THE labours of Mesmer and his disciples, whatever judgment we may form as to the practical or scientific worth of any result they have led, or are likely to lead to, cannot be denied to have rendered one considerable, though indirect service to the cause of knowledge. They have thrown light upon one of the darkest chapters in the history of man; they have solved, at least partially, the riddle of those wild accusations, and still wilder confessions, in virtue of which so many thousands of human beings were delivered to an appalling death, in the very era of the revival of letters, and the reformation of religion. They have taught us, in short, what to think of the witches and the witch-burners, the demonopathics and the exorcists, who played their fantastic and hideous drama — with the breadth of Europe for a theatre — from the fifteenth down to the middle of the eighteenth century. It is impossible to compare the appearances observable in a modern mesmeric patient with those presented by a witch or a devil-possessed nun of the period referred to — without being led to the conclusion, that it is one influence which affects both; that their states are identical; that either the mesmeric patient is a witch, or the witch was nothing more than a mesmeric patient. And this recurrence of phenomena so similar, under circumstances so widely diverse, is the strongest of all arguments against the supposition that the phenomena are the result of imposture. If we find insensibility to pain in the witch or the demonopathic, we have the less reason to believe the insensibility to pain, shown by the mesmeric patient, to be simulated. If we find clairvoyance, or a perception of things without the ordinary range of the senses, in the witch or the demonopathic, we have the less ground for supposing the clairvoyance of the mesmeric patient to be a hallucination, or a pretence. If we observe that very strange state of things which, in the language of the mesmerists, is termed rapport — a community of sensation, thought, or will — between the witch and the victim of her sorceries, or between the demonopathic and the exorcist, we are the less warranted to assume that such rapport, as subsisting between the mesmeric patient and the mesmeriser, is a chimera, or a trick sustained by collusion. And these are but a few of the points in which the two classes of phenomena we speak of correspond. In the hundreds of mesmeric cases that have been treated, in and out of Germany, since the great Swiss charlatan made his début at Vienna, and in the thousands of cases of diabolism, in its thousand forms, that for more than three hundred years kept the racks at work, and the market-places smoking, throughout the whole Christian world, a unity of character, a constant reproduction of the same leading features, is to be recognized, wholly inexplicable, unless on the hypothesis of a common origin — of one principle operating throughout. And certainly the manifestations of this principle, even as we witness them, in instances "few and far between," in our own times, are quite startling and enigmatical enough to account for the light in which they were viewed, and the impressions of horror which they produced, when developed in multitudes at once, and in a degree of intensity which we can but faintly picture to ourselves, at a period of time when physiological investigation was in its infancy, and when preternatural agency seemed to be the only solution at hand, for all occurrences that broke in on the routine of common experience. We are accustomed to consider the epoch of the witch-trials as one of gross and inconceivable credulity; and our indignation is without bounds, to find clergymen and physicians, magistrates, and men of law, alike ready to believe and act upon the monstrous tales, the more than delirious extravagancies, which the evidence on these trials disclosed. But nothing is more certain, than that not only the witnesses, but the accused parties themselves, in the greater number of instances, believed every word of these extravagancies to be true. Indeed the accusations of the witnesses, in most cases, fell far short of the confessions of the accused — confessions oftener volunteered than extorted by the application or threat of the rack, and not seldom accompanied by the most urgent entreaties to their judges, to hand them over, without delay, to the purifying flames, in which, as they hoped, the expiation of their nameless wickednesses was to be begun. It certainly was not easy to acquit persons who accused themselves, especially when the matter of the accusations was not, as now, at variance with the established belief of the age. And it must be confessed, that but too many of those sufferers were morally guilty of the crimes of which they were arraigned; they would have committed those crimes if it had been possible, and, so far as the will and the intention went, they did commit them. "It is certain," says one of the interlocutors in Hoffmann's delightful Serapionsbrüder, "that in those times, when no one doubted the immediate influence of the devil, and his visible appearing, those unhappy beings who were so cruelly persecuted with fire, and the axe, really believed in all that they were accused of. It is certain, even, that many did, in the wickedness of their hearts, seek, through the practice of what then passed for magical arts, to enter into relations with the evil one, either for gain, or in order to work mischief to others; and then, in the state of frenzy which sense-destroying potions, fumigations, and horrible incantations produced, saw the fiend, and in reality transacted, with this creation of their disordered sense, the hellish compact which was to put them in possession of satanic power. The insanest delusions, as they present themselves in those confessions, which are founded upon the most intimate conviction of the things confessed, will not appear too insane to him who considers to what strange fantasies, nay, to what frightful, what ghastly shapes of monomania, the common hysterical affections, to which the less robust sex is so peculiarly liable, can give birth." In perfect accordance with these observations, you will find the unfortunate persons accused of the crime of sorcery, freely acknowledging their commerce with the prince of darkness, circumstantially detailing the ceremonies of their initiation into the infernal league, and describing, with a graphic power which the romancist might often envy, the scenes to which their communion in the unholy mysteries has given them access; the unctions, the transformations, the broom-stick rides through the air, the assemblings at the "devil's sabbaths," the "black masses," and other sacrileges there committed; the ghoul-like banquets, and lycanthropic carouses that followed these accursed rites, and the lewdnesses perpetrated, in outrage and defiance of nature, during the demoniac intoxication in which these carouses had their issue. Each witch can tell even the name, the propensities, and habits of the particular unclean spirit assigned to her as her familiar, or ministering demon, and the prescribed formulary by which the services of such familiar, whether for the witch's proper benefit, or for the injury of those unlovingly regarded by her, are put in requisition.

       It is easy to say that these supposed witches were mad, and that no more weight ought to be attributed to their testimony against themselves than to the ravings (often so wonderfully plausible and coherent) of any other maniacs. But the difficulty is not thus to be got rid of. The Gordian knot, for the inquirer into these exhibitions of a strange and paradoxical aspect of the human mind, is, not that these ill-fated beings were haunted by delusions of an extraordinary vividness, but that those delusions, without any possible concert, displayed such unmistakeable traits of affinity. Mental aberration is inexhaustible in the variety of its perverting effects on the judgment; the intellectual vagaries of one madman have nothing in common with those of another. But in the dreamings of these demonomaniacs there is no variety; a sameness, suggestive of one knows not what vague and fearful suspicion, characterizes them. The weight of a nightmare seems to gather on your breast as you read, and the question, often silenced, keeps again and again recurring, "Is there nowhere — is there not, perhaps, in some dark region of my own being — a reality corresponding to all this?"

       No doubt, there is such a reality; and we think that the mesmeric phenomena yield a clue, by which we may advance some one or two steps, at least, in the direction in which it lies. Whatever the psychic state of the witches and demonopathics of the middle ages was, into the same state does the agency of mesmerism throw the person on whom it is brought to bear. It is a state sui generis; a state, without any question, of great nervous disturbance, but of which no familiar form of nervous disease supplies us with a definition. It is a state which, perhaps, discloses to man the heaven or the hell within him, peopled with "spirits of health," or with "goblins damned," that are but multiplied reflections, or magic lantern shadows, of his inner self, mirroring back to him his own "intents, wicked or charitable," and symbolically indicating how much of the angel or of the demon he has in his nature. And this is just what Schubert, under whose guidance we are glad to put ourselves in the "palpable obscure" of such bottomless questions, thinks of animal magnetism. Hear how he discourses upon it, in his "Views of the Dark Side of Natural Science" — views which we can not quite agree with Friedrich Rückert in thinking "only calculated for people with owls' eyes."

