1515. Forty-eight were burnt about this time in Ravensburg in five years. Five hundred at Geneva in three months.

1524. About this time, a thousand burnt in one year in the diocese of Como; and a hundred per ann. for several years together.

1580. In fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, Remigius burnt nine hundred in Lorrain. As many more fled out of the country to save their lives; and fifteen laid violent hands on themselves, rather than endure the tortures that they put them to; and whole towns were ready to leave their habitations for fear of witches. Great numbers also were tortured and destroyed in Spain and Germany.

1590. Most of this winter spent in examination of witches and sorcerers in Scotland.

1594. In the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, "the crime of witchcraft was grown so common at that miserable time, that the parliament jails would not hold the prisoners, nor had they judges enough to hear their causes. Their seats of justice were daily stained with their blood, and they hardly ever went home to their houses otherwise than astonished at the hideous and frightful things which the witches confessed."

1619. The author of Cautio Criminalis, saith, that about that time the German princes finding no cure, but increase, by executions of witches, began to stay their hands, and feared they had been wrong.

1634. The celebrated possession of the nuns of Loudun. 1649. Great numbers burnt in Scotland in those unsettled times; estimated at about four thousand.

1670. Seventy condemned, and most of them executed, at Mohra in Sweden, besides many children whipped.

1672. A "very great number of shepherds and other people," accused of witchcraft at Rouen; the proceedings were stopped by royal authority.

1678. Six executed in Scotland, for bewitching Sir George Maxwell.

1682. Several punished by the Portuguese Inquisition. 1692. Nineteen hanged at Salem in New England. Many more imprisoned.

We pass over now the executions in England, as we shall have occasion to advert to them, together with other facts connected with the history of witchcraft, after attempting a picture of the theory of that art as exhibited by the writers whom we have consulted.

Magic is the genus, witchcraft the species; and the specific distinction is, that the wonders of the latter are effected by virtue of a compact, express or implied, between the devil, or rather a devil and the witch. Glanvil says, 66 a witch is one who can

do, or seems to do, strange things, beyond the known power of art and ordinary nature, by virtue of a confederacy with evil spirits." In this confederacy, this covenant of death, which the devil makes in imitation of God's covenant of grace, lay the essence of the crime, of which the havoc made, in consequence, on man, beasts, or nature, constituted the overt acts.

A subject of much discussion was, whether any results out of the ordinary course of nature could be produced, saving miracles by divine agency, or that of angels or saints, except by such a contract: in other words, whether all magic ought not to be resolved into witchcraft. The witch-believers generally, as the controversy advanced, inclined towards this opinion, though some still clung to the more ancient notion, that charms, consisting of certain words, or figures, or herbs, properly disposed, had an inherent virtue, or might elicit the aid of good spirits, or even enable the bold operator to command the ministry of evil spirits, without subjecting himself to their dominion. This last practice was justly deemed, even if innocent, to be dangerous; and as one of the interlocutors, in the Demonology, observes, "They that sup keile with the devil have need of long spoons." It was also debated, whether, supposing charms to operate merely by demoniacal agency, that agency was voluntary, or compelled: some maintaining, that the devil spontaneously took the opportunity of displaying his power, that he might entrap the conjuror; and others, suspecting that there were certain clauses in the constitution of the kingdom of darkness, compelling its members to render services to man, when properly invoked.

The magic of heathen antiquity was, to all appearance at least, entirely free from the infernal compact. The hags of Thessaly sold not their souls, but wrought at a much cheaper rate. The divination of Greece and Rome derived its infallibility from certain secret but widely diffused sympathies in nature, by which the cackling of geese, or the appetite of chickens, or the croaking of ravens, or the flight of various kinds of birds, or the entrails of sacrificed animals, became indicative of mightier movements in the great machine, which were by these means suggested to the wise; as to the practised physiognomist, some slight convulsion of feature may predict the brewing up of a storm of passion, which bursts most unexpectedly on the unobserving; or else they were a species of oracle, the gods explaining themselves by signs, instead of words. They had faith, too, in the inherent efficacy of magic verse; and of rare stones and herbs, with or without the conjoined power of sidereal influences. If the aid of gods or demons was needful, it was not basely purchased, or sold a hard bargain, like the devil's wares, but accorded to the potency of

command, to the intensity of supplication, or in grateful acknowledgement of the pleasant fumes of sacrifice or incense. So far as mere divination was concerned, Cicero gives us its theory: "Primum a deo, deinde a fato, deinde a natura, vis omnis divinandi, ratioque repetenda." And nature, fate, and the gods, generously acceded to these cravings for knowledge, by dreams, omens, and portents, by sortilege, the ravings of insanity, by temporary meteors, and the eternal stars. But human nature craves for power as well as knowledge. Yet here the means, which have been already mentioned, sufficed for the grandest operations. Scott thus quotes Virgil, as translated by Tho. Phaiers:

"These herbs did Meris give to me,

And poisons pluckt at Pontus,
For there they grow and multiplie,
And doe not so amongst us.
With these she made hir selfe become
A wolfe, and hid hir in the wood;
She fetcht up souls out of their toome,
Removing corne from where it stood."

And Tibullus (lib. 1. eleg. 2.)

