upon, however they may "keep that word of promise to the ear," they will "break it to the hope," like the beings of whom they treat, and leave him with fatigued attention and depressed imagination, and a loathing, grieved, and humbled heart. This

is not all indeed that the perusal of them is likely to accomplish; if it were so, our notice of them would be so like a malicious attempt upon the time and patience of the reader, in revenge for having lost our own, that the compact between us must be firm as that of witch and devil, to hold us together afterwards. Had we so much of the very "lob of spirits" in us, as to beckon him to follow

"Over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough briar,

Over park, over pale, thorough flood, thorough fire,"

only to be tired, scratched, drenched, and burnt for his pains, our pages would well deserve to be exorcised, and consigned to that rapacious gulf, that red sea of literature, the trunk-maker's warehouse. The tale of wise men's weaknesses, and good men's undesigned but cruel injustice, and of the abject superstitions of the vulgar, and the guilt of impostors, and the sufferings of the innocent, is melancholy enough; but there it is that we may successfully seek for sound instruction on the nature of man, and thence may we derive cheering hopes of the progress of mind; and while the polished periods of history are but a gilding over the surface of society, there may we inspect its materials, and learn more about the great mass of the people, their opinions, habits, apprehensions, miseries, than from all that ever has, or can be told of illustrious characters and great events. But the witches of our dramatists, and of Shakspeare especially, being as buoyant on the fancy, and floating on the top of men's minds, as, fatally for truth as for themselves, their prototypes might have done on the waters by which all real witch-finders would have tried them, it becomes needful to premise the kind of entertainment to which we are inviting our readers, and to tell them that "'tis no poetic feast," where the divine cookery of genius, with an art beyond that of Dr. Kitchener himself, or of his renowned predecessor, (who conjured a bit of old leather into the most delicious viand that was ever tasted,) transforms garbage into celestial food, but that we only present the raw material unwarmed by that Promethean fire. Ours is the mere prose version of the story; it is Plato's man, as defined practically in the plucked bird of Diogenes; but like that too, we trust, making some amends by a wholesome moral for a cruel operation and disgusting exhibition.

The cave of the Weird Sisters was no paradise, nor was it angel's food that they stirred in their boiling cauldron; yet with

all the historical world of witchcraft before us, where to chuse, we have cast back many a lingering look to the scene of their incantations; and that cauldron, with its hell-broth, has bubbled in our memories like one of the flesh-pots of Egypt. They are no vulgar witches. Their rags are picturesque as Roman drapery. They are "so withered, and so wild in their attire," that they "look not like the inhabitants o' the earth." They are not of the earth, though they may be of hell. They call the fiends their masters, but rather like those who yield a voluntary deference to superior rank, than those who tremble at the rod. They are no base menials to do the devil's drudgery. They meddle in high matters, and promise crowns, though they wear none. The means they use, is "a deed without a name,' "" an expression more awful than even their own incantations; and the feats they achieve are magnificently told by their tool and victim, by him whose soul was their sacrifice, his own ambition the infernal fire they kindled to consume the offering, and his ill-gotten diadem the garland for the fatal ceremony:

-"Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;

Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees blown down;

Though castles topple on their warders' heads;

Though palaces and pyramids do slope

Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble all together,

Even till destruction sicken”

How miserable to descend from such creations as these to the common parish witch, an old woman "with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue, having a rugged coat on her back, a skull-cap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a dog or cat by her side," pelted and persecuted by all the neighbourhood, because the farmer's cart had stuck in the gateway, or some idle boy had pretended to spit pins and needles for the sake of a holiday from school or work;-harried by the witch-finders, till, what with shaving all over to search for imp-marks, and half drowning by the trial of water, and walking her incessantly, and fasting for four-and-twenty or eight-and-forty hours, to produce confession, they bewilder her into nonsensical talk;-and then, should she survive it all, preached to, sworn against, convicted, and `hung at the next assizes. Such was the witch of real life, at the time when, unhappily, witchcraft was most rife in England.. That time was from the commencement of the reign of

James the First, till near the conclusion of that of James the Second. It was only during that interval that witchcraft, properly so called, (for it must not be confounded with magic, conjuration, apparitions, possessions, &c. which, though ejusdem generis, are yet very different species) was so abundant in this country as to make it a national superstition. Then was the art most common in practice amongst the ignorant, and its theory was brought to highest perfection by the learned. Then were the devil's sabbaths held most merrily, as if his infernal majesty had taken a lesson from his sacred majesty, and issued a book of sports for his loyal subjects. Then were deeds and bonds of awful obligation so multiplied, as if the reprobate souls of all the lawyers of Christendom had been industriously labouring in their vocation in their new country, and meriting, if not attaining, the highest honours of its government. Then was fought the great controversial battle on this subject, in which Scott gallantly led on the van of the rationalists to the attack; and Glanvil as gallantly fought in the rear guard of the routed demonists. Witchcraft and kingcraft both came in with the Stuarts, and went out with them. The Revolution put to rights the faith of the country, as well as its constitution; aided by the Whigs for the one purpose, and by the Royal Society for the other. The information diffused by that band of philosophers, touched though many of them might be by the current prejudices and superstitions of the times, had a happy influence, and combined well with the efforts of those who more directly applied themselves to the matter in question. Several other causes co-operated for the healing of this mischief. The laws were more liberally interpreted and rationally administered. The trade of witch-finding ceased to be reputable or profitable. The demon of fanaticism was exorcised, and the separatists were dispossessed of their original enthusiasm. The wand of the popish conjuror was also broken. Yet, after all, the decline of this diabolical empire was scarcely so rapid as had been its rise, which is not quite so easily accounted for. The publication of that silly compilation of exotic tales and fancies, the Demonology of James,* together with the severe law enacted in his reign (for

