Part 6

James, it appears, from his singular piety, and the active part which, long before the composition of his 'Dæmonologie,' he had taken against Satan and his invisible world, had been, from the first, most obnoxious to his servants upon earth. On one occasion, when an unsuccessful attempt had been made against his life, the fiend pleaded (though we do not see why a Scotch devil should speak French) that he had no power over him, adding, "Il est homme de Dieu." The visit which, in a sudden fit of romantic gallantry, he paid to Norway, to bring over his queen, was too favourable an opportunity for the instruments of Satan to be neglected; and accordingly it was resolved by the conclave that every exertion should be made to raise such a tempest as should infallibly put an end to the greatest enemy (as Satan himself confidentially admitted to one of the witches) whom the devil ever had in the world. The preparations were therefore commenced with all due solemnity. Satan undertook, in the first instance, to raise a mist so as to strand the King on the English coast, but, more active measures being thought necessary, Dr. Fian, as the devil's secretary, or register, as he is called throughout these trials, addressed a letter to a distinguished witch, Marion Linkup, and others of the sisterhood, directing them to meet their master on the sea within five days, for the purpose of destroying the King. On All-hallowmas Eve the infernal party, to the number of about two hundred, embarked, "each in a riddle or sieve, and went into the same very substantially." In what latitude they met with Satan is not stated, but after some cruizing about he made his appearance, and delivered to Robert Grierson a cat, which it appears had previously been drawn nine times through the cruik, giving the word to "cast the same into the sea! Hola!" And this notable charm was not without its effect, for James, whose fleet was at that time clearing the Danish coast, afterwards declared that his ship alone had the wind contrary, while all the other vessels had a fair one.

The charm upon the water being finished, the witches landed, and after enjoying themselves with wine, which they drank out of the same sieves in which they had previously sailed so "substantially," they moved on in procession towards the kirk of North Berwick, which had been fixed on as their place of rendezvous with their master. The company exceeded one hundred, of whom thirty-two are enumerated in Agnes Sampson's confession. And they were preceded by Gellie Duncan, playing upon the Jew's-harp the following ditty:

"Cummer, goe ye before, Cummer, goe ye, Gif ye will not go before, Cummer, let me!"

Here their master was to appear in a character less common in Scotland than on the Continent, that of a preacher. Doctor Fian, who, as the devil's register, took the lead in the ceremonies at the kirk, blew up the doors, and blew in the lichts, which resembled black candles sticking round about the pulpit, while another of the party, Grey Meill, acted as door-keeper. Suddenly the devil himself started up in the pulpit, attired in a gown and hat, both black. The sketch of his appearance given in Sir James Melville's Memoirs has something of the power and picturesqueness of Dante. "His body was hard lyk yrn, as they thocht that handled him; his faice was terrible, his nose lyk the bek of an egle, gret bournyng eyn" (occhi di bragia); "his handis and leggis were herry, with clawis upon his handis, and feit lyk the Griffin, and spak with a how voice." He first called the roll of the congregation, to which each answered by name; he then demanded of them whether they had been good servants, what they had done since the last time they had convened, and what had been the success of their conjurations against the King. Gray Meill, the doorkeeper, who was rash enough to remark, that "naething ailet the King yet, God be thankit," was rewarded for this mal-apropos observation by a great blow. The devil then proceeded to admonish them to keep his commandments, which were simply to do all the evil they could; on his leaving the pulpit, the whole congregation, male and female, did homage to him, by saluting him in a way and manner which we must leave those who are curious in such ceremonies to ascertain from the original indictments.

Such is the strange story in which all the criminals examined before James and the Council substantially agree; and unquestionably the singular coincidence of their narratives remains at this day one of the most difficult problems in the philosophy of Scottish history. The fate of the unfortunate beings who confessed these enormities could not, in that age of credulity, be for a moment doubtful. Fian, to whom, after the inhuman tortures to which he had been subjected, life could not be of much value, was condemned, strangled, and burnt. Agnes Sampson underwent a similar fate. Barbara Napier, another person said to have been present at the convention, though acquitted of this charge, was condemned on certain other charges of sorcery in the indictment; but so strongly was the mind of James excited, that, though he had secured a conviction against her, he actually brought the assize to trial for wilful error in acquitting her on this point of dittay.