       "When the remembrance of the past — all that we have seen and suffered, learned and known — are become faint in us, yea, when they seem to be quite blotted out, and there comes a moment of inward lucidity, and all the long-dimmed, long-forgotten stands suddenly before the soul, in the freshness of the first impression; or when the history of a whole past eventful life is reviewed in a moment, the occurrences that followed one another in succession of time, ranging themselves, as it were, side by side in one great picture; — where, we would know, had that inward world so long hid itself? . . . Who would not wish that a microscope were found, which might unveil to us the secrets of this dark region? . . . And such a microscope we possess, in the observations of what is called vital magnetism, and of the phenomena related to it. However often, owing to the scanty light that can be brought upon the subject, unconscious, or even intentional deceptions and impositions, have mixed themselves up in these observations, important, and worthy of attention, they must, nevertheless, remain, inasmuch as they lay open to our view, one after another, the inner spheres of our being; though it is not to be forgotten, that the inmost and highest of those spheres lie beyond their range."

       Doctor Calmeil, in his work on Epidemic Insanity, of which an account appeared in the second number of the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, is at some pains to show the connexion between the mesmeric and the demonopathic phenomena. We quote the following from the review:—

       "In the case of the Ursulines in Loudon, many "séances" took place, attended by crowds of amateurs, among whom was the Duke of Orleans himself. They witnessed abundant examples of the "truth of mesmerism." Madame de Sazilli was exorcised in the presence of the prince: the exorcist commanded the demon to render the entire body of the patient as supple as a slip of lead; he then folded the trunk into a variety of forms, in each of which she was retained immoveable. During this time, respiration could hardly be perceived; and this lady felt no pain, although her arms were pierced through with pins. The Duke having made a secret communication to the exorcist, the patient at once fulfilled the order; 'and this phenomenon,' says Calmeil, 'one of the exploits of modern mesmerism – this reading the thoughts of the magnetizer — was produced in hundreds of instances.'

       "At Auxonne, somnambulism was produced at the command of the exorcists, or happened at the hour predicted by their suffering companions. The bishop of Chalons having commanded the demon who possessed Madame Denise to suspend her sensibility and render her inaccessible to suffering, they were able to run pins under the roots of her nails, without producing the slightest sign of pain. The exorcist had the power, not only of paralyzing all the senses, but of restoring them collectively or singly, as he saw fit. The most unlimited power was exercised over the muscles.

       "In the case of Rensie Pausot, the bishop directed 'dans le fond de sa pensée,' that she should come to him to be exorcised. She lived in a distant quarter of the town, but came to him immediately, saying that she did so in obedience to his commands. This happened repeatedly. Phenomena of the same class were observed in the epidemic of demonopathy in Bayeux, in 1732.

       "In one case, the patient, who had previously abandoned the study of Latin, comprehended all the orders of the exorcist, provided they were given while she was in the state of somnambulism. In this or the ecstatic condition, even the application of fire produced apparently no pain, and the patients exhibited all the symptoms of clairvoyance, describing the interiors of houses far removed from them, and in many of which they had never been."

       We find some difficulty in understanding the reasoning of Doctor Calmeil, or of his Irish reviewer, on the facts stated in the above extracts. The use made of those facts is to prove that there is no such thing as clairvoyance, and the proof consists in showing that an unequivocal clairvoyance was exhibited by the possessed nuns. By logic equally peculiar, it is demonstrated that "the knowledge of the thoughts of those 'en rapport' with the patient is a chimera, for the possessed nuns showed this knowledge "in hundreds of cases;" and that "the power of the magnetizer to produce various conditions at will" is equally illusory, for this power was exercised over the possessed nuns by the exorcists in the most unlimited way.

       The only mesmeric phenomena which Calmeil admits to be "real" are — 1st, the magnetic sleep; and 2nd, insensibility to pain. But by his own principles, these also ought to be included in the category of the chimerical, since they were both manifested by the possessed nuns, as well as by the witches of those times. Eusèbe Salverte, whose shallow book on the "Occult Sciences" has been recently made known to the English reader by the translation of Doctor Anthony Thomson, would not go even so far as Calmeil in his concessions to mesmerism. With him it has no "real phenomena;" and the insensibility to pain, which he does not deny the mediæval sufferers for sorcery to have unequivocally shown, he resolves into a mere effect of narcotic potions or unguents. The lapis memphiticus, Salverte informs us, on the authority of Dioscorides, was used in Egypt to produce insensibility in parts of the body which were to be subjected to painful operations in surgery; and its efficacy was the same, whether employed internally or externally. He thinks it probable that Hindoo widows are rendered insensible by some such means before undergoing the terrors of the Suttee. But we will let him speak on this point for himself, and in the English utterance which Doctor Thomson has lent him:

       "The eye-witness of one of these sacrifices, which took place in July, 1822, saw the victim arrive in a complete state of bodily insensibility, the effect, no doubt, of the drugs which had been administered to her. Her eyes were open, but she did not appear to see; and in a weak voice, and as if mechanically, she answered the legal questions that were put to her regarding the full liberty of her sacrifice. When she was laid on the pile, she was absolutely insensible. The Christians carried this secret from the East into Europe, on the return of the Crusaders. It was probably known to the subaltern magicians, as well as that of braving the action of fire, from which I imagine arose the rule of jurisprudence, according to which, physical insensibility, whether partial or general, was a certain sign of sorcery. Many authors quoted by Fromann speak of the unhappy sorcerers who have laughed or slept through the agonies of torture; and they have not failed to add, that they were sent to sleep by the power of the devil.

       "It is also said, that the same advantage was enjoyed by pretended sorcerers about the middle of the fifteenth century. Nicholas Eymeric, Grand Inquisitor of Arragon, author of the famous Directoire des Inquisiteurs, loudly complained of the sorceries practised by accursed persons, through the aid of which, when put to the torture, they appeared absolutely insensible. Fr. Pegna, who wrote a commentary on Eymeric's work in 1578, believed, also, the reality and efficacy of the sorceries. He strengthens himself by the evidence of the inquisitor Grillandus, and Hippolytus de Marsilies. The latter, who was Professor of Jurisprudence at Bologna in 1524, positively declares, in his 'Pratique Criminelle,' that he had seen the effect of the philters upon the accused persons, who suffered no pain, but appeared to be asleep in the midst of the tortures. The expressions he makes use of are remarkable; they describe the insensible man, as if plunged into a torpor more like the effect produced by an opiate, than the proud bearing which is the result of a perseverance superior to every pain."

       "To many instances of this temporary insensibility, Wierius adds an important observation; he saw a woman thus inaccessible to the power of torture; her face was black, and her eyes were starting out, as if she had been strangled; her exemption from suffering was due to a species of apoplexy. A physician, who witnessed a similar state of insensibility, compares it to fits, epileptic or apoplectic."

