eason the process appears to have been discontinued,
exceeded six thousand simpletons; the numbers of her deluded followers
in the metropolis and its vicinity alone, are supposed at one time to
have amounted to a hundred thousand.

Joanna was a coarse, common-place, and somewhat corpulent woman; she
dressed in a plain, quaker-like garb, in a gown of Calimancoe, with a
shawl and bonnet of drab colour. The three leading preachers in her
chapel in Southwark (her great stronghold), were a Mr. Carpenter, who,
after learning his business, set up as a prophet on his own account; a
Mr. Foley, and a lath-render named Tozer. She had chapels also in
Spitalfields, Greenwich, Twickenham, and Gravesend.

The scribblings in prose and verse of this illiterate creature, instead
of being committed to the waste paper basket, were solemnly preserved
and received as prophecies. Attacked at last with dropsy, her delusions
assumed the following objectionable form: she prophesied, and Sharp and
his fellow-disciples--some of whom were men of fair education--actually
believed, that Christ was to be born again under the name of "Shiloh,"
and that she, Joanna, at the age of sixty-five, was to be the mother.
The revelation which proclaimed the miraculous _accouchement_ was worded
as follows: "This year [1814], in the sixty-fifth year of thy age, thou
shalt have a son by the power of the Most High; which if they (the
Hebrews) receive as their prophet, priest, and king, then I will restore
them to their own land, and cast out the heathen for their sakes, as I
cast out them when they cast out Me, by rejecting Me as their Saviour,
Prince, and King, for which I said I was born, but not at that time to
establish My kingdom."

One might have imagined that this gibberish would open the eyes of some
at least of her votaries: their insane enthusiasm, on the contrary,
increased. Joanna was absolutely inundated with the "freewill" offerings
of the faithful--a costly cradle, white robes, pinafores, shoes of satin
and worsted, flannel shirts, napkins, blankets, silver spoons,
pap-boats, mugs, silver tea-pots, sugar-basins, tongs, and
corals,--absolutely without number. The absurdity of the simpletons who
sent these offerings was severely criticised, both in England and on
the Continent; and by way apparently of answering her traducers, Joanna
inserted an apostolical advertisement in the _Morning Chronicle_ of
Thursday, 22nd September, 1814, and in the _Courier