people in the house that she
had fainted, but did not tell them the cause, upon which they immediately
brought music, which I had for many days denied them, and which soon
revived her; and I then left the house to her relations to cure her at my
expense, in the manner I have before mentioned, though it took a much
longer time to cure my wife than the woman I have just given an account
of. One day I went privately, with a companion, to see my wife dance,
and kept at a short distance, as I was ashamed to go near the crowd. On
looking steadfastly upon her, while dancing or jumping, more like a deer
than a human being, I said that it certainly was not my wife; at which my
companion burst into a fit of laughter, from which he could scarcely
refrain all the way home. Men are sometimes afflicted with this dreadful
disorder, but not frequently. Among the Amhara and Galla it is not so
common."

Such is the account of Pearce, who is every way worthy of credit, and
whose lively description renders the traditions of former times
respecting the St. Vitus's dance and tarantism intelligible, even to
those who are sceptical respecting the existence of a morbid state of the
mind and body of the kind described, because, in the present advanced
state of civilisation among the nations of Europe, opportunities for its
development no longer occur. The credibility of this energetic but by no
means ambitious man is not liable to the slightest suspicion, for, owing
to his want of education, he had no knowledge of the phenomena in
question, and his work evinces throughout his attractive and unpretending
impartiality.

Comparison is the mother of observation, and may here elucidate one
phenomenon by another--the past by that which still exists. Oppression,
insecurity, and the influence of a very rude priestcraft, are the
powerful causes which operated on the Germans and Italians of the Middle
Ages, as they now continue to operate on the Abyssinians of the present
day. However these people may differ from us in their descent, their
manners and their customs, the effects of the above mentioned causes are
the same in Africa as they were in Europe, for they operate on man
himself independently of the particular locality in which he may be
planted; and the conditions of the Abyssinians of modern times is, in
regard to superstition, a mirror of the condition of the European nations
of the middle ages. Should this appear a bold assertion it wil