       M. Salverte further cites Taboureau, who was the king's counsel at the bailiwick of Dijon in 1585, to the effect that it was almost useless to put the "question" to the persons accused of necromancy. All the jailers, he complains, were acquainted with the stupifying recipe, and they did not fail to communicate it to the prisoners. The secret, according to Taboureau, consisted in swallowing soap dissolved in water; but this was evidently a mystification practised on the worthy king's counsel, whom it is probable that the possessors of so precious a secret saw no good reason to initiate into the mysteries of their order. It might, our author suggests, have been opium, henbane, belladonna, aconite, solanum, or stramonium, all of which have been used to deaden pain in surgical operations. Or might it not have been something analogous to the late discovery of ether-inhalation? Professor Schoenbein, the inventor of the gun-cotton, is said to have found a means of producing insensibility without the dangerous effects attending the use of ether: who knows but it is some of the witch-ointments, the composition of which may have been traditionally preserved in Germany from the dark ages?

       But it was not only for deadening the sense of pain that unguents were in use among the practitioners of magical arts. Another purpose to which they were made subservient was the producing of visions; and so vivid was the imagery conjured up in this way, that no persuasion could afterwards bring the dreamer to the belief that what they had witnessed was not reality. On this subject, we quote again from Salverte:—

       "Experiments have decidedly proved that several medicaments, administered in the form of liniments, are taken in by the absorbent system, and act upon the habit in the same manner as when they are directly introduced into the stomach. This property of liniments was not unknown to the ancients. In the romance of Achilles Tatius, an Egyptian doctor, in order to cure Leucippus of an attack of frenzy, applied to his head a liniment composed of oil, in which some particular medicament was dissolved. The patient fell into a deep sleep, shortly after the anointing. What the physician was acquainted with, the Thaumaturgist could scarcely be ignorant of; and this secret knowledge endowed him with the power of performing many apparent miracles. . . . Before consulting the oracle of Trophonius, the body was rubbed with oil; this preparation undoubtedly concurred in the desired vision. Before being admitted to the mysteries of the Indian sages, Apollonius and his companions were anointed with an oil, the strength of which made them imagine that they were bathed with fire.

       "The priests of Mexico, preparatory to their conversing with their divinity, anointed their bodies with a fœtid pomatum. The base of it was tobacco, and a bruised seed called Ololuchgui, the effect of which was to deprive man of his judgment, as that of the tobacco was to benumb his senses. After this, they felt themselves very intrepid, and not less cruel; and, no doubt, predisposed to have visions, since the intention of this practice was to bring them into connection with the objects of their fantastical worship."

       In order to be transported to their sabbath, the witches had to rub them selves with an oil or pomatum, which, according to their own account before the Inquisition, was composed of the water that exudes from a toad in a state of irritation.

       A woman at Florence, who was accused of sorcery, pleaded guilty to the charge, and declared that she would be present at the witch sabbath that very night, if it were permitted her to make use of the magic unguent. Having got permission, she rubbed her body with a fœtid composition, and presently fell into a profound torpor, from which neither blows, pricking, nor scorching — all of which were liberally administered — could arouse her. Next day, on coming to herself, she related that she had been to the sabbath, and described the painful sensations which she had really experienced in her sleep, as connected with things done to her in the infernal assembly. The magistrate considered this as a proof that she was no witch at all, and that her visits to the sabbath were mere dreams. It is evident that her insensibility was not complete, as she was conscious of pain, caused by the experiments actually made on her power of sensation, but, as in all such cases, referred by her to the visionary creations of her own haunted brain. Salverte relates the story after Paolo Minucci, a Florentine lawyer of the sixteenth century. The most obvious reflection it suggests is, that the accused was singularly happy in her judge, who, on no better grounds than the having had her bodily before him the whole night, thought himself justified in withholding belief from her own avowal, that she had attended the conclave of sorcerers. It would not have been wonderful if such incredulity had involved the judge himself in a suspicion of being no stranger to the hellish league. For the solution of the difficulty, in accordance with the spirit of the age, would have been, that if the witch's body did not go to the sabbath, her soul did; and, indeed, there were authorities of weight for the opinion that it was the soul that generally did take part in those scenes of impiety and uncleanness, and that the anointing had merely the effect of keeping the body in tenantable condition, until the return of its volatile inmate.

       Of this opinion is Mr. Joseph Glanvil, the learned and reverend author of "Saducismus Triumphatus,* a work published in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to the eternal discomfiture of all such sceptical Florentine judges, and others, who would not believe that old women could ride broom-sticks, or who thought it unlikely that the devil would spend his time philandering with a bevy of blear-eyed bel-dams, on heaths, and such out-of-the-way places; in an age, too, when, what with Roundheads, and Jesuits, and freethinkers, and merry King Charles and his court, and dull King James and his court, and pious King William, and filial Queen Mary, and their court, one would think he had quite enough of serious business on his hands.

* Saducismus Triumphatus; or, Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions. In two parts. The First treating of their Possibility, the Second of their Real Existence. By Joseph Glanvil, late Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty, and Fellow of the Royal Society. London. 1689.

       Over such Sadducees does Mr. Glanvil, as the title of his book sufficiently sets forth, triumph. He does not, however, seem to think much, himself, of the achievement; the victory is too cheap; the enemy made a miserable fight of it, and from a field so faintly contested laurels were scarce worth the carrying away. Indeed, in very pity of the weakness of his adversaries, Mr. Glanvil chivalrously takes up their side of the question first, and marshals against himself a far more imposing array of objections than he believes the contrary party to be able to do, if left to their own resources; which objections having with much ease overthrown, he avows his candid conviction that he has suggested much more against what he defends, than ever he heard or saw in any that opposed it; whose discourses for the most part have seemed to him inspired by "a lofty scorn of common belief, and some trivial notions of vulgar philosophy." So that he "professes, for his own part, he never yet heard any of the confident declaimers against witchcraft and apparitions, speak any thing that might move a mind, in any degree instructed in the generous kinds of philosophy and nature of things. And for the objections he has recited, they are most of them such as rose out of his own thoughts, which he obliged to consider what was possible to be said upon this occasion."

       In fact, to Mr. Glanvil, the defiance of common sense involved in doubting the existence of witches is so great, that he cannot but look upon those who are guilty of it as furnishing in themselves an argument of what they deny; and suspects shrewdly that "so confident an opinion could not be held upon such inducements, but by some kind of witchcraft and fascination." "And perhaps," he suggests, "that evil spirit, whose influences they will not allow in actions ascribed to such causes, hath a greater hand and interest in their proposition than they are aware of." For he thinks it the clear interest of this "agent of darkness" to have the world believe that there is no such thing as himself. And as he that thinks there is no witch, believes a devil gratis, so we must count ourselves much beholden to such a one, if he admit either angel or spirit, resurrection of the body, or immortality of the soul. Thus, this witch question is one in which the very vitals of religion are concerned; and if Mr. Glanvil, "late Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty," did not interest himself about the vitals of religion, who should? Moreover, does he not write himself F. R. S., and has not the question also its scientific side, its bearing on the vitals of philosophy, to which no man of these letters can without blame remain indifferent?

