dles. Indeed, no well-disposed man can be unwilling to be useful when he is dead. CASTING (IN METAL). THERE is not an ancient fable, not an old absurdity, which some simpleton will not revive, and that in a magisterial tone, if it be but authorised by some classical or theological writer. Lycophron (if I remember right) relates that a horde of robbers, who had been justly condemned in Ethiopia, by King Actisanes, to lose their ears and noses, fled to the cataracts of the Nile, and from thence penetrated into the Sandy Desert, where they at length built the temple of Jupiter Ammon. make plates so quickly, clever as they might be at pilfering. It is not very likely that they had the necessary apparatus ; they had more need to provide themselves with meal. I respect Lycophron much; but this profound Greek, and his yet more profound commentators, know so little of the arts-they are so learned in all that is useless, and so ignorant in all that concerns the necessaries and conveniences of lite, professions, trades, and daily occupations-that we will take this opportunity of informing them how a metal figure is cast. This is an operation which they will find neither in Lycophron, nor in Manetho, nor even in St. Thomas's Dream. I omit many other preparations which the Encyclopedists, especially M. Diderot, have explained much better than I could do, in the work which must immor Lycopbron, and after him Theopompus, tells us that these banditti, reduced to extreme want, having neither shoes, nor clothes, nor utensils, nor bread, bethought themselves of raising a statue of gold totalise their glory as well as all the arts. an Egyptian god. This statue was ordered one evening, and made in the course of the night. A member of the university, much attached to Lycophron and the Ethiopian robbers, asserts that nothing was more common, in the venerable ages of antiquity, than to cast a statue of gold in one night, and afterwards throw it into But to form a clear idea of the process of a fire, to reduce it to an impalpable pow-ON SUICIDE, AND THE ABBE DE ST. CYRAN'S der, in order to be swallowed by a whole people. BOOK LEGITIMATING SUICIDE. THE ingenious La Motte says of Cato, poetical odes : Caton, d'une ame plus égale, But where did these poor devils, with-in one of his philosophical rather than out breeches, find so much gold? “What, sir!" says the man of learning, " do you forget that they had stolen enough to buy all Africa, and that their daughters' earrings alone were worth nine millions five hundred thousand livres of our currency?" Be it so. But for casting a statue, a little preparation is necessary. M. Le Moine employed nearly two years in casting that of Louis XV. *༎ Sous l'heureux vainqueur de Pharsale, Stern Cato, with more equal soul, "Oh but this Jupiter Ammon was at It was, I believe, because Cato's soul most but three feet high. Go to any pew-was always equal, and retained to the last terer; will he not make you half-a-dozen its love for his country and her laws, that plates in a day?"?, he chose rather to perish with her than to crouch to the tyrant. He died as he had lived. Sir, a statue of Jupiter is harder to make than pewter-plates; and I even doubt { whether your thieves had wherewith to Incapable of surrendering! And to whom? To the enemy of Rome-to the man who had forcibly robbed the public treasury, in order to make war upon his fellow-citizens, and enslave them by means of their own money. A pardoned foe! It seems as if La Motte-Houdart were speaking of some revolted subject, who might have obtained his Majesty's pardon, by letters in chancery. It seems rather absurd to say that Cato slew himself through weakness. None but a strong mind can thus surmount the most powerful instinct of nature. This strength is sometimes that of frenzy; but a frantic man is not weak. a life of which so much ill is said. Thus far there is nothing very extraordinary : {such instances are almost every day to be met with. The astonishing part of the story is this: His brother and his father had each killed himself at the same age. What secret disposition of organs, what sympathy, what concurrence of physical laws, occasions a father and his two sons to perish by their own hands, and by the same kind of death, precisely when they have attained such a year? Is it a disease {which unfolds itself successively in the different members of a family-as we often Suicide is forbidden amongst us by the see fathers and children die of the smallcanon law. But the decretals, which pox, consumption of the lungs, or any form the jurisprudence of a part of Europe, other complaint? Three or four generawere unknown to Cato, to Brutus, totions have become deaf or blind, gouty Cassius, to the sublime Arria, to the Ém- or scorbutic, at a predetermined period. peror Otho, to Mark Antony, and the rest of the heroes of true Rome, who preferred a voluntary death to a life which they believed to be ignominious. Physical organisation, of which moral is the offspring, transmits the same cha{racter from father to son, through a succession of ages. The Appii were always We, too, kill ourselves: but it is when haughty and inflexible, the Catos always we have lost our money, or in the very severe. The whole line of the Guises rare excess of a foolish passion for an un- were bold, rash, factious; compounded worthy object. I have known women kill of the most insolent pride, and the most themselves for the most stupid men ima-seductive politeness. From Francis de ginable. And sometimes we kill our- Guise, to him who alone and in silence selves when we are in bad health, which went and put himself at the head of the action is a real weakness. people of Naples, they were all, in figure, Disgust with our own existence, weari-in courage, and in turn of mind, above ness of ourselves, is a malady which is likewise a cause of suicide. The remedy is, a little exercise, music, hunting, the play, or an agreeable woman. The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself to-day, would have wished to live, had he waited a week. ordinary men. I have seen whole-length portraits of Francis de