But the most distinguished victim connected with this scene of witchcraft was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of an eminent judge, Lord Cliftonhall, a woman of strong mind and licentious passions, a devoted adherent to the Roman Catholic faith, a partisan of Bothwell (who was accused by several of the witches as implicated in these practices against the King's life), and a determined enemy to James and to the Reformed religion. Whatever may have been the precise extent of this lady's acquirements in sorcery, there can be no doubt that she had been on terms of the most familiar intercourse with abandoned wretches of both sexes, pretenders to witchcraft, and that she had repeatedly employed their aid in attempting to remove out of the way persons who were obnoxious to her, or who stood in the way of the indulgence of her passions. The number of sorceries, poisonings, and attempts at poisoning, charged against her in the indictment, almost rivals the accusations against Brinvilliers; and, though the jury acquitted her of several of these, they convicted her of participation in the murder of her own godfather, of her husband's nephew, and of Douglas of Pennfrastone; besides being present at the convention of North Berwick, and various other meetings of witches, at which the King's death had been contrived. Her punishment was the severest which the court could pronounce: instead of the ordinary sentence, directing her to be first strangled at a stake and then burned, the unhappy woman was doomed to be "bund to ane staik and burnt in assis, quick, to the death," a fate which she endured with the greatest firmness, on the 25th of June, 1591. So deep and permanent was the impression made by these scenes upon the King's mind, that we owe to them the preparation of an Act of Parliament anent the form of process against witches, mentioned among the unprinted acts for 1597, and more immediately the composition of that notable work of the Scottish Solomon, the 'Dæmonologie.'

In the trials of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel Gardiner, the charges are principally of taking off and laying on diseases either on men or cattle; meetings with the devil in various shapes and places; raising and dismembering dead bodies for the purpose of enchantments; destroying crops; scaring honest persons in the shape of cats; taking away women's milk; committing housebreaking and theft by means of enchantments, and so on. South-running water, salt, rowan-tree, enchanted flints (probably elf-arrow heads), and doggrel verses (generally a translation of the Creed or Lord's Prayer) were the means employed for effecting a cure. Diseases again were laid on by forming pictures of clay or wax, which were placed before the fire or buried with the heads downward; by placing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in the house of the intended victim; or, as in the case of Grierson, by the simpler process of throwing an enchanted tailzie (slice) of beef against his door. It was immaterial whether the supposed powers of the witch were exerted for good or evil. In the case of Grieve, no malefice (to use the technical term) was charged against him, but simply that he had cured diseases by means of charms; and the same in the case of Alison Pearson; but both were executed. Bartie Paterson seems to have been the most pious of warlocks, for his patients were uniformly directed, in addition to his prescriptions, to "ask their health at all livand wichtis abone or under the earth, in the name of Jesus." The trial of Robert Erskine of Dun, though given as one for witchcraft, seems to have been a simple case of poisoning, he having merely resorted to a notorious witch, named Margaret Irvine, for the herbs by which he despatched his nephews. The case of Margaret Wallace, towards the close of James's reign, deserves notice as being the first where something like a stand was made against some of the fundamental positions of the demonologists; the counsel for the prisoner contending strongly against the doctrine that, in the case of a person accused of witchcraft, every cure performed by her was to be set down to the agency of the devil. The defence however, though it seems to have been ably conducted, was unsuccessful.

Matters continued much in the same state during the reign of Charles I. From 1625 to 1640 there are eight entries of trials for witchcraft on the Record, one of which, that of Elizabeth Bathgate, is remarkable, as being followed by an acquittal. In that of Katharine Oswald, the prisoner's counsel had the boldness to argue, that no credit was to be given to the confessions of the other witches, who had sworn to the presence of the prisoner at some of their orgies; "for all lawyers agree," argued he, "that they are not really transported, but only in their fancies, while asleep, in which they sometimes dream they see others there." This reasoning however appears to have made no impression on the jury, any more than the argument in Young's case, that the stoppage of the mill, which she was accused of having effected twenty-nine years before, by sorcery, might have been the effect of natural causes. About one-half of the convictions during this period proceed on judicial confessions; whether voluntary or extorted does not appear. They are not in general interesting, though some of the details in the trial of Hamilton differ a little from the ordinary routine of the witch trials of the time. Having met the devil on Kingston Hills, in East Lothian, he was persuaded by the tempter to renounce his baptism--a piece of apostasy for which he received only four shillings. The devil further directed him to employ the following polite adjuration when he wished to raise him, namely, to beat the ground three times with his stick, and say, "Rise up, foul thief!" On the other hand, the devil's behaviour towards him was equally unceremonious; for on one occasion, when Hamilton had neglected to keep his appointment, he gave him a severe drubbing with a baton.

