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eve of St. Walburgha, on the Kreydenburgh, a hill near the city of Wurtzburgh.

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The witches of Bamberg were also accused of poisoning men and cattle. They sprinkled venom on the grass of the meadows. This charge often appears in the witch trials; and it is hardly necessary to remind our readers of the double character of the Venefica of classical antiquity. Some credit has lately been given to these accusations. It is remarked by Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe that, with all the compassion which the fate of so many unfortunate victims is calculated to excite, it ought not to be forgotten that many of these persons made a boast of their supposed art, in order to intimidate and extort from their neighbours whatever they desired; that they were frequently of an abandoned life, and addicted to horrible oaths and imprecations; and in several cases venders of downright poison, by which they gratified their customers in the darkest purposes of avarice and revenge.' The same reasoning is followed by the author of the Scottish novels, when describing the witches introduced in the Bride of Lammermoor; and we may readily agree that, to a certain degree, it is not incorrect. But at the same time, even the real and undoubted crimes of the witch must be estimated in conjunction with her real and undoubted wretchedness.

Important lessons, both in psychology and in jurisprudence, are 'afforded by the history of witchcraft. The trials furnish the most painful proofs of the fallibility of human testimony and the infirmity of human judgment. In every portion of these records the strangest difficulties arise. Witnesses are found, who, under the sanction of the most solemn oaths, give evidence of events and acts, at once absurd, inconsistent and impossible. According to the mere average of human nature, it is difficult to suppose that all the persons who so bore testimony, were malignant and perjured ideots. But, admitting that every witness who was ever examined upon a witch trial swore wilfully and corruptly to a falsehood, it is still more incomprehensible to discover the supposed culprits themselves making full and free declarations of the crimes imputed to them, and meeting death with penitence and resignation as the atonement of their sins.

Altogether, the subject matter of these accusations might seem to be appropriately described, in the quaint but energetic words of an old writer, as 'that which God would not do, the Devil could not do, none but a liar would assert, and none but a fool believe.' If such can be considered as the characteristics of the proceedings, it ought to appear strange that they were so long tolerated even in an age of darkness and superstition. And it is still more degrading

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to the pride of the human understanding, to behold judges, who were not deficient in piety, good sense, or learning, imagine that they were fulfilling all the precepts of the law, by dooming the miserable and trembling aged sorceress to the stake and the scaffold.

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Hutchinson, whilst arguing against the belief in witchcraft, was so perplexed by the tales which he refuted, as to adopt a singular line of argument- We have been apt to wonder,' he states, why the devil had forsaken our age, that we had no possessions amongst us, when in ancient times they had so many. But if they that have been thought to have been bewitched, have really been demoniacks, and the Devil by their mouths hath carried on his great work of false accusing and murdering innocent people, then we must own he hath done by craft, what he could not do by direct temptation; and hath made those very men his tools, to carry on his plots, who verily believed that they had been destroying his works.

Such was the reasoning of a very humane and learned, but enthusiastic writer. It is an attempt to save the credit of human nature. Without seeking to enter into the dread question of moral responsibility, we may in some degree extenuate, without excusing, the crimes of the persecutors, by ascribing them to virtual insanity. In considering the actions of the mind, it should never be forgotten, that its affections pass into each other like the tints of the rainbow: though we can easily distinguish them when they have assumed a decided colour, yet we can never determine where each hue begins. It has been said that

'Great wit to madness nearly is allied,

And thin partitions do the bounds divide.'

The truth of this observation may be extended beyond the letter of the observation. Madness is almost undefinable. Right reason and insanity are merely the extreme terms of a series of mental action, which need not be very long. Much of the evidence in the witch trials was given under the influence of the positive though undefinable madness, arising from panic fear united to bitter hatred. And there are too many historical instances which prove that delusions perfectly equivalent in moral absurdity and wickedness, may be excited by terrors which have no affinity to those inspired by witchcraft.

As to the confessions made by the witches themselves, it is known that, in very many instances, they were obtained upon the rack. Such declarations of guilt require no explanation; but it is too evident that confessions of guilt were frequently wrung out of the sufferers by the agonies, more lingering, yet perhaps equally severe, of continued vexation and persecution. I went once,' says Sir George Mackenzie, when I was Justice Depute, to examine some

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women that had confessed judicially; and one of them, who was a sickly creature, told me, under secresie, that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat; and being defamed for a witch, she knew she should starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging; and that all men would beat her, and hound dogs at her; and that therefore she desired to be out of the world: whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness what she said.'-This species of torment again leads to insanity. Wretchedness and oppression, disorganizing the body as well as the mind, will make even wise men mad. At length the witch became wicked in thought, though not in deed. The hatred of the world placed her out of the pale of society. Detesting and detested, she sought to inflict those evils which she could not effect; and half conscious of a delusion which she could not overcome, she became reckless of her own miserable life, yielding to the frantic despair which compelled her to wish to believe that she was in league with the powers of hell. But these horrors are not the peculiar consequences of superstition. They are in no wise the exclusive attributes of barbarous times.

