompton, Marylebone, Paddington, Pancras, Highgate, Stoke-Newington, and Woolwich. It is true, he calls all this the 'metropolis;' but the metropolis is in common parlance identical with 'London.'

The population returns are not even a correct test in this matter, for they include different districts at different times. In 1821, of the eighteen villages or hamlets named above, only five were included in the 'metropolis;' and in 1831, there were two additional. The metropolitan population in 1841, in comparison with that of 1831, differs by no less than 200,000 on this mere question of nomenclature alone, independent of real increase on other grounds. The poor-law grouping differs again from that of the Registrar-General; the metropolis, or the 'London division,' does not include so many of the marginal parishes as the Registrar's system. Again, the Post-office arrangement is independent of all the others; for it is based upon taking St Paul's as a centre, and drawing circles around this at a definite number of miles' radius; and the metropolis is thus made expansible on geometrical principles. Then the parliamentary limit is _sui generis_; for the metropolis here comprises the City of London, the city of Westminster, the borough of Southwark, and the five modern boroughs of Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, and Lambeth--a very capricious limit, truly; for while it includes the far east at Woolwich, it excludes Pimlico, Brompton, and a vast adjoining area. Lastly, to give one more mesh to this net, we find the police metropolis to be the most grasping of all: by the original act of 1829, the metropolis is made to fill a circle twenty-four miles in diameter, having Charing Cross in its centre; while in 1840, this circle was coolly stretched to a diameter of thirty miles.

When a reader, therefore, is told of the vast increase of population in London, let him sober down his astonishment until he knows which (among half-a-dozen different Londons) is the one alluded to. As 'our own country' may be taken to mean England only, or England and Wales, or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or the British Empire, in five different degrees of largeness, so may 'our metropolis' have at least as many significations. Tables of metropolitan population have been issued in the following form:--1750, 676,250; 1801, 900,000; 1811, 1,050,000; 1821, 1,274,800; 1831, 1,471,941; 1841, 1,873,676; 1851, about 2,250,000. But this table is subject to the correction above hinted at. Nearly a century ago, Maitland said: 'This ancient city has engulfed one city, one borough, and forty-three villages.' A formidable addition has since been made to this 'engulfed' family. So enigmatical is this metropolis of ours, that it would be equally true to state that 'London is rapidly increasing in population,' and that 'London is slowly decreasing in population.' The metropolis, as a whole, yearly increases its numbers; but the _City_, the original London, is less populous now than a century ago, on account of the streets having been widened, and many small dwelling-houses removed, to make way for large commercial establishments, the managers and clerks of which almost all sleep out of London.

If we glance over a map of London, or, still better, take a resolute series of omnibus-rides or foot-rambles, we shall find ourselves as little able as before to settle the question, 'Where does London end?' That huge mass of small streets and poor houses, comprising the borough of the Tower Hamlets, allows us no rest till we get three miles eastward of St Paul's. Beyond this point, there are a few patches of Bow Common yet left; but Poplar and Blackwall, Bromley and Bow, tell us to go yet further eastward to the river Lea; and even West Ham and Stratford, though on the Essex side of the Lea, seem to claim a metropolitan position. Again, passing over Victoria Park--that pleasant oasis in a desert of houses--and bending round towards the north, we may ask where are the fields; and may wait until 'echo answers, Where.' Hackney and Homerton, Clapton and Dalston, Shacklewell and Newington, not only have the houses ranged themselves closely along the main roads to these villages, but have filled up nearly all the vacant ground between those roads. Is Tottenham to be included in our London; and if, not, why not? And at Highgate and Hampstead, as the rows of houses have ascended these hills, and climbed over the hills, why stop there? why not send London still further out of town? Look at the new town springing up around the Camden Station; at the Portland Town westward of Regent's Park; at the Westbourne Town far beyond the Paddington terminus; at the new town west of Kensington; at the vast mass of buildings between Kensington and the Thames--all these are the mere filling up of the districts which had before been marked out by the great roads; and the great roads themselves are carrying out their rows of houses still further into what we may, in courtesy, designate 'the fields.'

So it is on the south side of the river. Of the 13,000 vehicles which cross London Bridge in twelve hours on an average summer day, an immense number is employed in conveying 'City men' to and from their homes on the south of the Thames. Walworth, Camberwell, Kennington, and Brixton were once on the border region between town and country; nay, the city really _did_ reach the country there; but now, all these belong to London. A bit of green at Kennington is, by good-luck, to be kept green as a people's park; but nearly all else has become brick and mortar; the City man has to go further to get a pleasant house and a good garden, and _we_ have to go further to ascertain--where does London end?

Among many curious proofs of the wide grasp of the all-absorbing metropolis, we may adduce the horror of the Pentonvillians at the proposed new cattle-market. How many years ago is it since Copenhagen Fields were almost beyond the regions of civilisation, known only as a prairie lying between London and the Copenhagen Tea-gardens? Let any one, whose knowledge of the district goes back fifteen or twenty years, answer this question. But now, Copenhagen House itself is brought within the limits of London, by rows of goodly houses belting it in on the north; and the gentilities of the new town are shocked at the threatened advent of bullocks and sheep.