The scene darkens however, towards the close of this reign, with the increasing dominion of the Puritans. In 1640 the General Assembly passed an act, that all ministers should take particular note of witches and charmers, and that the commissioners should recommend to the supreme judicature the unsparing application of the laws against them. In 1643 (August 19), after setting forth the increase of the crime, they recommend the granting a standing commission from the Privy Council or Justiciary to any "understanding gentlemen or magistrates," to apprehend, try, and execute justice against the delinquents. The subject appears to have been resumed in 1644, 1645, and 1649; and their remonstrances, it would seem, had not been without effect, for in 1649, the year after the execution of Charles, an Act of Parliament was passed confirming and extending the provisions of Queen Mary's, so as more effectually to reach consulters with witches, in regard to whom it was thought (though we do not see why) that the terms of the former act were a little equivocal. From this time, not only does the number of convictions, which since the death of James had been on the decline, increase, but the features of the cases assume a deeper tinge of horror. The old, impossible, and abominable fancies of the 'Malleus' were revived in the trials of Janet Barker and Margaret Lauder, which correspond in a remarkable manner with some of the evidence in the Mora trials. About thirty trials appear on the record between this last date and the Restoration, only one of which appears to have terminated in an acquittal; while at a single circuit-court, held at Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in 1659, seventeen persons were convicted and burnt for this crime.

Numerous however as are the cases in the Records of Justiciary, it must be kept in view that these afford an extremely inadequate idea of the extent to which this pest prevailed over the country. For though Sir George Mackenzie doubts whether, in virtue merely of the general powers given by the act, 1563, inferior judges did at any time, of their own authority, try and condemn criminals accused of witchcraft, the same end was managed in a different way. The Court of Justiciary was anxious to get rid of a jurisdiction which would alone have afforded them sufficient employment; and the Privy Council were in use to grant commissions to resident gentlemen and ministers, to examine, and afterwards to try and execute, witches all over Scotland; and so numerous were these commissions, that Wodrow expresses his astonishment at the number found in the Registers. Under these commissions multitudes were burnt in every part of the kingdom. In Mercer's Manuscript Diary, Lamont's Diary, and Whitelock's Memorials, occasional notices of the numbers burnt are perpetually occurring.

In every case of the kind it would appear that the clergy displayed the most intemperate zeal. It was before them that the poor wretches "delated" of witchcraft were first brought for examination,--in most cases after a preparatory course of solitary confinement, cold, famine, want of sleep, or actual torture. On some occasions the clergy themselves actually performed the part of the prickers, and inserted long pins into the flesh of the witches in order to try their sensibility; and in all they laboured, by the most persevering investigations, to obtain from the accused a confession, which might afterwards be used against them on their trial, and which in more than one instance, even though retracted, formed the sole evidence on which the convictions proceeded. In some cases, where the charge against the criminal was that she was "habit and repute a witch," the notoriety of her character was proved before the Justiciary Court by the oath of a minister, just as habit and repute is now proved in cases of theft by that of a police officer.

Though the tide of popular delusion in regard to this crime may be said to have turned during the reign of Charles II., its opening was perhaps more bloody than that of any of its predecessors. In the first year after the Restoration (1661), about twenty persons appear to have been condemned by the Justiciary Court, two of whom, though acquitted on their first trial, were condemned on the second on new charges. The numbers executed throughout the country are noticed by Lamont. Fourteen commissions for trials in the provinces appear to have been issued by the Privy Council in one day (November 7, 1661). Of the numbers of nameless wretches who died and made no sign, under the hands of those "understanding gentlemen" (as the General Assembly's overture styles them) to whom the commissions were granted, it is now almost impossible to form a conjecture. In reference however to the course of procedure in such cases, we may refer to some singular manuscripts relative to the examination of two confessing witches in Morayshire in 1662, in the possession of the family of Rose, of Kilravock; more particularly as the details they contain are, both from their minuteness and the unparalleled singularity of their contents, far more striking than anything to be found on the Records of Justiciary about this time.

