The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1874-03-26
Curiosities Of Superstition.

| Louis Napoleon in his will emphasizes
the solemn declaration: 'With regard to
my son. let him keep As a talisman the seal
used TO wear attached to my watch This
piece of teticlsm would appear to have
| formed yet another link between the inn
peral exile that has passed from our midst,
and those Latin races whose cause he al
tected TO represent. whose superstition he
certainly shared. Indeed, the ancient Ro-
| mans degraded Il priest because his mitre
| fell. and unmade Il dictator because a rat
| Squcakcd. Caesar crossed the RubcOm, be
cause on the opposite bank, he saw a man
with a fine figure. Ills nephew felt conf
dent Of winning the battle of Antium, be
| cause he met Il peasant by the name of
Nicolaus mounted on an ass. Wolscv was
warned OF his doom by Il crozier-head
Sejanus, by 4 flight Of crows. DR. johnson
objected to going under a ladder Mon
taigne avoided giving his lett toot priority
in putting on his stockings Alexander
was believed to have united the Gordan
knot with slice Of his sword For good
luck sake Augustus wore some portion of
Il sea calf Charlemangc. some trinket of
| unknown value. Mohammed was all fate
| Bonaparte, all star and destiny Cromwell
poleon in December , Sula called him
self Felix, the favored child of fortune, and
| Tmoleon turned his house into a temple
of chance. Alexander, if we may credit the
account given by Quintus CTtius. was
| terrified by blood flowing inside his sol
diers' bread during the seige of Tyre in
}32 b. {. His seer. Aristander. toresaW in
this etluN Of the vital stream out of the
commsserlat happy issue for the Mace
domains; and the warriors thus never took
| Tyre. From the year 1904 the alarming
spectacle of the bleeding host and bread
rs we'll as the bewitched bloody milk
several times i'll each century. gave simple
folks a scare; thus it was noticed in 1861
under Urban ~. at Bolsena, not far from
Civtia Nechia and Raphael has taken this
for the subject of his picture, t'Aliraculco
de BolSena,' which is at all events a mir
acle of the pencil,
In 1888, when Heinrich Won Bulow de
stroyed the village and church of Wilnach,
drops Of blood were found eight days after
wards on the host placed on the altar. Bat
the victims Of superstition have the bump
OF casualty remarkably developed, and.
iii lilo, thirty-eight Jews We're burnt to
ashes because they had tortured the con
sccrated host until it bled Again the sight
was seen on the Moselle in 1924 and in
1913 the famous Ehrenberg analyzed the
terrible portent After STOPPING with his
microscope over the red stains on bread,
cheese, and potatoes, this savant declared
that they We're caused by small monads OF
yibrois, which have 4 red color, and are so
minute that from 46 ,Gj6 600 900 to SS4
-3G 600 900, 900 distinct beings adorn the
space Of one cubic inch Unfortunately
when, in 1910, thirty-eight Israelites, h
We have seen, We're burnt to ashes, no
scientific Ehrenberg existed to point out to
their supersttious butchers that what they
called q proof Of the consecrated host be
ing tortured until it bled, was merely due
to aggregation OF hungry red insects.
TChamher's journal