       We quote some of the "Objections," which our author supposes to be made by the Sadducean impugners of his doctrine, together with his triumphant answers to the same. And the objection we will begin with is the one which, we believe, has most weight with the unthinking part of men, and which, when we ourselves belonged to that class, we remember to have been much fortified by, in our resistance to the great verities for which Mr. Glanvil contends.

       Here follows the objection:—

       "There are actions in most of those relations ascribed to witches, which are ridiculous and impossible in the nature of things; such are (1.) Their flying out of windows, after they have anointed themselves, to remote places. (2.) Their transformation into cats, hares, and other creatures. (3.) Their feeling all the hurts in their own bodies which they have received in those. (4.) Their raising tempests, by muttering some nonsensical words, or performing ceremonies alike impertinent as ridiculous. And (5.) their being sucked in some particular private place of their bodies by a familiar. These are presumed to be actions inconsistent with the nature of spirits, and above the power of those poor and miserable agents. And therefore the objection supposeth them performed only by the fancy; and that the whole mystery of witchcraft is but an illusion of crasie imagination."

       To this "aggregate objection," Mr. Glanvil answers, with a boldness scarcely enough to be admired, that the more absurd and unaccountable those actions seem, the greater confirmations are they to him of the truth of those relations, and the reality of what the objectors would destroy. For he grants the circumstances to be exceeding unlikely, judging by the measures of common belief, but holds the probability to be the greater, on this very account, that they are not fictitious.

       "None (he remarks) but a fool or a madman would relate, with a purpose of having it believed, that he saw in Ireland men with hoofs on their heads, and eyes in their breasts; or if any should be so ridiculously vain, as to be serious in such an incredible romance, it cannot be supposed that all travellers that come into those parts after him should tell the same story. There is a large field in fiction; and if all these relations were arbitrary compositions, doubtless the first romancers would have framed them more agreeable to the common doctrine of spirits; at least, after these supposed absurdities had been a thousand times laughed at, people by this time would have learned to correct those obnoxious extravagancies; and though they have not yet more veracity than the ages of ignorance and superstition, yet one would expect they should have got more cunning. This supposed impossibility, then, of these performances, seems to me a probable argument that they are not wilful and designed forgeries. And if they are fancies, 'tis somewhat strange, that imagination, which is the most various thing in all the world, should infinitely repeat the same conceit in all times and places."

       Having thus made it tolerably plain that a reasonable amount of improbability is one of the best titles that a witch-story can have to our belief — in other words, that its likelihood is in the direct ratio of its unlikelihood — our author proceeds to show that the particular instances of improbability referred to in the "Objection" are not so improbable after all, but may be "as well accounted for by the rules of reason and philosophy, as the ordinary affairs of nature."

       But, before going into the proof of this position, let us observe, not without gratification, the point at which English knowledge of Ireland had arrived, so far back as the period at which Mr. Glanvil wrote. Nobody, it appears, could, with the most trifling chance of success, have attempted to make an enlightened British public believe, that Irishmen had hoofs on their heads! The thing would have been scouted. Put the hoofs, indeed, at the other end, and the story might have found credit. But on the head? No — Englishmen, even in 1688, knew too much of Ireland to believe that.

       And now, to prove that an old woman's flying out of the window, taking the shape of a cat, raising a storm, or giving suck to a young devil, may be accounted for by the rules of reason and philosophy:—

       "For the first then, that the confederate spirit should transport the witch through the air to the place of general rendezvous, there is no difficulty in conceiving it; and if that be true which great philosophers affirm, concerning the real separability of the soul from the body without death, there is yet less, for then 'tis easie to apprehend, that the soul having left its gross and sluggish body behind it, and being cloath'd only with its immediate vehicle of air, or more subtile matter, may be quickly conducted to any place it would be at, by those officious spirits that attend it. And though I adventure to affirm nothing concerning the truth and certainty of this supposition, yet I must needs say, it doth not seem to me unreasonable. And our experience of apoplexies, epilepsies, ecstacies, and the strange things men report to have seen during these deliquiums, look favourably upon this conjecture, which seems to me to contradict no principle of reason or philosophy, since death consists not so much in the actual separation of soul and body, as in the indisposition and unfitness of the body for vital union, as an excellent philosopher hath made good. On which hypothesis, the witch's anointing herself before she takes her flight, may perhaps serve to keep the body tenantable, and in fit disposition to receive the spirit at its return."

       With respect to these spiritual flights, we may here quote a passage from Salverte: —

       "Two of the reputed sorcerers, sent to sleep by the magic ointment, had given out that they would go to the Sabbat, and return from it, flying with wings. Both believed that this really happened, and were greatly astonished when assured of the contrary. One in his sleep even performed some movements, and struck out even as though he were on the wing. It is well known that, from the blood flowing towards the brain during sleep, it is not uncommon to dream of flying and rising into the air."

       Cornelius Agrippa, in his book, "Of Occult Philosophy," tells us that "the soul is sometimes, through a vehement imagination or speculation, wholly snatched away out of the body." And we have adduced, in a former number of this magazine,* the testimony of Kaempfer, that on partaking of a drink which was in use among the Persians, he presently seemed to himself to sit on a flying horse, and to ride through the air.

* Feb. 1845, p. 139.

       Cardanus (who asserts that aconite produces the sensation of flying) mentions the composition of one of the witch-ointments, as deposed to by an accused person of the better-informed class: it consisted of the fat of boys, mixed with the juice of parsley, aconite, solanum, pentaphylum and soot. In 1545, a pomatum composed of narcotic substances was found in the house of an accused sorcerer. Andrea Laguna, physician to Pope Julius III., was so little influenced by the superstition of the time, as to try the effect of this unguent upon a patient of his, who laboured under frenzy and loss of rest. The application produced an unbroken sleep of thirty-six hours.

       After all, to dream of flying, and to believe, after waking, that you have really flown, are two very different things. Opiates, or "the blood flowing to the brain in sleep," may produce the one; but a true Mesmeric state, that is, according to Calmeil, a state of special cerebral disease, is necessary to the production of the other; and of this neither Eusèbe Salverte, nor his English translator, appears to be gifted with an inkling.

       With respect to the transformation of witches into the shapes of cats, hares, and the like, we are to remember that it is not the material body, in its sanguineous and carnal grossness, that undergoes these changes of configuration, but the subtle aerial vehicle of the soul, over which the sleeping fantasy has an unlimited power. Mr. Glanvil says on this subject:—

       "'Tis easie enough to imagine, that the power of imagination may form those passive and pliable vehicles into those shapes, with more ease than the fancy of the mother can the stubborn matter of the fœtus in the womb, as we see it frequently doth in the instances that occur of signatures and monstrous singularities; and sometimes perhaps the confederate spirit puts tricks upon the senses of the spectators, and those shapes are only illusions.