The names of these crazed beldames were Isobel Gowdie and Janet Braidhead. Two of the latter's examinations are preserved; the former appears to have been four times examined at different dates between the 13th April and 27th May, 1662, before the sheriff and several gentlemen and ministers of the neighbourhood; and on one of these is a marking by the Justice Depute Colville, as follows:--"Having read and considered the confession of Isobel Gowdie, within contained, as paction with Sathan, renunciation of baptism, with divers malefices, I find that a commission may be very justly given for her last trial.--A. Colville." The confessions are written under the hand of a notary public, and subscribed by all the clergymen, gentlemen, and other witnesses present; as would appear to have been the practice where the precognitions were to be transmitted to the Justiciary, with the view of obtaining a commission to try and punish the crime. What the result of Isobel Gowdie's "last trial" was, it is easy, from the nature of her confessions, to conjecture.

"Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa."

Though examined on four different occasions, at considerable intervals of time, and undoubtedly undergoing solitary confinement in the interim, so minute and invariable are the accounts given by Gowdie in particular, of the whole life and conversation of the witches to whom she belonged, that a pretty complete institute of infernal science might be compiled from her confession. The distinctness with which the visions seem to have haunted her, the consistency they had assumed in her own mind, and yet the inconceivable absurdity and monstrosity of these conceptions, to many of which we cannot even allude, furnish some most important contributions to the history of hypochondriac insanity.

Her devotion to the service of the devil took place in the kirk of Auldearn, where she was baptized by him with the name of Janet, being held up by a companion, and the devil sucking the blood from her shoulder. The band or coven to which they belonged consisted of thirteen (whose names she enumerates, and some of whom appear to have been apprehended upon her delation), that being the usual number of the covens. Each is provided with an officer, whose duty it is to repeat the names of the party after Satan; and a maiden, who seems to hold sway over the women, and who is the particular favourite of the devil, is placed at his right hand at feasts. A grand meeting of the covens takes place quarterly, when a ball is given. Each witch has a "sprite" to wait upon her, some appearing "in sad dun, some in grass green, some in sea green, some in yellow." Those of Gowdie's coven were, "Robert the Jakes, Sanders the Reed-Reever, Thomas the Fairy, Swein the Roaring Lion, Thief of Hell wait-upon-herself, MacHector," and so on. Some of these spirits, it would appear, did not stand high in Isobel's opinion; for Robert the Jakes, she says, was aged, and seemed to be "a gowkit glaikit spirit." Each of the witches too received a sobriquet, by which they were generally known. Satan himself had several spirits to wait upon him; "sometimes he had boots and sometimes shoes upon his feet, but still his feet are forked and cloven." The witches, it appears, occasionally took considerable liberties with his character, on which occasions Satan, on detecting the calumny, used to beat the delinquents "up and down like naked gaists" with a stick, as Charon does the naked spirits in the 'Inferno,' with his oar. (Cant, iii.) He found it much more easy however to deal with the warlocks than with the fair sex. "Alexander Elder," says the confessing witch, "was soft, and could not defend himself, and did naething but greit and crye while he will be scourging him; but Margaret Wilson in Auldearn would defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to cape the blows, and Bessie Wilson would speak crustily with her tongue, and would be bellin again to him stoutly."

The amusements and occupations of the witches are described with the same firmness and minuteness of drawing. When the devil has appointed an infernal diet, the witches leave behind them, in bed, a besom or three-legged stool, which assumes their shape till their return, a feature exactly corresponding with the Mora trials. When proceeding to the spot where their work is to be performed, they either adopt the shape of cats, hares, etc., or else, mounting upon corn or bean straws, and pronouncing the following charm,--

"Horse and hattock, horse and go, Horse and pellats, ho! ho!"

they are borne through the air to the place of their destination. If any see these straws in motion, and "do not sanctify themselves," the witches may shoot them dead. This feat they perform with elf-arrow heads, which are manufactured by Satan himself; and his assistants the elf boys, who are described, like the Scandinavian trolls, as little humpbacked creatures who speak "goustie like" (gruffly); each witch receiving from Satan a certain number of these "Freischütze." A list of forty or fifty persons is given by the witch, who had been destroyed by herself and her companions, by these means; while she also mentions that she had made an unsuccessful attempt against the life of Mr. Harry Forbes, minister of Auldcarn, one of the witnesses actually present and subscribing her confession.

