Frontispiece--Gardens of the Hotel de Soissons. (From a print in Mr. Hawkins' collection.)
Vignette--The Bubblers' Arms, Prosperity. (_Bubblers' Mirror, or England's Folly_.)
John Law. (From a rare print by Leon Schenk. 1720)
Old Palais Royal from the Garden. (From a scarce print, _circa_ 1720)
Law's House; Rue de Quincampoix. (From Nodier's _Paris_)
Hôtel de Soissons. (From Nodier's _Paris_)
John Law as Atlas. (From _England under the House of Hanover_)
Caricature--Neck or Nothing, or Downfall of the Mississippi Company
The South-Sea House. (From a print, _circa_ 1750)
Stock-jobbing Card, or the Humours of Change Alley. 1720. (From the _Bubblers' Medley_)
Caricature--People climbing the Tree of Fortune. (From the _Bubblers' Medley_)
The Gateway to Merchant Tailors' Hall. (Gateway from old print)
Caricature--Beggars on Horseback. (From the _Bubblers' Medley_)
Caricature--Britannia stript by a South-Sea Director
Caricature--The Brabant Screen. (Copied from a rare print of the time, in the collection of E. Hawkins, Esq., F.S.A.)
Caricature--Emblematic Print of the South-Sea Scheme. (From a print by Hogarth)
Caricature--Bubblers' Arms: Despair. (From _Bubblers' Mirror, or England's Glory_)
The Alchymist. (From print after Teniers)
House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges. (From _Sommerard's Album_)
Dr. Dee's Show-stone and Magic Crystal. (Originals in the possession of Lord Londesborough and British Museum)
House of Cagliostro (Rue de Clery, No. 278), Paris
Henry Andrews, the original "Francis Moore, physician"
Nostradamus. (From the frontispiece to a collection of his Prophecies, published at Amsterdam A.D. 1666)
In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the philosopher's stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originated,--that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate them entirely from the popular mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.