       "But then, when they feel the hurts in their gross bodies, that they receive in their airy vehicles, they must be supposed to have been really present, at least in these latter, and 'tis no more difficult to apprehend how the hurts of those should be translated upon their other bodies, than that diseases should be inflicted by the imagination, or how the fancy of the mother should wound the fœtus, as several credible relations do attest."

       "And, for their being suck'd by the familiar, I say, we know so little of the nature of dæmons and spirits, that 'tis no wonder we cannot certainly divine the reason of so strange an action. And yet we may conjecture at some things that may render it less improbable. For some have thought that the genii (whom both the Platonical and Christian antiquity thought embodied) are recreated by the reeks and vapours of human blood, and the spirits that proceed from them. . . . Or, perhaps, this may be only a diabolical sacrament and ceremony to confirm the hellish covenant. To which I add, that which to me seems most probable, viz., that the familiar doth not only suck the witch, but in the action infuseth some poysonous ferment into her, which gives her imaginations and spirits a magical tincture, whereby they become mischievously influential; and the word venefica intimates some such matter. Now, that the imagination hath a mighty power in operation, is seen in the just now mentioned signatures and diseases that it causeth; and that the fancy is modified by the qualities of the blood and spirits, is too evident to need proof. Which things supposed, 'tis plain to conceive that the evil spirit, having breathed some vile vapour into the body of the witch, it may taint her blood and spirits with a noxious quality, by which her infectious imagination, heightened by melancholy and this worse cause, may do much hurt upon bodies that are impressible by such influences. And 'tis very likely that this ferment disposeth the imagination of the sorceress to cause the mentioned ἀφαιϱεσία, or separation of the soul from the body, and may, perhaps, keep the body in fit temper for its re-entry; as also it may facilitate transformation, which, it may be, could not be effected by ordinary and unassisted imagination."

       To the objection, that it is very improbable that the devil, who is a wise and mighty spirit, should be at the beck of a poor hag, and have so little to do as to attend the errands and impotent lusts of a silly old woman, our F. R. S. replies well, that it is much more improbable that all the world should be deceived in matters of fact, and circumstances of the clearest evidence and conviction, than that the devil, who is wicked, should also be unwise, and that he that persuades all his subjects and accomplices out of their wits, should himself act like his own temptations and persuasions. Then it is to be considered that there are more devils than one, and that what one may not have time or disposition for, another may. Nor is it to be supposed that all devils are of the same capacity or judgment, while there is so infinite a diversity of these qualities in different men. When there are so many dolts on earth, who shall say there are none in hell? In fact, "the devil," according to Mr. Glanvil, is a name for a body politic, in which there are very different orders and degrees of spirits, and perhaps in as much variety of place and state as among ourselves. And these familiars that enter into compact with old women, and do their behests, are, most likely, of the basest and most brutish sort in that invisible commonwealth — or commonbane, if the more suitable word may be used. With respect to the making of compacts, which, when we consider the character and probable destination of those who enter into them, would, no doubt, appear to be superfluous enough, it is a very ingenious conjecture of our author, that the dæmons, by whom those compacts with mankind are proposed or accepted, being of the lowest order in the kingdom of darkness, and having none to rule or tyrannize over within the circle of their own nature and government, are glad to get them vassals or subjects out of another sphere, and that 'tis like enough to be provided and allowed by the constitution of their state and government, that every wicked spirit shall have those souls as his property, and particular servants and attendants, whom he can catch in such compacts, as those wild beasts that we can take in hunting are, by the allowance of the law, our own. As for the spirits of higher rank, it does not appear that they are inclined to trammel or compromise themselves by any express covenants with the human beings with whom they converse. At least, Mr. Glanvil cites, to this effect, the case of a Mr. Edwards, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Cambridge, who being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his repentance that the demon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion, and never required any compact from him. This was a devil fit to converse with a gentleman and a scholar — a demon, in fact, to whom your aristocratic "hell" of the present day can furnish counterparts by the dozen, all "looking like men of good fashion," and probably of a very different social standing at home from those ignoble and gutter fiends who chaffered for the souls of old women, and gave lessons in the art of riding a broom-stick, or pleasuring on the high seas in a sieve.

       Having abundantly demonstrated, in the first part of his book, the possibility of witchcraft, our learned ex-Royal Chaplain in Ordinary applies him, in the second, to place before his readers evidence of its real existence. This is amply afforded by the records of the witch-trials of the time, of which Mr. Glanvil adduces some half-dozen of the most remarkable, and with a few notices of which we shall close the present paper.

       In the month of November, 1663, Elizabeth Hill, the daughter of Richard Hill, of Stoke Trister, in the county of Somerset, yeoman, being then about the age of thirteen, began to be attacked with strange fits, in which she cried out that one Elizabeth Style, of the same parish, a widow, appeared to her, and inflicted upon her various kinds of torments. She also described, in these fits, what clothes Elizabeth Style had on at the time, which descriptions were, upon inquiry, found to be correct.

       Here, let us observe, was a case of clairvoyance, as distinct as any of those which have been brought forward by Calmeil. The critical period of life in which the patient was when the fits appeared, is a circumstance which ought not to be left out of sight.

       The child's sufferings continuing, the father, about a fortnight before Christmas, went to Elizabeth Style, and in the presence of three neighbours, told her that "his daughter spoke much of her in her fits, and did believe that she was bewitched by her." The three neighbours, contrary to what commonly happened in such cases, took part with the accused person, and moved her to complain to the justice against Hill for defaming her. But she, having met this suggestion in an evasive way, and being again urged by the others not to submit to so great an affront, said "she would do worse than fetch a warrant." From this time the girl grew worse, her fits becoming so violent that, "though held in her chair by four or five people, sometimes six, by the arms, legs, and shoulders, she would rise out of her chair, and raise her body about three or four feet high." To these terrible convulsions another torment was added, her wrists, face, neck, and other parts of her body being, during the fits, pricked with thorns, which, on recovering the power of speech, she declared were thrust into her by the Widow Style. The afflicted family, as was very proper, sent for the parson of the parish, whose depositions to what he saw, taken before a neighbouring magistrate, and preserved by Mr. Glanvil, we here present to the reader.

       "William Parsons, Rector of Stoke Trister, in the County of Somerset, examined the 26th of January, 1664, before Robert Hunt, Esq., concerning the bewitching of Richard Hill's daughter, saith, that on Monday night after Christmas Day then last past, he came into the room where Elizabeth Hill was in a fit, many of his parishioners being present and looking on. He there saw the child held in a chair by main force by the people, plunging far beyond the strength of nature, foaming and catching at her own arms and clothes with her teeth. This fit he conceived held about half an hour. After some time, she pointed with her finger to the left side of her hand, next to her left arm, and then to her left hand, &c.; and where she pointed he perceived a red spot to arise, with a small black in the middle of it like a thorn. She pointed to her toes one after another, and expressed great sense of torment. This latter fit, he guesses, continued about a quarter of an hour, during most or all of which time her stomach seemed to swell, and her head where she seemed to be pricked did so very much. She sate foaming much of the time, and the next day after her fit, she showed examinant the places where the thorns were stuck in, and he saw the thorns in those places.
   "Taken upon oath before me,

"ROBERT HUNT."