Another attempt against the life of this minister is described very graphically. The instrument employed was "a bag made of the flesh and guts and galls of toads, the liver of a hare, pickles of corn, parings of nails, of feet, and toes," which olio being steeped all night, and mixed secundum artem by Satan himself, was consecrated by a charm dictated by Satan, and repeated by the witches, "all on their knees, and their hair about their shoulders and eyes, holding up their hands, and looking stedfastly on the devil, that he might destroy the said Mr. Harry." This composition one of the witches, who made her way into the minister's chamber, attempted to throw upon him, but was prevented by the presence of some other holy men in the room. Another composition of the same kind, intended for the destruction of the lairds of Park and Lochloy, was more successful, as appears from the deposition of the other witch, Janet Braidhead. Having prepared the venom, "they came to Inshock in the night time, and scattered it up and down, above and about the gate, and other places, where the lairds and their sons would most haunt. And then we, in the likeness of crows and rooks, stood above the gate, and in the trees opposite the gate. It was appointed so that, if any of them should touch or tramp upon any of it, as well as that it or any of it fall on them, it should strike them with boils and kill them, which it did, and they shortly died. We did it to make this house heirless."

It is needless to pursue further these strange details, which however form a valuable appendix to the records at that time.

It would seem as if the violence of this popular delirium began after 1662 to relax. An interval of six years now occurs without a trial for this crime, while the record bears that James Welsh was ordered to be publicly whipped for accusing several individuals of it,--a fate which he was hardly likely to have encountered some years before. Fountainhall, in noticing the case of the ten poor women convicted on their own confession in 1678, obviously speaks of the whole affair with great doubt and hesitation. And Sir George Mackenzie, in his 'Criminal Law,' the first edition of which appeared in the same year, though he does not yet venture to deny the existence of the crime or the expediency of its punishment, lays down many principles very inconsistent with the practice of the preceding century. "From the horridness of the crime," says he, "I do conclude that of all crimes it requires the clearest relevancy and most convincing probature; and I condemn, next to the wretches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges who burn persons by thousands as guilty of this crime." And accordingly, acting on these humane and cautious principles, Sir George, in his Report to the Judges in 1680, relative to a number of persons then in prison for this crime, stated that their confessions had been procured by torture, and that there seemed to be no other proof against them, on which they were set at liberty. "Since which time," adds Lord Royston, "there has been no trial for this crime before that court, nor before any other court, that I know of, except one at Paisley by commission from the Privy Council in anno 1697." This observation of Lord Royston is not altogether correct. The trial at Paisley to which he alludes is evidently the noted case of the Renfrewshire witches, tried on a charge of sorcery against a girl named Christian Shaw, the daughter of Shaw of Bargarran. The conviction of the accused appears to have taken place principally on the evidence of the girl herself, who in the presence of the commissioners played off a series of ecstasies and convulsion fits, similar to those by which the nuns of Loudon had sealed the fate of Grandier the century before. In this atrocious case, the Commissioners (in the Report presented by them to the Privy Council, 9th March, 1697), reported that there were twenty-four persons, male and female, suspected of being concerned in the sorceries; and among them, it is to be observed, is a girl of fourteen, and a boy not twelve years of age. After this, we almost feel surprised that out of about twenty who were condemned, only five appear to have been executed. They were burnt on the green at Paisley. The last trial before the Court of Justiciary was that of Elspet Rule, tried before Lord Anstruther, on the Dumfries circuit, 3rd of May, 1708, where the prisoner, though convicted by a plurality of voices, was merely sentenced to be burned on the cheek and banished Scotland for life. The last execution which took place was that of an old woman in the parish of Loth, executed at Dornoch in 1722, by sentence of the Sheriff depute of Caithness, Captain David Ross, of Little Dean. "It is said, that being brought out for execution, the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the fire, while the other instruments of death were made ready!"

