In Le "the claws of beasts and the hands of men."* viticus he says, "The soul of the flesh is in the blood." He does more; he makes a solemn compact with man and with all animals, which supposes an intelligence in the latter. In much later times, Ecclesiasticus formally says, "God shows that man is like to the beasts; for men die like beasts; their condition is equal: as man dies, so also dies the beast. They breathe alike. There is nothing in man more than in the beast."§ Jonas, when he went to preach at Nineveh, made both men and beasts fast. All ancient authors, sacred books as well as profane, attribute knowledge to the beasts; and several make them speak. It is not then to be wondered at, that the Brahmins, and after them the Pythagoreans, believed that souls passed successively into the bodies of beasts and of men: consequently they persuaded themselves, or at least they said, that the souls of the guilty angels, in order to finish their purgation, belonged sometimes to beasts, sometimes to men. This is a part of the jesuit Bougeant's romance, who imagined that the devils are spirits sent into the bodies of animals. Thus, in our day, and at the extremity of the west, a jesuit unconsciously revives an article of the faith of the most ancient Oriental priests. The Self-burning of Men and Women among the Brahmins. The Brahmins of the present day, who do all that the ancient Brahmins did, have, we know, retained this horrible custom. Whence is it that, among a people who have never shed the blood of men or of animals, the finest act of devotion is a public selfburning? Superstition, the great uniter of contraries, is the only source of these frightful sacrifices, the custom of which is much more ancient than the laws of any known people. The Brahmins assert that their great prophet Brama, the son of God, descended among them, and had seve * Genesis, c. ix. v. 4, 5. Genesis, c. ix. v. 10, &c. Ecclesiasticus, c. xviii, v. 19. ral wives; and that after his death, the wife who loved him the most burned herself on his funeral-pile, that she might join him in heaven. Did this woman really burn herself, as it is said that Portia, the wife of Brutus, swallowed burning coals, in order to be reunited to her husband? or is this a fable invented by the priests? Was there a Brama, who really gave himself out as a prophet and son of God? It is likely that there was a Brama, as there afterwards were a Zoroaster and a Bacchus. Fable seized upon their history, as she has everywhere constantly done. No sooner does the wife of the son of God burn herself, than ladies of meaner condition must burn themselves likewise. But how are they to find their husbands again, who are become horses, elephants, hawks, &c.? How are they to distinguish the precise beast, which the defunct animates? how to recognize him and be still his wife? This difficulty does not in the least embarrass the Hindoo theologians; they easily find a distinguo a solution in sensu composito―in sensu diviso. The metempsychosis is only for common people; for other souls they have a sublimer doctrine. These souls, being those of the once rebel angels, go about purifying themselves; those of the women who immolate themselves are beatified, and find their husbands readypurified. In short, the priests are right, and the women burn themselves. This dreadful fanaticism has existed for more than four thousand years, amongst a mild people, who would fear to kill a grasshopper. The priests cannot force a widow to burn herself; for the invariable law is, that the self-devotion must be absolutely voluntary. The longest married of the wives of the deceased has the first refusal of the honour of mounting the funeralpile; if she is not inclined, the second presents herself; and so of the rest. It is said, that on one occasion seventeen burned themselves at once on the pile of a rajah: but these sacrifices are now very rare; the faith has become weaker since the Mahometans have governed a great part of the country, and the Europeans traded with the rest. Still there is scarcely a governor of Madras or Pondicherry who has not seen some Indian woman voluntarily perish in the flames. Mr. Holwell relates, that a young widow of nineteen, of singular beauty, and the mother of three children, burned herself in the presence of Mrs. Russell, wife to the admiral then in the Madras roads. She resisted the tears and the prayers of all present: Mrs. Russell conjured her, in the name of her children, not to leave them orphans. The Indian woman answered, “God, who has given them birth, will take care of them." She then arranged everything herself, set fire to the pile with her own hand, and consummated her sacrifice with as much serenity as one of our nuns lights the tapers. Mr. Charnock, an English merchant, one day seeing one of these astonishing victims, young and lovely, on her way to the funeral-pile, dragged her away by force when she was about to set fire to it, and, with the assistance of some of his countrymen, carried