       The depositions of the child's father, and of a neighbour named Nicholas Lambert, are to the same effect, as to the manner in which the thorns made their appearance. Hill says, "in her fits she would have holes made in her hand-wrists, &c., which the informant and others that saw them, conceived to be with thorns. For they saw thorns in her flesh, and some they hooked out. That upon the child's pointing with her finger from place to place, the thorns and holes immediately appeared to the informant and others looking on. . . . The child hath been so tormented and pricked with thorns for several nights, at which time the informant and many other people have seen the flesh rise up in little bunches, in which holes did appear." And Lambert says, "that in her fits, not being able to speak, she would wrest her body as one in great torment, and point with her finger to her neck, head, hand-wrists, arms, and toes. And he, with the rest, looking on the places to which she pointed, saw on the sudden little red spots arise, with black ones in the middle, as if thorns were stuck in them, but the child then only pointed, without touching her flesh with her fingers."

       This reminds us of "stigmatization," so common among the ecstatics of the Roman Catholic church. In particular, what the clergyman mentions as to the swelling of the child's hand at the time it appeared pricked, seems to have close affinity with what is related of the Tyrolean nun, Maria Hueber:—

       "As she once laid to heart the crowning of our Saviour with thorns, her head, in the fervour of her sympathy, swelled up immoderately, with such piercing pains, that all believed her to be at the point of death. Her confessor was hastily summoned, and having obtained from her a confession of the cause of the phenomenon, he succeeded in so moderating her sympathy, through the power of obedience, that the swelling of her head subsided in a manner visible to all eyes."

       Of Giovanna della Croce, another nun of the Tyrol, it is related that on a similar occasion her head swelled enormously, and at several points a deep redness presented itself, as if blood were on the point of breaking forth. These are remarkable instances of the similarity prevailing between the symptoms of theomania (to adopt Calmeil's expression) and demonomania.

       Another circumstance deposed to by Richard Hill is, that his daughter, at the end of each fit, predicted the time at which another would happen, saying, that she had this information from her tormentor, Style. This was also the case in the instances of demonopathy referred to by Calmeil, and it is one of the most constant phenomena connected with mesmeric somnambulism.

       The Hills were not the only sufferers, whose accusations of witchcraft Elizabeth Style had to meet. During her examination before the above-mentioned Justice Robert Hunt, that enlightened magistrate observed that a certain Richard Vining, present in court, looked very earnestly upon him; and, asking if this man had anything to say relative to the matter before him, received answer, that Style had also bewitched his (Vining's) wife, Agnes. And, on further interrogation, this Vining related, that about two or three years before St. James's day, three years since, or thereabouts, his said wife, Agnes, fell out with Elizabeth Style, and within three days after she was taken with a grievous pricking in her thigh, which pain continued for a long time, till, after some physic taken from one Hallet, she was at some ease for three or four weeks. About the Christmas after the mentioned St. James's day, Style came to Vining's house, and gave Agnes, his wife, two apples, one of them a very fair red apple, which Style desired her to eat — which she did and in a few hours was taken ill, and worse than ever she had been before. Upon this, Vining went to one Master Compton, who lived in the parish of Ditch Eate, for physic for his wife. Compton told him he could do her no good, for that she was hurt by a near neighbour, who would come into his house, and up into the chamber where his wife was, but would go out again without speaking. After Vining came home, being in the chamber with his wife, Style came up to them, but went out again without saying a word. Agnes continued in great pain till Easter-eve following, and then died. Before her death, her hip rotted, and one of her eyes swelled out; and she declared to her husband in her last moments, as she had done several times before, that she believed Elizabeth Style had bewitched her, and was the cause of her death.

       While Vining deposed to these things, Elizabeth Style seemed appalled and concerned; and the justice saying to her, "You have been an old sinner, &c. — you deserve little mercy," she replied, "I have ask't God's mercy for it." Mr. Hunt then asking her, why she still continued in such ill courses, she said, the devil tempted her; and, after this, she no longer declined to make confession of her crimes. We give the confession, as preserved by Glanvil.

       "Elizabeth Styles, her confession of her witchcrafts, January 26th and 30th, and February 7th, 1664, before Robert Hunt, Esq.:— She then confessed, that the devil, about ten years since, appeared to her in the shape of a handsome man, and after, of a black dog. That he promised her money, and that she should live gallantly, and have the pleasure of the world for twelve years, if she would, with her blood, sign his paper, which was to give her soul to him, and observe his laws, and that he might suck her blood. This, after four solicitations, the examinant promised him to do. Upon which he prickt the fourth finger of her right hand, between the middle and upper joynt, (where the sign at the examination remained) and with a drop or two of her blood, she signed the paper with an O. Upon this, the devil gave her sixpence, and vanished with the paper.

       "That, since, he hath appeared in the shape of a man, and did so on Wednesday seven-night past; but more usually he appears in the likeness of a dog, and cat, and a fly like a millar, in which last he usually sucks in the poll, about four of the clock in the morning, and did so, January 27; and that it usually is pain to her to be so suckt.

       "That when she hath a desire to do harm, she calleth the spirit by the name of Robin, to whom, when he appeareth, she useth these words, "O Sathan, give me my purpose." She then tells him what she would have done. And that he should so appear to her, was part of her contract with him.

       "That, about a month ago, he appearing, she desired him to torment one Elizabeth Hill, and to thrust thorns into her flesh, which he promised to do, and the next time he appeared, he told her he had done it.

       "That a little above a month since, this examinant, Alice Duke, Anne Bishop, and Mary, Penny, met about nine of the clock in the night, in the common near Trister gate, where they met a man in black clothes, with a little band, to whom they did courtesie and due observance, and the examinant verily believes that this was the devil. At that time, Alice Duke brought a picture in wax, which was for Elizabeth Hill; the man in black took it in his arms, anointed its forehead, and said, 'I baptize thee with this oyl,' and used some other words. He was godfather, and the examinant and Anne Bishop godmothers. They called it Elizabeth, or Bess. Then the man in black, this examinant, Anne Bishop, and Alice Duke stuck thorns into several places of the neck, hand-wrists, fingers, and other parts of the said picture. After which, they had wine, cakes, and roast meat (all brought by the man in black), which they did eat and drink. They danced, and were merry; were bodily there, and in their clothes.

       "She further saith, that the same persons met again, at or near the same place, about a month since, when Anne Bishop brought a picture in wax, which was baptized John, in like manner as the other was; the man in black was godfather, and Alice Duke and this examinant, godmothers. As soon as it was baptized, Anne Bishop stuck two thorns into the arms of the picture, which was for one Robert Newman's child of Wincaunton. After they had eaten, drank, danced, and made merry, they departed.

       "That she, with Anne Bishop and Alice Duke, met at another time in the night, in a ground near Marnhul, where also, met several other, persons. The devil then also there in the former shape baptized a picture by the name of Anne or Rachel Fletcher. The picture one Durnford's wife brought, and stuck thorns in it. Then they also made merry with wine and cakes, and so departed.