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Dreadful as the cruelties may have been which were thus perpetrated under the name of the law, we are still compelled to acknowledge that superstition only assisted in producing them. It was only one of the influential causes; and other causes and pretences equally potent may exist even in an age of reason. the contagion of fear and hatred is at its height, the mysterious love of destruction which is always lurking in human nature, acquires fresh strength as it proceeds. Its effects have been exemplified within our recollection. The wide wasting and insane persecutions which, two hundred years ago, would have taken the shape of the proscription of witchcraft, have been renewed in our enlightened times with greater violence. The executions, the massacres, the noyades, the fusillades of the French Revolution were urged by the same moral madness which, in the preceding age, had occasioned the persecutions of so many alleged votaries of Satan. They differ in name; but they are precisely the same in kind. Bloodshed always causes bloodshed. There is a state of morbid excitement, during which the contagion of murder spreads with as much certainty as the plague; and the individuals composing a nation may be exalted into a paroxysm of moral frenzy, possessing as little controul over their actions as the raving maniac. The instruments of evil may occasionally share our pity with the victims; but those who are anxious for the welfare of society, will dread the philosophy' of the disciples of Robespierre and Marat just as much as the superstition' which is taught in the Malleus Maleficarum.

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It would be easy to show that, in peculiar instances, the belief in witchcraft had a physical basis in that preternatural state of the body and of the mind which is produced by the use of potent herbs and intoxicating drugs, the accompaniments of magic even from the earliest age. This is eminently the case with respect to the witchcraft of the Scandinavians. Odin was said to have first revealed these dangerous secrets; and he taught the Asi to boil the demon cauldrons of the Vani. Whilst the body of the Trollquind, or Sorceress, was outstretched on the earth, her soul was floating in far distant lands; or in a state of feverish dream, excited by the maddening narcotic, she poured forth her oracles in verse, unconscious of her strain, and without effort or premeditation. Of the influence and employment of medicated potions for such purposes there is sufficient evidence, and the Kubla Khan of Coleridge, composed, if the expression may be allowed, under circumstances perfectly similar, is an extraordinary and authentic instance of the energy arising from this morbid excitement of the mind.

The Runic Hecate has been familiarized to the English reader, by her introduction in one of those works which at once command an unchallenged pre-eminence in our national literature. In the Scottish novels,' every tint of the landscape has received colouring from nature: no personage is brought into action who has not been really heard and seen-we can hardly except the White Lady of Avenel. And therefore, no surprize will be excited when it is stated that the prototype and namesake of Ulla Troil now lives and commands the powers of the air in the distant Shetlands. About three years ago, a Stranger, though not unknown, sailed to these still vexed islands, from the main land of Scotland, ard Norna then sold him a wind, unwitting that she was conversing vith a far mightier magician than herself.

Warton observes, that the enchantments of the Runic poetry are very different from those in our romances of chivalry. The former chiefly deal in spells and charms, such as would preserve from poison, blunt the weapons of an enemy, procure victory, allay a tempest, cure bodily diseases, or call the dead from their tombs; in uttering a mysterious form of words, or inscribing Runic characters. The magicians of romance are chiefly employed in forming and conducting a train of deceptions. There is an air of barbarian horror in the incantations of the Scaldic fablers, the magicians of romance often present visions of pleasure and delight; and, although not without their terrors, sometimes lead us through flowery forests, and raise up palaces glittering with gold and precious stones. The Runic magic is more like that of Canidia in Horace, the romantic resembles that of Armida in Tasso. The operations of the one are frequently but mere tricks,

in comparison with that sublime solemnity of necromantic machinery which the other so awfully presents to the spectator.'

The parallel so presented is pleasing, but it is deficient in correctness. The historian of poetry has not attended strictly to the line which divides the fiction of fable from the fiction of reality. In the poetical romances of the earlier portion of the middle ages, in the geste and in the lay, the agency of supernatural beings is not of frequent introduction. In Amadis de Gaul, and in the lives of his followers and progeny, wonders increase upon us. We fully agree with our good friend Don Quixote, that there is not a greater pleasure in this world than to see before us an immense lake of burning pitch, boiling and bubbling, and full of serpents, dragons, and alligators, and to hear a dolorous voice issuing from the midst thereof, summoning the knight to plunge into the flaming waves, or to be considered as unworthy of participating in the delights of the seven castles of the seven fairies. But the marvels of these romances-and it is to them that Warton seems chiefly to allude-are by no means authentic: they are merely poetical machinery. Nobody ever believed in them, and they are quite unconnected with the orthodoxy and practice of the black art. trustworthy authorities are the invectives of the divine and the sentences of the lawyer. From these sources a correct and minute detail of the superstitions in question may be collected; and when examined, they rather tend to destroy the idea of any marked distinction between the enchantments of Runic poetry,' and those of the Scandinavian stem which prevailed amongst other nations, though the belief was necessarily modified by the circumstances under which it was received.

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Magic assumes a more creditable shape than the superstitions which are usually associated with its name; it was knowledge; and many of those whom Naudé has vindicated from the charge, would probably have considered themselves rather honoured than disgraced by the imputation.

The magical colleges of Spain enjoyed a species of classical reputation. In these our western parts of Europe, they appear to have been the successful rivals of Dom Daniel, the great Alma Mater beneath the sea. Toledo and Salamanca and Simancas were alike celebrated or defamed for the instruction which they imparted in unhallowed lore. The schools were held in subterraneous chambers. Martin Delrio had seen the entrance of the awful cavern at Simancas, which was not closed until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, when the entire subjection of the Ishmaelites rendered it unnecessary to temporize any longer with the powers of darkness. The doctrine delivered at Simancas, however, was not Goetic Magic, or that which is vulgarly termed the

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