Opening
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.
VOLUME I.
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS
AND THE
MADNESS OF CROWDS.
BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF "EGERIA," "THE SALAMANDRINE," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.
VOL. I.
N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce, En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse; Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins. BOILEAU.
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.
THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.
John Law; his birth and youthful career--Duel between Law and Wilson--Law's escape from the King's Bench--The "Land-bank"--Law's gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans--State of France after the reign of Louis XIV.--Paper money instituted in that country by Law--Enthusiasm of the French people at the Mississippi Scheme--Marshal Villars--Stratagems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law--Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock--Dreadful murders--Law created comptroller-general of finances--Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris--Financial difficulties commence--Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind--Payment stopped at the bank--Law dismissed from the ministry--Payments made in specie--Law and the Regent satirised in song--Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme--Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice--Death of the Regent--Law obliged to resort again to gambling--His death at Venice
THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE.
Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford--Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement--Mr. Walpole--Sir John Blunt--Great demand for shares--Innumerable "Bubbles"--List of nefarious projects and bubbles--Great rise in South-sea stock--Sudden fall--General meeting of the directors--Fearful climax of the South-sea expedition--Its effects on society--Uproar in the House of Commons--Escape of Knight--Apprehension of Sir John Blunt--Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont--His second escape--Persons connected with the scheme examined--Their respective punishments--Concluding remarks
THE TULIPOMANIA.
Conrad Gesner--Tulips brought from Vienna to England--Rage for the tulip among the Dutch--Its great value--Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip--Regular marts for tulips--Tulips employed as a means of speculation--Great depreciation in their value--End of the mania
THE ALCHYMISTS.
Introductory remarks--Pretended antiquity of the art--Geber--Alfarabi--Avicenna--Albertus Magnus--Thomas Aquinas--Artephius--Alain de Lisle--Arnold de Villeneuve--Pietro d'Apone--Raymond Lulli--Roger Bacon--Pope John XXII.--Jean de Meung--Nicholas Flamel--George Ripley--Basil Valentine--Bernard of Trèves--Trithemius--The Maréchal de Rays--Jacques Coeur--Inferior adepts--Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Augurello--Cornelius Agrippa--Paracelsus--George Agricola--Denys Zachaire--Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly--The Cosmopolite--Sendivogius--The Rosicrucians--Michael Mayer--Robert Fludd--Jacob Böhmen--John Heydon--Joseph Francis Borri--Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century--Delisle--Albert Aluys--Count de St. Germain--Cagliostro--Present state of the science
MODERN PROPHECIES.
Terror of the approaching day of judgment--A comet the signal of that day--The prophecy of Whiston--The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at that event--The plague in Milan--Fortune-tellers and Astrologers--Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames--Mother Shipton--Merlin--Heywood--Peter of Pontefract--Robert Nixon--Almanac-makers
FORTUNE-TELLING.
Presumption and weakness of man--Union of Fortune-tellers and Alchymists--Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of Elizabeth to William and Mary--Lilly the astrologer consulted by the House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London--Encouragement of the art in France and Germany--Nostradamus--Basil of Florence--Antiochus Tibertus--Kepler--Necromancy--Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve--Geomancy--Augury--Divination: list of various species of divination--Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of dreams)--Omens
THE MAGNETISERS.
The influence of imagination in curing diseases--Mineral magnetisers--Paracelsus--Kircher the Jesuit--Sebastian Wirdig--William Maxwell--The Convulsionaries of St. Medard--Father Hell--Mesmer, the founder of Animal Magnetism--D'Eslon, his disciple--M. de Puysegur--Dr. Mainauduc's success in London--Holloway, Loutherbourg, Mary Pratt, &c.--Perkins's "Metallic Tractors"--Decline of the science
INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND RELIGION ON THE HAIR AND BEARD.
Early modes of wearing the hair and beard--Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls--Louis VII.'s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France--Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers--Peter the Great--His tax upon beards--Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830--The King of Bavaria (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
Hôtel de Soissons. (From Nodier's Paris)
The Coach upset
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)
Stock-jobbing Card, or the Humours of Change Alley. 1720. (From the Bubblers' Medley)
Caricature--People climbing the Tree of Fortune. (From the 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
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
Bayeux Tapestry