       "She saith, before they are carried to their meetings, they anoint their foreheads, and hand-wrists, with an oyl the spirit brings them (which smells raw); and then they are carried in a very short time, using these words as they pass, "Thout, tout a tout, tout, through out and about." And when they go off from their meetings they say, 'Rentum tormentum."

       "That, at their first meeting, the man in black bids them welcome, and they all make low obeysance to him, and he delivers some wax candles, like little torches, which they give back again at parting. When they anoint themselves, they use a long form of words, and when they stick in thorns into the picture of any thing they would torment, they say, "A pox on thee, I'll spite thee."

       "That at every meeting, before the spirit vanisheth away, he appoints the next meeting place and time, and that at his departure there is a foul smell. At their meeting they have usually wine or good beer, cakes, meat, or the like. They eat and drink really when they meet in their bodies, dance also, and have musick. The man in black sits at the higher end, and Anne Bishop usually next him. He useth some words before meat, and none after; his voice is audible, but very low.

       "That they are carried sometimes in their bodies and their clothes, sometimes without, and as the examinant thinks, their bodies are sometimes left behind. When only their spirits are present, yet they know one another.

       "When they would bewitch man, woman, or child, they do it sometimes by a picture made in wax, which the devil formally baptizeth. Sometimes they have an apple, dish, spoon, or other thing from their evil spirit, which they give the party to whom they would do harm. Upon which they have power to hurt the party that eats or receives it. Sometimes they have power to do mischief by a touch or curse, by these they can mischief cattle; and by cursing without touching, but neither without the devil's leave.

       "The man in black sometimes plays on a pipe or cittern, and the company dance. At last the devil vanisheth, and all are carried to their several houses in a short space. At their parting they say, 'A boy! merry meet, merry part.'

       "That the reason why she caused Elizabeth Hill to be the more tormented was, because her father had said she was a witch. That she has seen Alice Duke's familiar suck her in the shape of a cat, and Anne Bishop's suck her in the shape of a rat.

       "That she never heard the name of God or Jesus Christ mentioned at any of their meetings.

       "That Anne Bishop, about five years and a half since, did bring a picture in wax to their meeting, which was baptized by the man in black, and called Peter. It was for Robert Newman's child of Wincaunton.

       "That some two years ago she gave two apples to Agnes Vining, late wife of Richard Wining, and that she had one of the apples from the devil, who then appeared to her, and told, That apple would do Vining's wife's business.

       "Taken in the presence of several grave and orthodox divines before me,

"ROBERT HUNT."

       This confession of Style's, Mr. Glanvil assures us, was free and unforced, without any torturing or watching; drawn from her by "a gentle examination, meeting with the convictions of a guilty conscience." In some of its most incredible particulars, it was confirmed by other testimony, as well as by the confessions of her accomplices in crime, who, upon her accusation, were also apprehended, and who, in their turn, accused others. Three men, to whose custody Style was consigned, after her confession, and who watched her during the night, testified next day to their having seen her visited by her familiar (one of them at the time reading in the Practice of Piety), in the shape of a glistening bright fly, about an inch in length, which pitched at first in the chimney, and then vanished. This was about three o'clock in the morning. The fly was like a great millar, and the witnesses having examined her poll, from which they had observed the fly to come, found it very red, and like raw beef. Being asked what the fly was, she at first said it was a butterfly, but afterwards confessed that it was her familiar, who usually came to her about that hour. During the diabolical visitation, the fire in the watch-room was remarked by the witnesses to change its colour. Five women also, Style's neighbours, after these discoveries, came forward, and deposed, that a little after Christmas they had searched Elizabeth Style, and had found in her poll a little rising, which felt hard, like a kernel of beef, whereupon they suspecting it to be an ill mark, thrust a pin into it, and, having drawn it out, thrust it in again the second time, leaving it sticking in the flesh for some time, that the other women might also see it. Notwithstanding which, Style did neither at the first nor second time make the least show that she felt anything. But after, when the constable told her he would thrust in a pin to the place, and made a show, as if he did, she said, "O Lord! do you prick me?" whereas no one then touched her. She afterwards confessed to one of these women that her familiar did use to suck her in the place mentioned, in the shape of a great millar, or butterfly.

       Alice Duke's confession was fully of the stamp of Elizabeth Style's. About eleven or twelve years before their unlucky meddling with Hill's daughter, she (Duke) had become acquainted with the devil, through the good offices of Anne Bishop. The introduction was effected in a singular way. Bishop persuaded Duke to go with her into the church-yard in the night-time, and, being come thither, to go backward round the church, which they did, three times. In their first round, they met a man in black clothes, who went round the second time with them, and then they met a thing in the shape of a great black toad, which leapt up against Duke's apron. In their third round, they met somewhat in the shape of a rat, which vanished away. After this they went home, but before Anne Bishop went off, the man in black said something to her softly, which the other did not hear. A few days after this, Bishop told Duke that now she might have her desire, and what she would wish for. And shortly after, the devil appeared to her in the shape of a man, promising that she should want nothing, and that if she cursed anything with "A pox take it," she should have her purpose, in case she would give her soul to him, suffer him to suck her blood, keep his secrets, and be his instrument to do such mischief as he would set her about. In its further tenor, her confession corresponds closely to that of Style: there is the signing the unhallowed contract with her blood; the sixpence given by the devil as earnest; the nocturnal junketting on commons and other lonesome places; the "oyl, which smells raw," rubbed on the forehead before starting on the airy flight; the cabalistic words used in going and returning; the devil in his black suit, "with a little band;" the baptizing of waxen "pictures," or images, and afterwards sticking thorns in them; the wine and cakes, dancing and music; the place of honour occupied by Anne Bishop at table; the "very low," yet audible voice, in which the infernal Amphitryon at these banquets speaks, and the circumstance, credible on many grounds, that he "leaves an ugly smell at parting." At a meeting, held on the Monday night after Christmas, Anne Bishop is mentioned as having had on a green apron, a French waistcoat, and a red petticoat, in which costume we think it no wonder that the devil should consider her entitled to sit next to himself at the higher end of the table. With regard to Alice Duke's familiar, she states that it "doth commonly suck her right breast about seven at night, in the shape of a little cat of a dunnish colour, which is as smooth as a want (that is, a mole), and when she is sucked, she is in a kind of trance."

       There is something pathetic in the close of this confession:—

       "He promised her, when she made her contract with him, that she should want nothing, but ever since she hath wanted all things."

       No doubt she hath. What better could she expect from him who was a liar from the beginning, and will be a liar to the end? All she ever had of him was sixpence, for her blood here and her soul hereafter! A warning to those who would put faith in his promises, or expect advantage in his service — which we hope the reader will lay to heart.

       What finally became of Duke and Bishop, Mr. Glanvil does not inform us; but Elizabeth Style "prevented execution" by dying in jail, a little before the term expired which her confederate demon had set for her enjoyment of diabolical pleasures in this life.

