The king does not possess a norimmonnos, as he is not required to travel to Japan for the purpose of homage. He rides his horse on land, and varies this out-door existence by going down to the sea in a balcon or balon, a sort of barge or galley, with a tower in the middle. Other dignitaries also have their balcons, but these are smaller and less gorgeous.

Some of the more outlandish habits and customs of the Formosans must be mentioned here.

Polygamy is practised by those who can afford it. But if the first wife, or an only wife, bears her husband no children, he may kill her and install another in her place. The oldest son of the first wife is the heir to one-half the husband's fortune, and in case the first wife has no child, that portion of the estate is forfeited to the crown. Hence the king keeps a watchful and a thrifty eye over all marriages.

Terrible penalties prevent the practice of polygamy by those who cannot afford it. "If any one takes more wives than his means will maintain, he is to be beheaded." Each wife lives in a separate chamber, but all of them take their meals together. 'No conversation is allowed between any man and another man's wife, nor between a bachelor and a maid, but in the greatest feasts and diversions every one keeps among those of his own family."

66

Cannibalism is not habitual, but the inhabitants eat the bodies of prisoners of war and of malefactors legally executed. "The flesh of the latter is our greatest dainty, and is four times dearer than other rare and delicious food." Husbands, also, who have reason to be offended with their wives condemn them to the family larder. In aggravated cases the husband may send for the lady's relatives, and "sometimes with fiery indignation he strikes her in the breast with a dagger, and sometimes, to show his resentment, he will take her heart out hastily and eat it before her relations."

The Formosans are also accustomed to beat live serpents with rods "until they be very angry, and when they are in this furious passion all the venom that was in the body ascends to the head, which being then cut off, there remains no more poison in the body, which may therefore be safely eaten." Elsewhere the author commends this, taken in the early morning with a pipe of tobacco and a cup of tea, as, "in my humble opinion, the most wholesome breakfast a man can make."

The laws, as a rule, seem to be much like those which prevail in European countries, save that the punishments are more vindictive and sanguinary. A murderer is to be "hanged up by the feet with his head downward" for a longer or shorter time, and is then "shot to death with arrows." "If he be both a robber and a murderer, he shall be crucified." A thief is punished with hanging or with continual imprisonment, or with whipping, or with a fine. An adulterer is fined or whipped for the first offence, and beheaded for the second. A blasphemer is burnt alive. A slanderer has his tongue bored through with a hot iron, and one who bears false witness loses that member altogether. A traitor is "tortured with all imaginable torments."

A son or daughter who strikes his or her parents, relations, or superiors, shall have his or her legs and arms cut off, and, a stone being fastened to the maimed and helpless trunk, it is cast into the sea or river.

Evidently any child who wishes its days to be long and pleasant in that land must honor father and mother and uncle and aunt.

In his chapter on the Formosan language the author dwells at much length upon its alphabet and grammatical structure, and adds specimens of the written character, which are to be read from right to left,-plausible enough to mystify even men of culture, acquainted only with the classical languages of Europe, and ignorant of the rudiments of comparative philology.

The book was a success. The first edition was rapidly sold, and a second

was called for. But though the learned world was staggered, and a large pro. portion convinced, the book was too full of absurdities, the author too young and ignorant, to gain universal credence.

Evidence is given in the second edition that there had grown up a formidable crop of objections against the narrative. He treated them, however, with a debonair air that shows him to have been an agile master of logical fence. For example, when it was urged that the annual sacrifice of eighteen thousand male infants would soon depopulate the island, he explained that he referred to the number legally demanded by the priesthood. Bribery, prompted by parental affection, undoubtedly diminished that number very greatly. Again, when asked how he could remember the very words of Merryaandanoo's letter, he replied, “My father has a copy of the letter by him." But his cavillers were not to be silenced. To use a current but excellent phrase, he was continually "giving himself away" by contradictions and misstatements made in the heat of personal altercation with his disputants. Slowly and reluctantly the public mind was brought to acquiesce in the view that he was an impostor. He fell from favor, and almost disappeared from public view. His biographer states that he consorted with the very lowest ranks of society and crawled in the vilest pursuits.

But we are not yet at the end of the surprises reserved for us by Psalma

nazar.

In 1716, at the age of thirty-two, he experienced a genuine and lasting change of heart. The squalid adventurer became the model of modest virtue, the audacious forger the pattern of conscientious scholarship.

No penitent could have done more honor to religion. He disavowed his early impostures, took occasion to introduce into a treatise upon geography a rectification on the subject of his former description of Formosa, and finally wrote a detailed confession designed for publication after his death.

He lived to be seventy-nine years old, busying himself for half a century upon a "Universal History" and other meritorious but now forgotten works. Dr. Johnson knew him in those days, and more than once bore testimony to the uprightness and sincerity of the former adventurer. "He was," Johnson told Boswell, "one of the men for whom he entertained the greatest respect." In 1764, a year after his death, his memoirs were published, containing a full confession of what the writer calls "the base and shameful imposture of passing upon the world for a native of Formosa and a convert to Christianity, and backing it with a fictitious account of that island, and of my own travels, conversion, etc., all or most of it hatched in my own brain without regard to truth or honesty."