If we look into the stupendous _London Directory_, it does not remove our troubles; it gives us the names of nearly 7000 streets, places, roads, squares, circuses, crescents, quadrants, rows, hills, lanes, yards, buildings, courts, alleys, gardens, greens, mews, terraces, and walks, but it does not tell us how far the suburbs are included, nor what are the principles which determine the inclusion or exclusion.

In short, we began by asking a question, and must end by leaving it unanswered. Although tolerably familiar with London, we cannot tell--'Where does London end?'

EDUCATED SKILL.

It is well known, that in the manufacture or preparation of most articles in the arts, the main cost lies in the judicious application of skilled labour. The value of the raw material is usually of comparative small amount. A pound's worth of iron makes six hundred pounds' worth of penknives; and cotton, which in the state of gingham may be bought at 3d. per yard, is sold for the same weight as gold in threads for Brussels lace.

It is therefore obvious, that the great advantage of cheap raw material is in the rude stages of manufactures, or when our skill in production is not inferior to that possessed by our neighbours. In a manufacture in which the cost of the finished article is several hundred times the price of the materials used to make it, it is skill, and not the original cost of the material, that determines successful competition.

We find that all European nations except England, have accepted this fact as a principle of state, and have founded schools and colleges to train their industrial population in the knowledge of art and science, which are the only true foundations of practical skill in an advanced stage of civilisation. In fact, we in this country have for some years seen this truth, so far as art is involved, and have established Schools of Design; but we have forgotten that art in industry is chiefly used to adorn the productions of science, and have neglected the latter. What circumstances have happened in the last few years in the history of the world, that compel an allusion to this neglect in a speech from the throne?

The marking features of our age are the great economy of time, and the practical abbreviation of space. Coal and iron are now transported by other means than by slow-going trains or coast-hugging luggers. Iron horses, which feed on coal and drink only water, go screaming over the country at a gigantic pace, dragging with them the whole produce of coalmines and ironworks. Marine monsters, related to these, plough the ocean, and scatter our natural riches over the world, receiving in exchange the produce of other climes. The earth is bound round by chains, which render geographical distribution arbitrary distinctions, and enable thought to be reciprocated without being arrested by distance in space. Blind must be the nation that does not see in all this an alteration of conditions, which introduce new elements into the competition of industry. The changes may be summed up in the remark, that as improved locomotion distributes raw material to all lands at a very slightly increased cost for the transit, manufacturing competition among nations is resolved into a race for intellectual pre-eminence.

This truth is less likely to be speedily acknowledged by us, because if our native science languishes, we have yet capital to import it; and we do not see that this is only accelerating our overthrow. But the relative influence of abundance in raw material, and the application of science to its development, may be seen by an illustration from a barbarous country, in which the former is plentiful, and the latter is beginning to shine on it by means of an enlightened prince.

Siam, as our readers know, is an important kingdom situated between the Burman Empire on the one hand, and Cochin-China on the other. It abounds in natural resources, but exports only sugar, spices, drugs, and lead, and these only in comparatively small quantity; yet it has gold enough to make pavements for the sacred white elephants, and to throw down into the unfathomed abyss in the Cavern of the Sun. Of antimony, there are stores sufficient to render lustrous the eyes of the black-teethed beauties of Siam; while silver, iron, copper, lead, and fuel, are known to abound in these favoured regions. Yet with all these local advantages, it is nearly certain that we could, in spite of the distance, successfully compete with the productions of copper and iron in their own markets, because we have applied science to their extraction and preparation.

Siam, like nations nearer home, is very proud of its own industry, and of its position among the states of the earth; and it may well be, seeing that its king is hereditary lord of the stars, and gives them permission to move in their orbits. The presumptive heir to the stars thought one day he would like to know what Europeans believed of his celestial powers, so he studied mathematics and astronomy from English books, afterwards extending his knowledge to navigation, to the natural sciences, and to English literature. Prince Chow Faa, who has, since April 1851, succeeded his sensual and ignorant brother, under the new appellation of King Somdet Phra Chom Klow, found his knowledge of science thus acquired a prodigious power in the improvement of his future terrestrial kingdom, although his celestial possessions vanished at the same time. Like Prince Henry of Portugal, the Siamese prince believed that the only princely talent worth cultivating, was 'the talent to do good;' and under his mental vigour, this distant kingdom began to develop in a wonderful manner. Like Peter the Great, he founded dockyards, and built ships of war equal to first-class English vessels, navigating them, not by eyes painted in front, as of old, but by chronometers and Greenwich tables. He introduced European discipline into the army, and taught it how to use artillery. He obtained miners of talent to examine into his mines, and the mode of working in them; but in his reforms he awakened the jealousy of the king and of the priesthood, and for the last few years has been obliged to conceal his talents and good designs under the yellow garb of a priest, which he threw off in the April of last year, a few days previous to the opening of our Great Exhibition.