"She plucks each star out of his throne,
And turneth back the raging waves,
With charmes she makes the earth to cone,
And raiseth soules out of their graves:

She burnes men's bones as with a fire,

Eclog. 8.

And pulleth downe the lights from heaven,

And makes it snowe at hir desire,

E'en in the midst of summer season."

Scott has a multitude of similar quotations from the Roman classics, nor were they foreign to his subject, for not only did St. Augustin believe in the metamorphosis of Ulysses and his companions into swine, but Pope Leo the Seventh held for canonical the transformations of Apuleius and Lucian. Several Catholic writers seriously appealed to such passages, in proof of the reality of witchcraft. They neglected one morceau of Horace, which Scott did not fail to apply:

"Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,

Nocturnos lemures, portentaque; Thessala rides."

"These dreams and terrors magicall,

These miracles and witches,

Night walking sprites, or Thessal bugs,

Esteeme them not two rushes."

Omens and portents, ghosts, and divination in its various forms, astrology, chiromancy, sortilegy, catoptromancy, &c. passed by wholesale from ancient into modern, from Pagan into Christian superstition. These are beside our present subject. Their witchcraft was copied, with greater modifications as to the means, the charms being Christianized, or rather devilized, and the compact was added, which, when invented, became the very head and front of the offence, and was, indeed, that which constituted the art, a crime; but many of the feats were pretty much the same, especially Lycanthropia, or the witch's own transformation into a wolf, which often occurred in the sixteenth century; and her propensity to transform others into brutal shapes. Two Italian "alewives" drove an excellent trade by this art, for they made horses of all the travellers who refreshed themselves at their house, and sold them at neighbouring fairs or markets.

One of the most ancient tricks of witchcraft appears to have been conjuring corn from one field into another, which was made a capital offence by the law of the twelve tables: "Qui fruges incantasset, pœnis dato, neve alienam segetem pellexeris excantando, neque incantando, ne agrum defruganto." Pliny reports a notable trial under this law, of one Č. Furius Cresinus, who was accused on the presumptive evidence of his grounds bearing particularly good crops. He produced in court his "ploughs and harrows, spades and shovels, and other instruments of husbandry; his oxen, horses, and working bullocks; his servants, and also his daughter, which was a sturdy wench, and a good huswife," exclaiming, as Othello did, "These only are the witchcraft I have used."

Witchcraft by compact was not of Jewish origin. The Jews were addicted to divination, and sometimes ventured upon calling up spirits by conjuration; but they chiefly wrought by words and numbers, and stood very much on the defensive, endeavouring to protect themselves, their families, and houses, against Sammael, the devil, and Lilis, his wife or mother, who was very troublesome and murtherous amongst the children. They had good receipts for laying amatory demons, as we read in Tobit. Their opinions and practices in that part of their history, which belongs to canonical scripture, were the subjects of warm discussion; but the pleaders for the antiquity of witchcraft were sorely distressed by the challenge of their opponents, to produce a single text declaratory of the reality and power of this infernal compact.

Before the superstition of paganism was wholly worn out,

there arose a pseudo-Christian demonology, which blended with it to produce the embryo of that monstrous and miserable being, the witch of the dark ages. Air, earth, and sea, were peopled with devils, and these devils identified with the objects of heathen adoration; and all the tricks of priests, cheats of jugglers, tales of poets, and traditionary wonders of the vulgar, were soon received as facts, acknowledged to be supernatural, and traced to the agency of these infernal beings, the extent of whose power was continually magnified, their numbers multiplied, the policy of their proceedings more accurately developed, and their union with human co-operators drawn into a closer bond. According to Hallywell, who follows "Marcus the Eremite, a skilful dæmonist," there are six kinds :

.

"The first fiery, called Lelurion, i. e. nocturnal fire, and these wander in the top of the aiery region, yet far beneath the moon: the second are aiery, whose mansions are these lower regions nearer to us: the third are terrestrial, dwelling upon the earth, and perilous foes to mankind: the fourth are aquatic, or watry, keeping their haunts about rivers, lakes, and springs, drowning men often, raising storms at sea, and sinking ships: the fifth sort are subterranean, living in caverns and hollows of the earth, often hurting and killing welldiggers and miners for metals, causing earthquakes and eruptions of flames and pestilent winds: the last and worst sort are these lighthating ghosts, or night-walkers, the darkest and most inscrutable kind, and striking all things they meet with cold passions. And all these demons, saith he, hate both gods and men, but some worse than others."

Here then every one addicted to magic might find a devil to his taste, and every devil a witch according to his.

"And these demons take care to suit themselves to the tempers of those they have familiarity withal; and the devils with whom Apollonius conversed might be far different from those fouler and grosser fiends that attend a wicked sorceress, daily sucking her blood, and nestling in her loathsome rags."

Towards their chieftain, this author is disposed to use and recommend respectful language: "That mighty angel of darkness is not foolishly and idly to be scoffed at or blasphemed;" and he pleads the Scriptural precept, not to speak evil of dignities, for

"The devil may properly be looked upon as a dignity, though his glory be pale and wan, and those once bright and orient colours faded and darkened in his robes: and the Scriptures represent him as a prince, though it be of devils."

But while the leader appears not "less than Archangel