Guise, of the Balafré, and of his son: they are all six feet high, with the same features, the same courage and boldness in the forehead, the eye, and the attitude. This continuity, this series of beings alike, is still more observable in animals; and if as much care were taken to perpetuate fine races of men, as some nations still take to prevent the mixing of the breeds of their horses and hounds, the genealogy would be written in the countenance and displayed in the manners. I was almost an eye-witness of a suicide which deserves the attention of all cultivators of physical science. A man of a serious profession, of mature age, of regular conduct, without passions, and above indigence, killed himself on the 17th of October, 1769, and left to the towncouncil of the place where he was born a There have been races of crooked and written apology for his voluntary death, of six-fingered people, as we see redwhich it was thought proper not to pub-haired, thick-lipped, long-nosed, and flatlish, lest it should encourage men to quit {nosed races. But that nature should so dispose the organs of a whole race, that at a certain age each individual of that family will have a passion for self-destruction- this is a problem which all the sagacity of the most attentive anatomists cannot resolve. The effect is certainly all physical; but it belongs to occult physics. Indeed, what principle is not occult? We are not informed, nor is it likely, that in the time of Cæsar and the emperors the inhabitants of Great Britain killed themselves as deliberately as they now do, when they have the vapours, which they denominate the spleen. Philip Mordaunt, cousin-german to the celebrated Earl of Peterborough-so well known in all the European courts, and who boasted of having seen more postillions and kings than any other man-Philip Mordaunt was a young man of twentyseven, handsome, well-made, rich, of noble blood, with the highest pretensions, On the other hand, the Romans, who and, which was more than all, adored by never had the spleen, did not hesitate to his mistress: yet Mordaunt was seized put themselves to death. They reasoned; with a disgust for life. He payed his they were philosophers; and the people debts, wrote to his friends, and even made of the island of Britain were not so. Now, some verses on the occasion. He disEnglish citizens are philosophers, and Ro- patched himself with a pistol, without man citizens are nothing. The English-having given any other reason than that man quits this life proudly and disdain-his soul was tired of his body, and that fully, when the whim takes him; but the when we are dissatisfied with our abode, Roman must have an indulgentia in arti- we ought to quit it. It seemed that he culo mortis; he can neither live nor die. wished to die, because he was disgusted with his good fortune. Sir William Temple says, that a man should depart when he has no longer any pleasure in remaining. So died Atticus. Young women, who hang and drown} themselves for love, should then listen to the voice of hope; for changes are as frequent in love as in other affairs. An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction, is, always to have something to do.Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscript :-"N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished."{ Ile kept his word with himself, that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid, he would have lived longer. Why have we fewer suicides in the country than in the towns? Because in the fields only the body suffers; in the town, it is the mind. The labourer has sot time to be melancholy; none kill themselves but the idle-they who, in the tes of the multitude, are so happy. In 1726, Richard Smith exhibited 8 strange spectacle to the world, from a very different cause. Richard Smith was disgusted with real misfortune. He had been rich, and he was poor; he had been in health, and he was infirm; he had a wife, with whom he had nought but his misery to share; their only remaining property was a child in the cradle. Richard Smith and Bridget Smith, with common consent, having embraced each other tenderly, and given their infant the last kiss, began with killing the poor child, after which they hung themselves to the posts of their bed. I do not know any other act of coldblooded horror so striking as this. But the letter which these unfortunate persons wrote to their cousin, Mr. Brindley, before their death, is as singular as their death itself. "We believe," say they," that God will forgive us.... We quit this life because we are miserablewithout resource; and we have done our only son the service of killing him, lest to himself"Kill thyself! Coward, he should become as unfortunate as our-thou darest not selves...." It must be observed, that these people, after killing their son through parental tenderness, wrote to recommend their dog and cat to the care of a friend. It seems they thought it easier to make a cat and dog happy in this life than a child, and they would not be a burden to their friends. Lord Scarborough quitted this life in 1727, with the same coolness as he had quitted his office of Master of the Horse. He was reproached, in the House of Peers, with taking the king's part, because he had a good place at court. My lords,” { said he, "to prove to you that my opinion is independent of my place, I resign it this moment." He afterwards found himself in a perplexing dilemma between a mistress whom he loved, but to whom he had promised nothing, and a woman whom he esteemed, and to whom he had promised marriage. He killed himself, to escape from his embarrassment. It is said, that there have been countries in which a council was established, to grant the citizens permission to kill themselves, when they had good and sufficient reasons. I answer, either that it was not so, or that those magistrates had not much to do. It might, indeed, astonish us, and does, I think, merit a serious examination, that the ancient Roman heroes almost all killed themselves when they had lost a battle in the civil wars. But I do not find, neither in the time of the League, nor in