Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds Vol. I

CONTENTS.


THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.

John Law; his birth and youthful career--Duel between Law and
Wilson--Law's escape from the King's Bench--The "Land-bank"--Law's
gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke
of Orleans--State of France after the reign of Louis XIV.--Paper money
instituted in that country by Law--Enthusiasm of the French people at
the Mississippi Scheme--Marshal Villars--Stratagems employed and
bribes given for an interview with Law--Great fluctuations in
Mississippi stock--Dreadful murders--Law created comptroller-general
of finances--Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris--Financial
difficulties commence--Men sent out to work the mines on the
Mississippi, as a blind--Payment stopped at the bank--Law dismissed
from the ministry--Payments made in specie--Law and the Regent
satirised in song--Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme--Law,
almost a ruined man, flies to Venice--Death of the Regent--Law obliged
to resort again to gambling--His death at Venice


THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE.

Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford--Exchange Alley a scene of great
excitement--Mr. Walpole--Sir John Blunt--Great demand for
shares--Innumerable "Bubbles"--List of nefarious projects and
bubbles--Great rise in South-sea stock--Sudden fall--General meeting
of the directors--Fearful climax of the South-sea expedition--Its
effects on society--Uproar in the House of Commons--Escape of
Knight--Apprehension of Sir John Blunt--Recapture of Knight at
Tirlemont--His second escape--Persons connected with the scheme
examined--Their respective punishments--Concluding remarks


THE TULIPOMANIA.

Conrad Gesner--Tulips brought from Vienna to England--Rage for the
tulip among the Dutch--Its great value--Curious anecdote of a sailor
and a tulip--Regular marts for tulips--Tulips employed as a means of
speculation--Great depreciation in their value--End of the mania


THE ALCHYMISTS.

Introductory remarks--Pretended antiquity of the
art--Geber--Alfarabi--Avicenna--Albertus Magnus--Thomas
Aquinas--Artephius--Alain de Lisle--Arnold de Villeneuve--Pietro
d'Apone--Raymond Lulli--Roger Bacon--Pope John XXII.--Jean de
Meung--Nicholas Flamel--George Ripley--Basil Valentine--Bernard of
Trèves--Trithemius--The Maréchal de Rays--Jacques Coeur--Inferior
adepts--Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries--Augurello--Cornelius
Agrippa--Paracelsus--George Agricola--Denys Zachaire--Dr. Dee and
Edward Kelly--The Cosmopolite--Sendivogius--The Rosicrucians--Michael
Mayer--Robert Fludd--Jacob Böhmen--John Heydon--Joseph Francis
Borri--Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century--Delisle--Albert
Aluys--Count de St. Germain--Cagliostro--Present state of the science


MODERN PROPHECIES.

Terror of the approaching day of judgment--A comet the signal of that
day--The prophecy of Whiston--The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at
that event--The plague in Milan--Fortune-tellers and
Astrologers--Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames--Mother
Shipton--Merlin--Heywood--Peter of Pontefract--Robert
Nixon--Almanac-makers


FORTUNE-TELLING.

Presumption and weakness of man--Union of Fortune-tellers and
Alchymists--Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of
Elizabeth to William and Mary--Lilly the astrologer consulted by the
House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London--Encouragement
of the art in France and Germany--Nostradamus--Basil of
Florence--Antiochus Tibertus--Kepler--Necromancy--Roger Bacon,
Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve--Geomancy--Augury--Divination: list
of various species of divination--Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of
dreams)--Omens