There seems to have been some doubt whether James Montacute, Bishop of Exeter, who edited the works of King James, both in Latin and English, in 1616, did not Gaudenize a little. Ady speaks of "James, Bishop of Winton, setting forth three books called Demonology, in the name and title of the works of King James;" and Webster says, "There is a little Treatise in Latine titled Demonologia, fathered upon King James, how truly we shall not dispute, for some ascribe it to others." No reason is assigned for this doubt, nor is it probable that there was any foundation for it. Two editions of

laws have often made and multiplied crimes), no doubt materially aided; though something had been done before by the statutes of Henry VIII and Elizabeth.

James assigns, as reasons for the publication of his Demonology, both the increase of witches, and the denial of their existence.

"The fearful abounding, at this time, in this country, of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch, in post, this following Treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a shew of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience) to preasse thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many, both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merit most severely to be punished: against the damnable opinions of two principally, in our age, whereof the one called Scott, an Englishman, is not ashamed, in publicke print, to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, &c."—

In Cap. 7 he again adverts to the comparative novelty of this kind of superstition :

"For as we know, moe ghosts and spirits were seen, nor tongue can tell, in the time of blind Papistrie in these countries, where now by the contrarie, a man shall scarcely all his time hear once of such things; and yet were these unlawful arts farre rarer at that time, and never were so much heard of, nor so rife, as they are now."

His vigorous opposition however made them much more rife. It seemed as if the devil avenged on the episcopally christened Solomon of the west, the insults he had sustained from Solomon of the east. The latter sent out of his country all the demons that could be found, safe packed in a vessel of brass, to be buried at Babylon; and the former imported, by his book, all that were flying about Europe to plague the country which was sufficiently plagued already in such a sovereign. But tradition makes the one the greatest of magicians, and authentic history declares the other to have been no conjuror.

The evil arrived at its greatest height during the civil war, and under the domination of the Sectaries. Hutchinson says,

"In 103 years, from the statute against witchcraft in the 33d of Henry 8th, till 1644, when we were in the midst of our civil wars, I find but about fifteen executed. But in the sixteen years following, while the government was in other hands, there were an hundred and

the Demonology were printed in Edinburgh (in 1597 and 1600) before James's accession to the crown of England; and a third in London in the year of his accession.

nine, if not more, condemned and hanged. In the five years following, before the late notions were well considered, I find five witches condemned, and three of them, if not all five, executed; and three after at Exeter, 1682. Since then, that is, in thirty-six years last past, I have not yet met with one witch hanged in England. In Scotland, indeed, and New England, several have suffered; but in England not one, that I know of."

Witchcraft had flourished and declined in several countries of Europe before it came over to England by royal invitation, to run here a similar career of frenzy, imposture, and bloodshed. The phænomena of its rise and subsidence were very similar. Laws were enacted against it, commissioners or inquisitors were appointed, volumes of horrid and extravagant tales were published, confessions were elicited by torture, or volunteered by insanity; the gibbet groaned, the stake blazed, and every body was either witch or bewitched. But presently the laws relaxed, the executioner grew tired, the commissions were dissolved, the books ceased to be read, and the world went on as it had done before-rather better, perhaps. Some little treasonable intercourse with "the enemy," or suspicion of it, or hankering after it, there undoubtedly was, previous to this bustle; but still it is most evident, that the degree of it which produced such laws and executions, was trifling indeed, in comparison with that which they, in turn, produced. They inflamed the public imagination, and tempted superstitious wickedness to embark on the ocean of crime of which they published the chart, and superstitious weakness to fancy itself an unwilling (yet guilty) agent, or a devoted victim; and gave imposture an opportunity for safely gratifying the most malignant propensities. But little was heard of witchcraft, properly so called, till about the middle or latter end of the fifteenth century, when Pope Innocent VIII. directed a bull to the Inquisitors of Almain, empowering them to discover and burn witches. From this time the frenzy floated from country to country, raging a short time in each, and then the persecution and the imagined crime ceased together. A few articles from Hutchinson's chronological table will illustrate its transitions, and the havoc which it made.

1485. Cumanus burnt forty-one poor women for witches in the country of Burlia in one year. He caused them to be shaven first, that they might be searched for marks. He continued the prosecutions in the years following, and many fled out of the country.

About this time, Alciat, a famous lawyer, in his Parerga, says, one inquisitor burnt a hundred in Piedmont, and proceeded daily to burn more, till the people rose against the inquisitor, and chased him out of the country.