The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

SPECTATOR.—The event of the week has been a
harmless but widely-felt earthquake, which shot
across the island from west to east at 3.20 a.m. on
Tuesday morning, wakening a considerable num-
ber of British householders from their sleep. It
was severest in the neighbourhood of Liverpool, at
Hereford, Worcester, and Derby ; but it was felt
on the south coast and on the British Channel, and
struck a ship in St. George's Channel 20 miles west
of Milford Haven. It does not appear to have been
perceived at all on the Continent of Europe, nor, we
think, at any point further north than Southport,
in Lancashire, on the west coast; or the Vale of
Pickering, in Yorkshire, in the midland region ; nor
at any place exactly on the east coast. But as far
east as Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and North-
amptonshire, in the north, and as Rochester, in
Kent, in the south of England, the shock was dis-
tinctly felt. In London it was perceived, but evi-
dently much more slightly than in the west. A
shock of earthquake was felt in Normandy on the
Sunday, but not on the day in question. Of course
all the scared Britons at once confided their sensa-
tions and those of their wives and children to the
Times, which opened wide its columns to receive
them, printing on Wednesday and Thursday 53
personal letters, many impersonal reports, and, al-
together, seven and a half columns of small type
concerning British " seismological" emotion& The
prevalent type of intellect amongst them, on find-
ing itself awakened from sleep in a rather startling
manner, at once suggested " thieves"—so truly doe&
the Bible illustration that the day of the Lord shall
come upon men " like the thief in the night" hit
the weak point in the British imagination—the
dread of losing portable property unawares. Some
gentlemen plunged honestlybeneath the bedclothes;
some delayed getting up on the insincere pretence
that perhaps " their leg might have bceu asleep
and unwittingly twitched ;" some, perhaps,
struck a light at once—but most took time to con
eider. A few children it appears date their rather
anticipated appearance on the scene from the earth-
quake, but most of the phenomena recorded were
'floral. One gentleman reports that his wife was
awakened first, but kept profoundly still till the
house and bed were shaken. But while she was
thus musing the fire kindled, and at last she spake
with her tongue, "My dear, what is it ?" The
manly voice answered, without any endearing epi-
thet, "I really cannot imagine what it is, unless it
be an earthquake." " The physical effect upon my
wife," proceeds the writer (adding in offnand paren-
thesis, as it strikes him that that lady may read
these lines in paint " who is really the last person
in the world to be alarmed at anything") " was a
violent palpitation of the heart, and on myself that
of quickening the circulation and increasing per-
ceptibly and pleasantly the heat of the system." A
sort of scientific glow, in short, passed through him.
After giving these invaluable scientific data, this
charming writer thinks the phenomenon may be
referred to electrical currents " above the ground,
or subterranean, or both ;" but would " be happy
to know what the wise and learned in such cases
have to say upon the facts stated." Probably it
would be, that a British interior, moral and physi-
cal, suddenly unroofed at midnight even by a phe-
nomenon which adds a "pleasant stimulus to the
heat of the system," is apt to discover among those
white-robed horizontal forms, reluctantly vigilant,
one of the foolishest spectacles that human imagi-
nation can conceive.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—We can scarcely expect, in
the present state of the public mind, that the popu-
lar view of the recent earthquake will be very dif-
ferent from what it would have been in
the dark ages. The great public instructors
may congratulate themselves on the spread
of intellectual light, and on the march of mind,
and may contrast the abject superstition of the past
with that calm philosophical estimate of material phe
nomena which we are told is the characteristic of our
own times. It is to be feared that much of our light
is only borrowed, and is but a sham reflection ; and
with the awkward facts of experience which so often
occur, it may be doubted whether, as far as the gene-
ral intelligence goes, any very remarkable advance
has been made. The difference between our credulity
and that of past centuries is this—that credulity then
took a respectable form, whereas now it is disrepu-
table. It was a virtue, and it included a pious and
reverential feeling; now, it is a sin concealed, and
consequently cherished. It was a religion—it 5.s a
superstition. But it exists nevertheless. Whole vil-
lages—with schools, and clergy, and railways, and
electric telegraphs—believe in witchcraft, and act on
their belief. Spiritualism has its professors and its
organs. The traded a soothsayer is profitable, and
magical books are a lucrative literature. In their
heart of hearts there are tens and hundreds of thou-
sands who will connect the rare occurrence of an
earthquake in England with some significance, moral,
spiritual, or political. Earthquakes in countries of
active volcanic agency are as much a matter of course
as is a violent and exceptional tempest among our-
selves. The people of Central America or Calabria
or the Philippines no more think of investing an
earthquake with any supernatural meaning than we
should think of reading Divine wrath in a specially
destructive storm. But literature grew up in coun-
tries where earthquakes were rare, and they have
consequently connected themselves, in an exceptional
way, with religious feelings. There are those who
probably think, without a metaphor, that the voice
of the Deity is in the thunder ; and such may per-
haps be pardoned for considering an earthquake as
a sign of an angry Providence. It is the Scriptural
image in which troubles and convulsions of the
spiritual world are described. When the solid
foundations of the round world seem to be shaken
the mind may be almost pardoned for thinking that
wrath has gone out from the Most High ; and even
the staid and lofty poet of antiquity, whose whole
mind was occupied in a protest against superstition,
and against religion itself, admits and apologises
for the feelings that the thunderstorm was a stern
awakener of conscience, and a remembrancer of the
retribution that awaits the tyrant's crime and pub-
lic wrong. How far Kings and peoples of the pre-
day are above or below what we have ventured to
think is still at the bottom of very many minds
among us when they discuss the earthquake of
Tuesday morning, it is not for us to say. We shall
not inquire whether Foreign Secretaries read the
signs in Heaven and Earth. If they had consulted
Zadkiel—who will next year sell 100,000 more
copies on the strength of another lucky hit—they
would have found that that distinguished seer, in
his " Voices of the Stars for October, 1863," fore-
told that " from the conjunction of Saturn and Mars
earthquakes and storms, both physical and political,
are likely to occur." To be sure the prophecy was
a safe one, for, as the illustrious Tao-Sze did not
specify an English eatthquake, there wan pretty s
certain to be an earthquake somewhere in the aril'
terrarum early in October, and tempests at the
Equinox form a safe subject for prediction. But
certainly this shaking of the earth and the disturb-
ance of the political equilibrium are strangely coin-
cident. If earthquakes are sent to admonish the
nations as to political duties and political crimes,
the lesson is just now significant. One young King
is mounting a precerious throne, and a new Trans-
atlantic sceptre has just been manufactured, and