Still he does not reveal his real name. He begs to be excused from naming his country or family, "or anything that might cast a reflection upon either," but assures the reader "that out of Europe I was not born, nor educated, nor ever travelled." It has been plausibly conjectured, however, from various admissions made here and there in the memoirs, that he was a native of the southern part of France.

His parents, he tells us, were extremely poor. His father came of an ancient but decayed family, but through stress of circumstances had been obliged to leave his mother when the boy was only five years old and live a long distance away. So his care and education were left entirely to the mother. She was a zealous Catholic, cherishing a natural hatred for Prot. estants and Protestantism, but withal an excellent and well-meaning woman. Poor as she was, she stinted herself of everything but the necessaries of life in order to give the boy an education.

When six years old he was sent to a free school taught by two Franciscan monks. Here his uncommon talent for languages was early recognized.

He

was transferred to the Latin form, where, although his classmates were twice his years, he outstripped them all in a comparatively brief space of time, carrying off the highest prizes, and being "singled out as the flower of the flock" whenever priests, monks, gentlemen, or other persons passed through the city. All this made him assuming and arrogant. Nevertheless, he was never guilty of a fault at school: "so, let me do what I would out of it, I was never punished for it as the other boys were, but had, perhaps, a soft reprimand or some easy task assigned me by way of penance."

The good boy of the school, who won all the prizes and escaped all the reprimands, was naturally no favorite with his school-fellows. But he held his head high, and they dared not vent their displeasure in any other way than in words.

At nine years of age he was removed to a Jesuit college. Here at first he found it hard work to keep up with his class, and he who had been used to be foremost found it a shame now to be middlemost. So he worked hard, and acquitted himself with much credit. Subsequently he studied theology. Then he left school and tried teaching. But in this he was not a success. He was naturally indolent. When he found that his pupil was not only indolent, but stupid, he gave up trying to teach him, and master and pupil "spent more of our time in playing on the violin and flute than at our books."

His next situation was with two small boys, whose mother proved somewhat too demonstrative to him. But he remained cold to all her advances, owing not so much to virtue, he acknowledges, as to "my natural sheepish bashfulness and inexperienced youth." So she procured his dismissal.

He was now in sore straits. He took the road to Avignon, and made his first essay as an impostor. He claimed to be a sufferer for religion,—his love for the Church had estranged his father and cut off his financial supplies. He was praised and pitied. But he wanted hard cash, and that was not forthcoming. So he tried another plan. He procured a certificate to the effect that he was a young student of theology of Irish extract," then going on a pilgrimage to Rome.

But how to obtain a pilgrim's garb?

He remembered that a returned pilgrim had left his cloak and staff in a neighboring church as a token of gratitude for his happy return. The church was never empty. But fearless audacity is always successful. Psalmanazar

simply walked boldly in at noon-time and carried off both cloak and staff. He had an answer ready prepared in case he was stopped and questioned. He would have said that he imagined the things were placed there for the accommodation of penniless pilgrims.

"How far such a poor excuse would have gone I knew not, neither did I trouble my head about it; however, I escaped without such an inquiry, and carried it off unmolested, and made what haste I could to some private corner, where I threw my cloak over my shoulders, and walked with a sanctified grace with the staff in my hand, till I was out of the city."

So accoutred, and with the proper certificate in his hand, he begged his way in fluent Latin, "accosting only clergymen or persons of figure, by whom I could be understood and was most likely to be relieved."

But as

He was very successful, so successful, indeed, that but for his vanity and his extravagance he might easily have saved a good deal of money. soon as he had sufficient for the day he would quit begging and retire to some inn, where he spent money as freely as he got it, "not without some such awkward tokens of generosity as better suited with my vanity than my present circumstances."

Should he go home, or pursue his journey to the Eternal City? He deliberated the question for a while. Filial piety finally carried the day. His

mother was overjoyed to see him, though pained at his poverty-struck appearance. A few days after his return she proposed that he should proceed, still in pilgrim guise, to visit his father. He accepted the suggestion and started on his travels. Though his pilgrim garb should have protected him from robbers, he did not feel entirely safe. And no wonder.

"I met frequently with some objects that made me shrink, though it was a considerable high-road. Now and then at some lonely place lay the carcass of a man rotting and stinking on the ground by the way-side, with a rope about his neck, which was fastened to a post about two or three yards' distance, and these were the bodies of highwaymen, or rather of soldiers, sailors, mariners, or even galley-slaves, disbanded after the peace of Ryswick, who, having neither home nor occupation, used to infest the roads in troops, plunder towns and villages, and when taken were hanged at the country towns by dozens, or even scores sometimes, after which their bodies were then exposed along the highway in terrorem. At other places one met with crosses, either of wood or stone, the highest not above two or three feet, with inscriptions to this purport: Pray for the soul of A. B., or of a stranger, who was found murdered in this spot!"

