A monomaniac is generally made by dwelling for a long period upon one object with intense interest, to the exclusion of others. By this process, this one object at last occupies the whole soul, fills the entire vision, and makes the mind blind to the relative importance of other things. A man in this condition is insane, and resembles the bedlamite, who, being asked why he was confined, replied, "I thought the world mad, and the world thought me mad, and they[Pg 283] outvoted me!" While the world, guided by common sense, assigns to each subject its relative importance, the monomaniac we have imagined, sees but one thing, his own hobby, and pronounces mankind mad because they do not agree with him.
There are a thousand forms and shades of this insanity; one of the most common is displayed by the miser, who has dwelt so long and so intently upon the acquisition of money, that money becomes his idol: he thinks it the supreme good: he has a mad delight in amassing it: his eagerness to increase his store, quenches the lights of the soul—pity, benevolence, charity, and mercy; he is beset by a horrid fear of its being taken from him; and, as age creeps on and weakens his powers of body and mind, the demon of avarice takes possession of the bosom, and, putting out the light of reason, holds its revel in darkness and fear, till death closes the scene.
Of misers, history has furnished us a long list. We are told of M. Osterwald, a wealthy banker of Paris, who died in 1790, of want, yet leaving an estate of 600,000 dollars! When he began life, and bought a bottle of beer for his dinner, he took away the cork in his pocket. He practised this for a long period, and had at last collected such a quantity that they sold for nearly one hundred dollars! A few months before his death, he refused to buy meat for soup. "I should like the soup," said he, "well enough, but I do not want the meat. What, then, is to become of that?" The fear of losing the meat, led him to starve himself; yet, at the very moment, he had 800 assignats, of 200 dollars each, in a silken bag, around his neck!
[Pg 284]Another Frenchman, by the name of Fortescue, affords a curious piece of history. He was a farmer-general of the taxes, and amassed an immense fortune by grinding the poor. The government at length called upon him for a considerable sum, but he pleaded poverty. Fearing that some of his neighbors should testify to his wealth, he determined to conceal it. He therefore dug a vault beneath his wine-cellar, where he deposited his gold. He went down to it by a ladder, and fastened the door by a spring lock. One day, while he was in the vault, the door closed, and the lock fastened him in! In vain were his cries for help! There he remained, till, worn out by horror of mind and starvation of body, he perished in the very midst of his heaps of gold! His miserable fate was not known till some years after, when, his house being sold, his bones were discovered in the vault with his treasures.
The celebrated John Elwes, whose portrait we have placed at the head of this article, has furnished a memorable instance of the inconsistency of man. He has showed that the most sordid parsimony may be combined with the greatest negligence and profusion, and that principles of the purest honor may be associated with a degree of meanness, that is utterly degrading to the human character. He was born in London, about the year 1714, his father\'s name being Meggot. He was educated at Westminster school, and afterwards went to Geneva, where he seems to have led rather a gay life.
On his return to England, his father being dead, he went to live with his uncle, Sir Harvey Elwes, a[Pg 285] wealthy miser, who resided at Stoke, in Suffolk. In order to make a favorable impression upon his uncle, the nephew doffed his gay attire, at the little inn at Chelmsford, and appeared at Stoke with an old worn-out coat, a tattered waistcoat, darned worsted stockings, and small iron buckles in his shoes. He was received by Sir Harvey with satisfaction, who now adopted him as his heir. Here the two lived together, shivering with a single stick on the fire, occasionally dividing a glass of wine between them, and railing against the extravagance of the times. When night approached, they went to bed, to save the expense of candles!
But at last, Sir Harvey paid the debt of nature, and left his fortune, of more than a million of dollars, to his nephew. John Meggot, who was now about forty years old, adopted his uncle\'s surname agreeably to the will, and, while he inherited Sir Harvey\'s parsimony, he still addicted himself to gambling. He became a member of various clubs in London, and often played for very high sums. He once played two days and a night without intermission, the Duke of Northumberland being one of the party; and, as it was the custom among these gamblers in high life to throw aside the cards after being once used—at the close of the sitting, the party were nearly up to their knees in cards.
While Elwes was thus engaged, he had the most grasping desire of money, and, having sat up all night at play with persons of the highest rank, he would walk out at four o\'clock in the morning, to Smithfield, to meet his cattle coming to market from his estates[Pg 286] in Essex. There, forgetting the scenes he had just left, he would stand in the cold or rain, higgling with the butcher for a shilling. Sometimes, if the beasts had not arrived, he would walk on in the mire to meet them; and more than once he has gone on foot the whole way to his farm, which was seventeen miles from London, without stopping, after sitting up all night.
Mr. Elwes usually resided at Meacham, in Berkshire. In travelling between this place and London, he used to put two or three eggs, boiled hard, with a few crusts of bread, into h............