her off and married her. The people regarded this act as the most horrible sacrilege. Why do husbands never burn themselves, that they may join their wives? Why has a sex, naturally weak and timid, always had this frantic resolution? Is it because tradition does not say that a man ever married a daughter of Brama, while it does affirm that an Indian woman was married to a son of that divinity? Is it because women are more superstitious than men; or is it because their imaginations are weaker, more tender, and more easily governed? The ancient Brahmins sometimes burned themselves to prevent the pains and the languor of old age; but above all, to make themselves admired. Calanus would not, perhaps, have placed himself on the pile, but for the purpose of being gazed at by Alexander. The Christian renegade Peregrinus burned himself in public, for the same reason that a madman goes about the streets dressed like an Armenian, to attract the notice of the populace. Is there not also an unfortunate mixture of vanity in this terrible sacrifice of the Indian women? Perhaps, if a law were passed that the burning should take place in the presence of one waiting-woman only, this abominable custom would be for ever destroyed. One word more. A few hundreds of Indian women, at most, have furnished this horrid spectacle; but our inquisitions, our atrocious madmen calling themselves judges, have put to death in the flames more than a hundred thousand of our brethren-men, women and children-for things which no one has understood. Let us pity and condemn the Brahmins; but let us not forget our miserable selves! Truly, we have forgotten one very essential point in this short article on the Brahmins, which is, that their sacred books are full of contradictions; but the people know nothing of them, and the doctors have solutions ready-senses figured and figurative, allegories, types, express declarations of Birma, Brama, and Vishna, sufficient to shut the mouth of any reasoner. BREAD-TREE. THE bread-tree grows in the Philippine islands, and principally in those of Guam and Tinian, as the cocoatree grows in the Indies. These two trees alone, if they could be multiplied in our climates, would furnish food and drink sufficient for all mankind. The bread-tree is taller and more bulky than our common apple-trees; its leaves are black, its fruit is yellow, and equal in dimensions to the largest apple. The rind is hard; and the cuticle is a sort of soft white paste, which has the taste of the best French rolls; but it must be eaten fresh, as it keeps only twentyfour hours, after which it becomes dry, sour, and disagreeable; but, as a compensation, the trees are loaded with them eight months of the year. The natives of the islands have no other food; they are all tall, stout, well made, sufficiently fleshy, and in the vigorous health which is necessarily produced by the use of one wholesome aliment alone: and it is to negroes that naturę has made this present. Corn is assuredly not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize and cassava are the food of all America. We have whole provinces in which the peasants eat none but chesnut bread, which is more nourishing and of better flavour than the rye or barley bread on which so many feed, and is much better than the rations given to the soldiers. Bread is unknown in all southern Africa. The immense Indian Archipelago, Siam, Laos, Pegu, Cochin-China, Tonquin, part of China, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and the banks of the Ganges, produce rice, which is easier of cultivation, and for which wheat is neglected. Corn is absolutely unknown for the space of five hundred leagues on the coast of the Icy Sea. The missionaries have sometimes been in great tribulation, in countries where neither bread nor wine is to be found. The inhabitants told them by interpreters: "You would baptize us with a few drops of water, in a burning climate, where we are obliged to plunge every day into the rivers; you would confess us, yet you understand not our language; you would have us communicate, yet you want the two necessary ingredients, bread and wine. It is therefore evident that your universal religion cannot have been made for us." The missionaries replied, very justly, that good will is the one thing needful; that they should be plunged into the water without any scruple; that bread and wine should be brought from Goa; and that as for the language, the missionaries would learn it in a few years. BUFFOONERY-BURLESQUE-LOW COMEDY. He was a very subtle schoolman, who first said that we owe the origin of the word buffoon to a little Athenian sacrificer called Bupho, who, being tired of his employment, absconded, and never returned. The Areopagus, as they could not punish the priest, proceeded against his hatchet. This farce, which was played every year in the temple of Jupiter, is said to have been called buffoonery. This story is not entitled to much credit. Buffoon was not a proper name; bouphonos |