Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

How can one account for some things ? Would any man in his senses have ever expected to find, and under the sign of the cross, the following Christian charm for an ague (of which I have been in possession these twenty years) in Mr. Marsden’s excellent ” History of Sumatra,” p. 342, used, I […]

It is apprehended that what your correspondent, Mr. Bickerstaff, describes as found in St. Mary’s churchyard, at Leicester, and imagines a plate once charged with salt, and laid on a corpse [see Note 371 was a patten intombed in the coffin of some priest or incumbent of that church. The custom of putting a plate […]

Having accidentally been this day a spectator of the funeral pro-cession of Sir Barnard Turner, I was referred, by a learned friend, in consequence of a conversation on the subject of the delay in moving the body, to Mr. Barrington’s ” Observations on the more antient Statutes,” p. 474; where it clearly appears that, whatever […]

A mite towards an history of the force of Imagination in Brutes : A Mr. William Chamberlain, an intelligent farmer and grazier at Ayleston, in Leicestershire, had six cows that cast calf, occasioned, he thinks, by the miscarriage of one in the same pasture, by a kind of contagious sympathy; which common experience, he says, […]

Having never met with any rational account of certain stoney concretions, thrown up by the tides on a certain part of the shore at this place, and thinking them very extraordinary, I have attempted a description of them, which I request you to insert, with the drawings which accompany them (Pl. III. fig. 7, 8, […]

Being Candlemas Day, there was a grand entertainment at the Temple Hall, for the Judges, Sergeants-at-law, etc. The Prince of Wales was there incog., the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Macclesfield, Bishop of Bangor, and several persons of quality. Mr. Baker was Master of the Ceremonies, and received all the company ; at night there was […]

In an excursion to the North of England, I was easily prevailed upon to see the Luck of Edenhall,* celebrated in a ballad of Ritson’s Select Collection of English Songs. The only description I can give you of it is, a very thin, bell mouthed, beaker glass, deep and narrow, ornamented on the outside with […]

That curious piece of antiquity, called the Lee-penny, is a stone of a dark red colour and triangular shape, and its size about half an inch each side. It is set in a piece of silver coin, which, though much defaced, by some letters still remaining is supposed to be a shilling of Edward I., […]

AN UNCOMMON STONE, OF WHICH AN ACCOUNT WAS READ TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, AT PARIS. On the 15th of February, 1752, the workmen who were digging in a quarry in Montmartre, near Paris, about 80 yards from its mouth, found a solid body in the form of a table, not like any sort […]

The sacred ash Ydrasil is displayed in a wildly sublime allegory ; and many words signifying strength, valour, or pre-eminence, are compounds of the Saxon word AErc, and in the fifth fable man is described as being formed from the ash. Hesiod in like manner deduces his brazen race of men Ex Meniav, from the […]