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sirable; but anything that was black he abhorred, and a black hen which he once chanced upon nearly killed him with fright. Of a Creator, or death, or a life to come, it is needless to say he had no conception or any capability of understanding. Shortly after his domestication in Nuremberg divers devout and well-meaning clergymen sat down before him, and at sundry times strove to accomplish the salvation of his soul. But though he would listen for a time with the most encouraging attention, he would presently make a dart at the good man's eye-glass, or curiously fondle his whiskers, or stoop down to feel the polish on his boots, or by other and similar exhibitions of babyness satisfactorily demonstrate that he had not the slightest idea of what the sermon was about. Indeed, all through his life Kasper entertained a strong aversion to parsons, their presence operating upon him in somewhat the same way that meat did. His impression of the ceremony of public worship he once summed up in the following pithy First the people bellow, and when they have done the parson begins to bellow."

manner:

them, and moved their big arms and fingers. Himself scrupulously clean, he beheld with indignation a dirt-encrusted statue which stood in his tutor`s garden, often asking "why the man did not wash himself." He also propounded a similar inquiry for the consideration of an old grey cat, which he viewed as wilfully neglecting the ordinary means at its command of becoming white.

At this time his eyes, recovering from the state of inflammation into which they had been thrown by the sudden translation from darkness to light, were keen beyond comparison, and, as I have mentioned, were equally serviceable by night or day. His sense of hearing, too, was peculiarly acute, and he could distinguish at a great distance the sound of a man walking barefoot. His touch was equally sensitive, and he was affected in a powerful manner by metallic and magnetic influences. Of all the senses smelling was with him so highly developed as to be a source of daily torture. Things which to ordinary mortals are entirely destitute of odour, he could scent from afar, and flowers or other substances which possess a distinguishable perfume affected him so powerfully that it was necessary to exercise constant care to keep him without their range.

The struggle of this peculiarly situated human mind to grapple with the ideas that had suddenly burst upon it was deeply in teresting to the psychological world, and To this state of morbid sensibility Kasper's education was directed with as there succeeded one in which his exanxious a care as if the poor foundling ceptional powers of memory, and, in a had been the Prince Imperial or the pro-less degree, those of sight, hearing, spective Czar of all the Russias. Pos-smelling, taste, and touch, faded, and his sessing a memory which, counting its ability to learn the lessons prepared for age by years, was in its prime, and upon him steadily decreased. This was doubtwhich no ideas had yet been written, and less a natural result of the forcing syswith a disposition singularly docile and tem which was adopted by his tutors; earnest, Kasper made wonderful progress but it was also coexistent with the change in his studies. In a manner which shall presently be noted he had made a start in the art of writing, and in this he soon perfected himself, while he daily added to his vocabulary of speech. His notions of things were, however, essentially childish, and when he passed beyond the stage of impassive indifference to all around him he constantly indulged in fancies the most grotesque. He endowed images and trees with life, and if a sheet of paper were blown off the table he regarded the act as of its own volition, and would "wonder why it went." It was a matter of deep surprise to him that the horses and unicorns which he saw carved in stone upon the buildings of the city did not run away, and he was forever guessing what the trees were saying when the wind rustled through,

which had been gradually effected in his diet. Education in this direction had been a work of great difficulty, but by degrees Kasper became accustomed to eat meat and drink milk, and he throve so well under his new diet that he was soon able to walk the streets of Nuremberg without exciting doubts of his sobriety. Of horses and of riding he was passionately fad. He was from his first mount as safe in the saddle as a child in its cradle, and thenceforward daily rode out on horseback, undertaking without fatigue journeys which would have worn out a foxhunter.

In 1829, the year after Kasper's birth into the world and it is necessary to bear in mind that it is of his first year I have hitherto discoursed the public demanded that something more than had

yet been accomplished should be done | stood on his feet, and the experiment towards clearing up the mystery of his gave him great pain. But the man perselife. Accordingly a court of inquiry was vered, and by degrees the position grew appointed by the Government, and sev-less distressing. After the lesson had eral days were consumed in hearing de- been repeated many times the man one positions of facts connected with the day took him up on his back and carried foundling. Of the scanty evidence ad- him out into a bright light, in which Kasduced the most interesting is a brief me- per fainted, and "all became night." moir written by himself in February, 1829, They went a long way, he being someless than twelve months after his appear- times dragged along, falling over his helpance in Nuremberg, a production which less feet, sometimes carried on the man's displays the wonderful educational prog- back. But the man spoke no word exress made by him in so short a time. cept to say, "I would be a rider as my His reminiscences are wholly confined to father was," a shibboleth which thus behis existence in what he calls "a hole," came imprinted on Kasper's memory. which, from his comparisons with other When they got near Nuremberg the man localities, appears to have been a cham-dressed him in the clothes described at the ber about six or seven feet long and five commencement of this article, and upon feet high. His dress, he tells us, con- entering the gates of the city placed a sisted of a shirt and trousers, with a rug letter in his hand and vanished. to cover his legs, and he sat upon straw with his back against the wall, never lying full length even when he slept. When he awoke from sleep he sometimes found that he had a clean shirt on, and there was always a pitcher of water and a piece of bread on the floor beside him. How they came there he never questioned, accepting them as a matter of course, and only occasionally wishing the supply of water were more liberal. When he was very thirsty, and had drunk all the water in the pitcher, he was wont to take up the vessel and hold it to his mouth, expecting that water would presently flow; "But it never did," and then he would put down the pitcher and go to sleep again, and when he awoke there was water. He had for playthings two wooden horses, a dog, and some pieces of red and blue ribbon, and his sole occupation throughout the years he had spent in "the hole" was to deck the dog and the horses with the ribbon. He had no notion that there was anything anywhere beyond the walls that enclosed him, and for a long time did not know that there was any being in creation save himself. But once a man appeared, and placing a low stool before Kasper laid a piece of paper thereon, and taking the prisoner's hand within his own guided it in forming with a pencil the words "Kasper Hauser." This he repeated at intervals, till Kasper could write them himself, a practice in which he took great pleasure, for it varied the monotony of his ordinary recreation.

