The name is absent

met with ; among the most remarkable, that of Ele-
anor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, and Stacey,
servant to George Duke of Clarence ɪ."

But it seems to include also the practising against
the life of an enemy by means of a waxen or other
figure, in which pins were stuck, or against which
a sharp bolt was shot, It is against this crime that
the law of IIenry the First enacts²: “Si quis ve-
neno, vel sortilegio, vel invultuacione, sen maleficio
aliquo, faciat Iiomicidium, sive illi paratum sit sive
alii, nihil refert, quin factum mortiferum, et nullo
modo redimendum sit : ” and this is perhaps also
intended by the word Hblac used by √E⅛⅛lstan³. It
is also probable that this was the crime for which
in the tenth century a widow was put to death by
drowning at London Bridge, and her property for-
feited to the crown⁴. Anglosaxon homilies however
also mention philtres of various kinds, which the
people are warned against as dangerous and damn-
able heathendom.

Such are the fragments of a system which at one
time fed the religious yearnings and propped the
moral faith of our forefathers,—faint notes from a
chorus of triumphant jubilation which once rose to
heaven from every corner of the island.

How shall we characterize it ? Asa dull and de-
basing Fetish-worship, worthy of African savages 1
or as a vague and colourless Pantheism, in which
religion vanishes away, and philosophy gropes for
a basis which it cannot find 1 I think not.

¹ Anc. Laws and Inst. vol. ii. Gloss.

³ √Eβ_θlst. i. § 6,

Contemplate the child who bounds through the
wood, or pauses in delight upon the meadow, where
Jie wantons in the very joy of life itself: to him
this great creation is full of playmates, beings ani-
mate or inanimate, with whom he shares his little
pleasures, to whom he can confide his little sorrows,
∏e understands their language, and in turn he has
a language for them, which he thinks they under-
stand : he knows more of their peculiarities than
the halting step of scientific observation is always
able to overtake ; for he knows what science
haughtily refuses to contemplate or, it may be, is
unable to appreciate. The birds speak to him, the
forests whisper to him, the shadows and the low
tones of the hill and valley lull him to repose, the
winds wanton with his curled locks and blow them
over his shoulders, the streams and brooks have
spray to play with and sprinkle in his laughing
eyes. IIe stands before the great spirit of nature,
face to face, and knows him as he reveals himself
in every one of his divine forms ; for the child sees
and knows the secrets of God, which the man, alas !
is condemned to forget. Such as the child is, has
the child-like nation been, before the busy hum
of commerce, the crashing strokes of the piston, the
heavy murmur of innumerable spinning-jennies
necessarily banished more natural music from our
^ears. An age that thinks about itself and its own
capacity, ■ that reflects upon its own processes of
thought, and makes great combinations of powers,
and anatomizes nature till it becomes familiar with

vol. i.                                      2 F

<<   <   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   >   >>