that of the Fronde, nor in the troubles of Italy, nor in those of England, that any chief thought proper to die by his own hand. These chiefs, it is true, were Christians, and there is a great difference between the principles of a Christian warrior and those of a Pagan hero. But why were these men, whom Christianity restrained when they would have put themselves to death, restrained by nothing when they chose to poison, assassinate, and bring their conquered enemies to the scaffold? Does not the Christian religion forbid these murders much more than self-murder, of which the New Testament makes no mention? These tragical stories, which swarm in the English newspapers, have made the rest of Europe think that, in England, men kill themselves more willingly than elsewhere. However, I know not but there are as many madmen or heroes to be found in Paris as in London. Perhaps, if our newspapers kept an exact list of all who had been so infatuated as to seek their own destruction, and so lamentably courageous as to effect it, we should, in this particular, have the misfortune to rival I once received a circular letter from an the English. But our journals are more { Englishman, in which he offered a prize discreet. In such of them as are acknow- to any one who should most satisfactorily ledged by the government, private occur-prove, that there are occasions on which rences are never exposed to public slander. à man might kill himself. I made no All I can venture to say with assurance answer: I had nothing to prove to him. is, that there is no reason to apprehend He had only to examine whether he liked that this rage for self-murder will ever be better to die than to live. come an epidemical disorder. Against this, nature has too well provided. Hope and fear are the powerful agents which she very often employs to stay the hand of the unhappy individual about to strike The apostles of suicide tell us, that it is quite allowable to quit one's house when one is tired of it. Agreed: but most men would prefer sleeping in a mean { house to lying in the open air. at his own breast. Cardinal Dubois was once heard to say Another Englishman came to me at Paris, in 1724; he was ill, and promised me that he would kill himself if he was not cured by the 20th of July. He accordingly gave me his epitaph, in these words: "Valete cura!" "Farewell care!"-and gave me twenty-five louis to The next in place, and punishment, are they -Fools, who, repiing at their wretched state, get a small monument erected to him at Who prodigally throw their souls away the end of the Faubourg St. Martin.cl returned him his money on the 20th of July, and kept his epitaph.de en In my own time, the last prince of the house of Courtenai, when very old, and the last branch of Lorraine-Harcourt, when very young, destroyed themselves, almost without its being heard of. These occurrences cause a terrible uproar theness which awaited them in the next first day; but when the property of the deceased has been divided, they are no longer talked of.ans 1:anada, The following most remarkable of all suicides has just occurred at Lyons, in June, 1770: A young man well known, who was handsome, well made, clever, and amiable, fell in love with a young woman whom her parents would not give to him, So far, we have nothing more than the opening scene of a comedy: the astonishing tragedy is to follow. 1 The lover broke a blood-vessel, and the surgeons informed him there was no remedy. His mistress engaged to meet him, with two pistols and two daggers, in order that, if the pistols missed, the daggers might the next moment pierce their hearts. They embraced each other for the last time: rose-coloured ribbons were tied to the triggers of the pistols; the lover holding the ribbon of his mistress's pistol, while she held the ribbon of his. Both fired at a signal given, and both fell at the same instant. Of this fact the whole city of Lyons is witness. Pætus and Arria, you set the example; but you were condemned by a tyrant, while love alone immolated these two victims. Laws against Suicide. Has any law, civil or religious, ever forbidden a man to kill himself, on pain of being hanged after death, or o on pain of being damned? It is true that Virgil has said Proma deinde tenent mæsti loça, qui sibi lethum But fate forbids, the Stygian floods oppose, And, with mine circling streams, the captive souls inclose. Tak na tu dy vod: vor ryden. Such was the religion of some of the pagans; yet, notwithstanding the weari world, it was an honour to quit this by killing themselves;-so contradictory are the ways of men. And amongst us, is not duelling unfortunately still honourable, though forbidden by reason, by religion, and by every law? If Cato and Cæsar, Anthony and Augustus, were not duellists, it was not that they were less brave than our Frenchmen. If the Duke of Montmorency, Marshal de Marillac, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, and so many others, chose rather to be dragged to execution in a waggon, like highwaymen, than to kill themselves like Cato, and Brutus, it was not that they had less courage than those Romans, nor less of what is called honour. The true reason is, that at Paris self-murder in such cases was not then the fashion: but it was the fashion at Rome. The women of the Malabar coast throw themselves, living, on the funeral-piles of their husbands. Have they, then, more courage than Cornelia? No, but in that } country it is the custom for the wives to burn themselves. In Japan, it is the custom for a man of honour, when he has been insulted by another man of honour, to rip open his belly in the presence of his enemy, and say to him" Do thou likewise if thou hast the heart." The aggressor is dishonoured for ever, if he does not immediately plunge a great knife into his belly. The only religion in which suicide is forbidden by a clear and positive law, is Mahometanism. In the fourth sura it is said-"Do not kill yourself, for God is merciful unto you; and whosoever killeth himself through malice and wickedness, Eneis, lib. vi. v. 484 et seq. shall assuredly be burned in hell-fire." |