So ends in Scotland the tragical part of the history of witchcraft. In 1735, as already mentioned, the penal statutes were repealed; much to the annoyance however of the Seceders, who, in their annual confession of national sins, printed in an act of their Associate Presbytery at Edinburgh, in 1743, enumerated, as a grievous transgression, the repeal of the penal statutes "contrary to the express laws of God!" And though in remote districts the belief may yet linger in the minds of the ignorant, it has now, like the belief in ghosts, alchemy, or second sight, only that sort of vague hold on the fancy which enables the poet and romance writer to adapt it to the purposes of fiction, and therewith to point a moral or adorn a tale. And, of a truth, no unimportant moral is to be gathered from the consideration of the history of this delusion; namely, the danger of encouraging those enthusiastic conceits of the possibility of direct spiritual influence, which, in one shape or other, and even in our own days, are found to haunt the brain of the weak and presumptuous. For it is but the same principle which lies at the bottom of the persecutions of the witches, and which shows itself in the quietism of Bourignon, the reveries of Madame Guyon, the raptures of Sister Nativity, the prophecies of Naylor, the dreams of Dr. Dee, or Swedenborg's prospect of the New Jerusalem; still but an emanation of that spirit of pride, which, refusing to be "but a little lower than the angels," asserts an immediate communion and equality with them, and which, according to the temper of the patient, feeds him with the gorgeous visions of quietism, or impels him, like a furious Malay, along the path of persecution. Some persons assert that, in this nineteenth century of ours, we have no enthusiasm. On the contrary, we have a great deal too much: at no period has enthusiasm of the worst kind been more rife; witness the impostures of Southcott and Hohenlohe, and the thousand phantasies which are daily running their brief course of popularity. At no time has that calenture of the brain been more widely diffused, which, as it formerly converted every natural occurrence into the actual agency of the devil, now transforms every leader of a petty circle into a saint, and invests him with the garb and dignity of an apostle. Daily, are the practical and active duties of life more neglected under the influence of this principle; the charity which thinketh no evil of others daily becomes more rare; the stream of benevolence which of old stole deep and silently through the haunts of poverty and sickness at home, is now but poorly compensated by being occasionally thrown up in a few pompous and useless jets, at public subscriptions for distant objects; while even in those whose minds are untinctured by the grosser evils to which enthusiasm gives rise, life passes away in vain and illusive dreams of self-complacent superiority, which, as they are based only in pride and constitutional susceptibility, rarely endure when age and infirmity have shaken or removed the materials out of which they were reared. Thus, the enthusiast who, like Mirza, has been contemplating through the long day the Elysian islands that lie beyond the gulf, and already walking in a fancied communion with their myrtle-crowned inhabitants, feels, in spite of all his efforts, that, as evening creeps upon the landscape, the phantasmagoria becomes dimmer and more dim; the bridge, the islands, the genius who stood beside them disappear; till at last nothing remains for him but his own long hollow valley of Bagdad, with its oxen, sheep, and camels grazing on its sides;--this sober, weary, working world, in short, with all its cares and duties, through which, if he had been wisely fulfilling the end for which he was sent into it, he should have been labouring onward with a beneficent activity, not idly dreaming by the wayside of the Eden for which he is bound; and so he awakes to a consciousness of his true vocation in life when he is on the point of leaving it, and perceives the value and the paramount necessity of exertion, only when youth, with its opportunities, and its energies, lies behind him for ever, like the shadows of a dream.

* * * * *

The work of Church-Councillor Horst, and the review of its principal contents, leave however one hemisphere at least of the subject of Magic, Theurgy, and Necromancy unnoticed. These arts, or at least the popular belief in them, are much more ancient than any of the forms of Christianity, and were, in fact, a most unlucky legacy bequeathed by Paganism to the creeds which supplanted it. It needs no ghost to tell the reader how firmly the ancients believed in all supernatural influences: how populous, in their conceptions, were the elements with omens, portents, and prodigies; how abject and unreasoning was their credulity; and how dependent both their public and their domestic life upon the exorcisms of the priest and the science of the augur. The Canidias and Ericthos of antiquity were not mere creations of the poets; the most sober and sceptical of historians does not disdain to relate that, in the house of the dying Germanicus, were found burnt bones and dissevered limbs of dead bodies; and the most philosophical of the Roman poets recounts with complacent gravity the charms by which the dead might be evoked, or the faithless lover recalled by his forsaken mistress. Nor did the belief in witches and supernatural agencies decay or decline with the disbelief in the state-religion which marked the latter ages of the Roman Empire. On the contrary, as scepticism increased in one direction, credulity and abject superstition grew and prevailed in another. Neither were these infirmities of the mind by any means confined to the vulgar or the profane. The later Platonists were deeply infected with the malady of superstition, and there are few more curious chapters in the history of human inconsistency, than the lives of many of the philosophers, who argued against the being of a God, and who trembled if a hare crossed their path, at a sinister flight of crows, or at a sudden encounter with a beldame or a blackamoor in the grey of the morning.

The magical art of the ancients, more especially towards the decline of Pagandom, was indeed of an extremely dark and atrocious complexion. Unmindful of the wise and reverent forbearance of the poet of the Æneid--

"Sin has ne possim naturæ accedere partes Frigidus obstiterit circum præcordia sanguis,"--

the ancient wizards pried, or affected to pry, into the very "incunabula vitæ." Could we recover a few of those books which the sorcerers at Corinth burned and brought the price of them to St. Paul, we should probably find in their pages, among some curious physical or medical secrets, nearly all the elements of a cruel and obscene superstition.