Eighteenth Century Waifs

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Ashton John. Eighteenth Century Waifs

A FORGOTTEN FANATIC.1

A FASHIONABLE LADY’S LIFE

GEORGE BARRINGTON

MILTON’S BONES

THE TRUE STORY OF EUGENE ARAM

REDEMPTIONERS

A TRIP TO RICHMOND IN SURREY

GEORGE ROBERT FITZGERALD, COMMONLY CALLED ‘FIGHTING FITZGERALD.’

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMAZONS

THE ‘TIMES’ AND ITS FOUNDER

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT

JONAS HANWAY

A HOLY VOYAGE TO RAMSGATE A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

QUACKS OF THE CENTURY

CAGLIOSTRO IN LONDON

Отрывок из книги

One of the most curious phases of religious mania is that where the patient is under the impression that he is divinely inspired, and has a special mission to his fellow-men, which he is impelled to fulfil at all costs and under all circumstances.

From the earliest ages of Christianity pseudo-Christoi, or false Christs, existed. Simon Magus, Dositheus, and the famous Barcochab were among the first of them, and they were followed by Moses, in Crete, in the fifth century; Julian, in Palestine, circa A.D. 530; and Serenus, in Spain, circa A.D. 714. There were, in the twelfth century, some seven or eight in France, Spain, and Persia; and, coming to more modern times, there was Sabbatai Zewi, a native of Aleppo, or Smyrna, who proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, in Jerusalem, circa 1666. The list of religious fanatics is a long one. Mahomet, Munzer, John of Leyden, Brothers, Matthews, Joanna Southcott, ‘Courtenay,’ or Thomas, and Joe Smith are among them, and are well-known; but there are hundreds of others whose work has not been on so grand a scale, or whose influence has not been of the national importance of the above; and it is of one of these forgotten fanatics that I now treat.

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In October, 1885, public attention was particularly directed to St. Kilda, and the story cannot be better told than by reproducing some contemporary newspaper paragraphs.

Morning Post, October 9, 1885. – ‘A letter has been received by Principal Rainy, Edinburgh, and has been forwarded to the Home Secretary from St. Kilda. The letter was found on the shore of Harris, having been floated from St. Kilda in a little boat made of a piece of plank. The letter was written by the clergyman of St. Kilda, by direction of the islanders, asking that the Government should be informed that their corn, barley, and potatoes were destroyed by a great storm, in the hope that Government would send a supply of corn-seed, barley, and potatoes, as the crop was quite useless.’

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