       In the following March, another batch of witches was discovered in the county of Somerset, and divers of those concerned brought before the indefatigable Mr. Hunt. The centre of the group was a certain Margaret Agar, qualified in the record of the transactions as a "rampant Hagg," and who seems to have merited the name. She bewitched Jos. Talbot, overseer of the poor at Brewham, in Somersetshire, for requiring her daughter to go to service; swore "by the blood of the Lord" she would "tread upon his jaws," and brought a picture of him in clay or wax to a witch-meeting at Redmore, where the fiend, after baptizing it, stuck a thorn in or near the heart of it, Agar herself another in the breast, and Catherine Green, Alice Green, Mary Warburton, Henry Walter, and Christian Green, each his or her thorn in such place as they chose, or as was pointed out to them by the authoress of this cruel revenge. The effect was, that Talbot was suddenly taken in his body as if he had been stabbed with daggers, and he continued four or five days in great pain, and then died. Several of the witches of Agar's knot deposed to her crimes, and confessed their own part therein, hereby showing how much more detestable a crime witchcraft is than theft, since there is honour among thieves, but, as it seems, none among witches. At the same time it is to be remembered, in favour of those who thus gave testimony against their consorts in wickedness, that they did it, not to save their own lives, but their souls; they who confessed themselves guilty of witchcraft being put to death, no less than they who were convicted of the crime by the evidence of others. Christian Green was the principal witness in this case of Margaret Agar. She was a youngish witch, having been but barely past thirty years of age when she was enlisted by Catherine Green in the service of the evil one, She was at that time in great poverty, and thought, by going to the devil, to better her condition. She made herself over to him, as usual, by a bond, signed with blood taken from the fourth finger of her right hand, between the middle and upper joints; and received from him as earnest of her wages — he being, it seems, at the time, either "hard up," or in a particularly stingy humour — fourpence-halfpenny, with, which she afterwards bought bread in Brewham. At his vanishing, he left a smell of brimstone behind.

       This circumstance, let us remark, of the ill-savour diffused by the fiend at the moment of his departing, is explained by Mr. Glanvil in a very satisfactory way. The adscititious particles he held together in his visible vehicle, the reverend F. R. S. thinks, being loosened at his vanishing, offend the nostrils by their floating, and diffusing themselves in the open air.

       Christian Green's familiar sucked her left breast, about five o'clock in the morning, in the likeness of a hedgehog; and, like her sister sorceresses, she declared that she "was usually in a trance when she was suckt."

       Mary Green, another witch of this knot, describes the devil in the same terms as the witches of Stoke Trister, as "a man in black clothes, with a little band;" and both she and Christian Green confirm the observation of the others, that his voice is "very low."

       This "little band," we confess, puzzles us. Was it a girdle? Or are we to understand that this reprobate spirit sacrilegiously wore bands, like a clergyman? Or did he only mean, by this manner of dressing, to insinuate a connexion with the legal profession? If we remember rightly, a "Geneva band" was part of the paraphernalia of a Roundhead preacher in those days. Viewed in this light, the "band" in question would have an unquestionable propriety.

       The wearer of the "little band" — waiving the question of his right to wear it — is described by more than one of the witches as "a little man," which is worth remarking, for the contradiction it presents to Milton's portraiture of the Titanic stature of his diabolical hero. We are disposed to think that, in this point, the old women took a truer measure of the "bad un" than the poet, whose predilections, political and religious, naturally inclined him to glorify the arch-independent.

       Passing that, let us observe that the devil is not without his notions of politeness; for when the sisterhood, on his appearing in answer to their conjurations, "make obeysance" to him, the "little man" puts his hand to his hat, and saith, "How do ye?" speaking "low but big." Upon which they all make low obeisance to him again. One of the oddest of his whims is the going always in black, a coincidence of clerical and infernal tastes, indeed, which can only be accounted for on the principle that extremes meet. However, it ought to be noted that it is only in our British lands that the "old boy" manifests this serious turn. In Germany, a scarlet jacket, and a swaling cock's feather in the bonnet, are among his invariable attributes; and in Sweden, the most authentic accounts represent him as wearing "a grey coat, with red and blue stockings, a high-crowned hat, with linen of divers colours wrapt about it, and long garters upon his stockings."

       In all countries, however, he has a strange kind of attraction to the church, as a moth has to the flame in which it is to perish. We have seen how Alice Duke was brought by Anne Bishop to the church-yard, to be introduced to him there; and how the two votaresses of the powers of evil went round the church backwards, a process apparently akin to that of saying the Lord's Prayer from end to beginning — commencing with Amen, and closing with Our — which is understood to be the orthodox way for a witch to express her devotional feelings. The very name Sabbath, applied to the witch-meetings, points to the same principle, which is still more markedly developed in what takes place at these foul assemblies, where, as the reviewer of Calmeil informs us:—

       "An altar was raised, at which Satan, with his head downwards, his feet turned up, and his back to the altar, celebrated his blasphemous mass."

       Even the use, in these hellish solemnities, of a language "not understanded of the people," was a manifest aping of ecclesiastical practices; for what English witch could attach any definite meaning to such words as "Thout, tout a tout, throughout and about," or "Rentum tormentum?" M. Salverte quotes Tiedmann as supposing that many barbarous words, used in the operations of witchcraft, are only Latin and Greek words, badly read and pronounced by the uneducated, which originally were part of the formularies used in the mysteries. (We should say it is more likely such words are of Egyptian or Asiatic origin than Greek or Latin.) Nothing, Salverte thinks, can be more probable than Tiedmann's supposition; and thus "the three unintelligible Greek words, pronounced by the high-priest at the Eleusinian mysteries, Κογξ Ομ Παγξ, have been recognized by Captain Wilford in the Sanscrit words, Can sha Om Pansha, which are repeated by the Brahmins every day at the close of their religious ceremonies."

       It is probable that "Thout, tout a tout," "Rentum tormentum," and "A boy! merry meet, merry part," are, as well as "Konx Om Panx," ancient forms of invocation, Coptic or Hindoo, or scraps of such forms, turned to jargon in the mouths of persons who learned to repeat them by rote, and who were ignorant of their meaning. Thout, or Thoth, we know to be the name of the Egyptian Hermes; and "A Boy" is but a slight corruption of Evoë, a cry still used, in their orgies, by the wizards of Siberia, though without reference to the joyous Phrygian god. From all this, the conjecture of Salverte would seem not to be without some colour of likelihood, "that sorcery was founded by those Egyptian priests of the last order, who, from the commencement of the Roman empire, had wandered in every direction; and who, although they were publicly despised, yet were consulted in secret, and continued to make proselytes among the lowest classes in society." Maintaining themselves throughout the whole period of Roman history, the workings of this fallen and dispersed hierarchy did not wholly cease even after Christianity had overthrown the altars of polytheism; and Thoth and Evoë were still invoked after the names of Mercury and Bacchus had been forgotten. But the debased worship was performed in the wildest solitudes, and under the cover of night: its priesthood sank, age after age, into a more and more brutish ignorance; its votaries were gathered, in each succeeding generation, from a ruder and more neglected class of the people; and no very long time had elapsed, before all traces of its meaning and its origin had passed from the knowledge of those who bore a part in it, and it retained little more of the religion which had possessed the temples of the world, than its antagonism to Christianity.