One day the man came to him, lifted him up, and placing him upon his feet endeavoured to teach him to stand upright and use his legs. Kasper had never yet

Nothing could be made of this extraordinary story, and the court of inquiry, solemnly convened, was as solemnly dissolved, having effected no other result than that of widening and deepening public interest in the history of the foundling. This interest received a fresh stimulus from an occurrence which took place on the 17th October, 1829. On that day Kasper was found insensible and covered with blood, lying in the corner of a cellar in the house of the learned professor with whom he lived. When restored to consciousness, he related how that a man with a black silk handkerchief tied round his face had suddenly appeared before him as he sat alone in his room; how the man had struck him a heavy blow on the forehead, felling him to the ground; and how upon partially coming to himself he staggered down stairs and into the cellar, where he had fainted. After this event Kasper was more carefully tended than ever, and the process of intellectual cramming proceeded with such vigour that in a couple of years all his peculiar brightness had faded. Writing of him in the year 1832 Herr von Feuerbach says, "The extraordinary, almost preternatural, elevation of his senses has been diminished, and has almost sunk to the common level. He is indeed still able to see in the dark, so that for him there exists no real night. But he is no longer able to read in the dark, nor to recognize the most minute objects at a great distance. Of the gigantic powers of his memory, and of other astonishing qualities, not a trace remains. He no longer retains anything that is remarkable, except his extraordinary fate, his indescribable goodness, and the exceeding amiableness

of his disposition." It is astonishing | closed by the assassin's dagger. On the how Kasper wound himself about the hearts of those with whom he came in contact. There are people still living in Nuremberg who remember him and regard him over a space of nearly forty years with a marvellous tenderness and infinite pity. One such gave me as a precious gift a copy of his portrait. It shows a lad of some eighteen years, fullfaced, with short curly hair lying over a broad high forehead, large eyes, wellshaped nose, a sweet mouth, a dimpled chin, and a general expression of the presence of a great and constant sorrow uncomplainingly borne.

17th December, 1833, he went by appointment to the castle park, to meet a person who had darkly promised to give him a clue to his parentage, and who upon his arrival at the trysting place treacherously stabbed him to the heart. The deed was done in broad daylight, but the murderer escaped, and with him vanished all hope of elucidating the mystery of Kasper Hauser's birth and life. There were fresh inquiries and new conjectures, but from that day to this nothing capable of proof has been discovered. God," wrote the pious Binder, chief burgomaster of Nuremberg, in a manifesto issued In the year 1832 the Earl of Stanhope upon the death of Kasper, "God in his prevailed upon the magistracy of Nurem-justice will compensate him with an eterberg to deliver up to his care the adopted | nal spring of the joys of infancy denied child of their city, and his lordship tempo- him here, for the vigour of youth of which rarily placed him at Anspach, purposing he was deprived, and for the life destroyed shortly to remove him to England. At five years after he was born into the Anspach the life for which poor Kasper world. Peace to his ashes." This was had so little cause for thankfulness was Kasper Hauser's epitaph.

THE CATHOLICS AND THE JEWS. The Tablet contains a very objectionable paragraph (says the Jewish Chronicle), which we regret to find has been copied without comment in some of the daily papers. The Tablet, the organ of an intolerant communion, a communion distinguished by its virulent and cruel oppression of the race to which its founder belonged, is of course quite in its element in speaking offensively of the Jews. The paragraph reads as if written by some disappointed Catholic speculator checkmated on the Stock Exchange by the superior intelligence of a Jewish opponent. We can afford to read complacently these angry invectives of our Romish contemporary. We cannot afford, however, to read them without regret when we find them copied into the columns of the general press. We appeal to our Protestant fellow-countrymen of the Church of England, for an expression of opinion as to whether the allegations and insinuations of the Tablet are justifiable. We are not misled by the fact that in so-called Catholic countries the Jews are treated with as much liberality as in Protestant countries perhaps in some instances with greater liberality. The truth is that, when this is the case, Catholicism is at a discount in these countries. It was revolutionary, or rather constitutional France, the France of 1789, that emancipated the Jews. Italy and Spain were liberal and tolerant when Papacy, in those countries, was under a cloud. Heaven help the Jews if Charles the Seventh should reign in Spain, and Henry the Fifth in France, unless wiser counsels than those of the Vatican prevail,

and unless for once the Bourbons do remember the past, and yield to the loud-sounding and persuasive voice of liberty of conscience. To us Jews it always seems singular that Christians should delight from time to time in ridiculing and reviling the race to which they owe their religion, their morality, their early teachers, their master and their God! The Catholics worship "the sacred heart " -the bodily heart of Jesus, forgetting that the corporeal heart throbbed in the body of a Jew. Let us quote to the Tablet His words "Forgive them; they know not what they do!"

THE invaluable collections of books, prints, and manuscripts at Windsor Castle are, we learn from the Times of the 6th inst., to be protected from one of the most serious casualties to which such treasures are exposed by the Royal Library and Print-room being rendered fireproof. It is to be hoped also that the statements made in a recent letter to the Times concerning the insecurity of the National Gallery against fire will be promptly investigated and all necessary precautions taken. It is alarming even to contemplate such an accident as the destruction by fire of our fine National Collection, particularly as the precaution has not been taken, as at Munich, of marking those pictures which in case of such an event should be saved first. Some few of our national pictures might, it must be owned, with advantage be left to the flames.

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