MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.
VOLUME I.
[Illustration: THE BUBBLERS' ARMS--PROSPERITY.]
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
MEMOIRS
1
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 deplaise a ces fous nommes sages de Grece, En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgre tous leurs soins
Ne different entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
BOILEAU.
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
2
227 STRAND.
1852.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.
CONTENTS.
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
3
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
4
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 Treves--Trithemius--The Marechal 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 Bohmen--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.
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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
6
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 Hotel de Soissons. (From Nodier's Paris) The Coach upset 7 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) Stockjobbing Card, or the Humours of Change Alley. 1720. (From the Bubblers' Medley) Caricature--People climbing the Tree of Fortune. (From the 8 Bubblers' Medley) The Gateway to Merchant Tailors' Hall. (Gateway from old print)