Sights enough to discourage even a brave and resolute youth!

Nevertheless he pressed ahead, and finally reached the village where his father dwelt. That gentleman professed joy at seeing him, but was unable to offer any assistance. Indeed, the son was surprised to find that his father dwelt even more meanly than he had been led to anticipate. But though he had no money, the old gentleman had lots of advice to give. He suggested that the young man should continue visiting the various parts of Europe at free cost. The advice was accepted.

Psalmanazar was now sixteen years of age. His wits had been sharpened by necessity. He determined to find some more "cunning, safe, and effectual way of travelling" than he had hitherto pursued. To pass as an Irishman and a sufferer for religion not only exposed him to the constant risk of detection, but "came short of the merit and admiration I had expected from it."

He would leave off the Irish and become a Japanese. His notions of the East were vague, but they were not much vaguer than those of even the learned and the travelled. The average European knew less than he did. "I was rash enough to think that what I wanted of a right knowledge of them I might make up by the strength of a pregnant invention." So he proceeded to excogitate both an alphabet and names of letters, together with many other particulars equally difficult, such as a considerable piece of a new language and grammar, a new division of the year into twenty months, a new religion, etc. Then he forged a certificate to bear out his assumed character, and appended to it the seal belonging to his Avignon certificate.

On the whole, he found that he was generally credited not only in Germany, but in Brabant and in Flanders. His wonderful story, his fluency in Latin, his smattering of various sciences, procured him more money and attention than an ordinary pilgrim might have expected. After many adventures, he finally joined a Dutch regiment as a recruit. He still pretended to be a Japanese, but no longer a convert to Christianity. He found himself an object of greater interest than ever. Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen sought to convert him. But when Papists and Protestants are so intermingled, he explains, their guides are better stored with arguments against each other than against the common enemies of the Christian faith. Hence in his assumed character as a heathen he won an easy controversial victory over his opponents.

In due time the regiment in which Psalmanazar had enrolled himself was ordered to Sluys. A Scotch regiment in the Dutch pay was quartered here.

Brigadier Lander was the colonel of the regiment, as well as governor of the place. A good, honest Scotchman, he was anxious to convert the interesting Japanese recruit to Christianity.

For this purpose he introduced him to Chaplain Innes. At first Innes, too, was duped. But he speedily discovered the fraud. Did he denounce it? Not at all. He was too canny for that. He broadly hinted that it would be well for both of them if Psalmanazar would consent to be baptized, and then accompany him to London.

Psalmanazar profited by the hint. Brigadier Lander stood sponsor, Chap-
lain Innes performed the ceremony. Then the latter wrote a letter to the
Bishop of London about his interesting convert.
What followed we have already detailed.

N.

N, the fourteenth letter and eleventh consonant of the English alphabet, derived through the Latin and Greek from the Phoenician. In the English prayer-book N is used in the same way as the algebraic x in mathematics, to indicate the unknown name of some person in question. For example, in the baptismal service the priest is directed to say, "N., I baptize thee," etc. In the catechism the "Question. What is your name?" is followed by the "Answer. N. or M." Again, in the marriage service and in the formula for publishing the banns the initials used are "M. and N." Much ingenious conjecture has been spent on the question as to the ulterior meaning of these initials. It has been suggested that M. stands for Mary and N. for Nicholas. But the people who make this suggestion forget that from the position of the initials M. is the man and N. the woman. Therefore there is more plausibility in the guess that M. stands for maritus (“husband”) and N. for nupta ("bride"). But even this theory is disposed of by the fact that in the more ancient prayer-books the letter M makes no appearance, the form in all cases where there is more than one party being "N. and N." It is therefore more than probable that N was originally adopted as a convenient letter, and the initial of nomen, or name, and that in due course M was added, not only from its cognate quality, but as the next preceding letter, the next succeeding one, O, being, for obvious reasons, objectionable. Or M may stand for double N

= names.

Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht (Ger., "We are not going to Canossa"), the answer made by Bismarck to the clerical party in 1872. Canossa, it will be remembered, was the place whither Emperor Henry IV. of Germany was summoned by Pope Gregory VII. after a long and bitter struggle for su premacy, in which Henry was obliged to confess himself vanquished. It was at the dead of winter when the humbled monarch reached the castle of Canossa, among the mountains of Modena in Italy, but he was only admitted to the space between the first and second walls, standing there barefooted and fasting until sunset. Not till the morning of the fourth day, January 25, 1077, was he ushered into the Pope's presence. Here he swore to be faithful in future to the command of the Church. The struggle in 1872 between Pope and Kaiser terminated for the moment in the passage of the Falk laws, which disqualified the Pope's appointees from performing their clerical functions if they were disapproved by the state or refused to take the required oaths before the civil authority. Bismarck's phrase was used in the German Reichstag, May 14, 1872.