with such an awful majesty that beats back all enchantments, and makes the infernal fiends tremble at his presence, hating those vigorous beams of light, which are so contrary and repugnant to their dark natures."

Besides the potency of this divine ray, there is a general security in the hosts of spiritual beings banded against the powers of darkness.

"For there is a chain of government that runs down from God, the Supreme Monarch, whose bright and piercing eyes look through all that he has made, to the lowest degree of the creation; and there are presidential Angels of Empires and Kingdoms, and such as under them have the tutelage of private families; and lastly, every man's particular Guardian Genius. Nor is the inanimate or material world left to blind Chance or Fortune, but there are likewise mighty and potent Spirits to whom is committed the guidance and care of the fluctuating and uncertain motions of it, and by their ministry, fire and vapour, storms and tempests, snow and hail, heat and cold, are all kept within such bounds and limits, as are most serviceable to the ends of Providence. They take care of the variety of Seasons, and superintend the tillage and fruits of the earth; upon which account, Origen calls them invisible husbandmen. So that all affairs and things being under the inspection and government of these Incorporeal Beings, the power of the Dark Kingdom and its Agents is under a strict confinement and restraint, and they cannot bring a general mischief upon the world without a special permission of a superior Providence."Melampronvea, p. 91.

There was a strong disposition in many to combat the witch with her own weapons, and repel charm by counter-charm. Protestants generally denounced this practice as unlawful, impious, and dangerous. The witch-finders deemed it allowable, to a certain extent, for the discovery of offenders; but they did not escape scandal. Among the Catholics it was generally tolerated. Indeed, some classes of charms were sanctified by their religion, and very many of their ceremonies seem to belong to that description. A guardian angel or saint might slumber over his charge, and need to be refreshed by the flap of such a conjuration. Something, too, was needful for their protection, who could not soar to the sublimities of that divine philosophy which was invulnerable armour for the soul; and who had not the luck to have "Mars happilie placed in the ninth house of the heavens," a circumstance which gave power "to drive awaie divels with his onelie presence." ." Catholics had high authority for resorting to these means. It was sanctioned by all the old canonists; and Pope Nicholas the Fifth gave a certain bishop named Miraties, who suffered in a way

which need not have much troubled a Romish prelate if faithful to his vows, a dispensation for applying to a witch to unbewitch him, which was accomplished. We must introduce a few specimens of these counter-charms. For them, too, antiquity was cited:

"Baccare frontem

Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.

Thus Englished by Abraham Fleming :

"Of berrie-bearing baccar bowze
A wreath or garland knit,

And round about his head and browze
See decentlie it sit;

That of an evill-talking tung,

Our future poet be not stung."

Virgil.

To the potent Moly, which preserved Ulysses from the charms of Circe, many additions were made in the demonological botany of the middle ages. The native virtue of the plants was increased by that of the planet under which they were gathered, or by charms recited at the moment of plucking them. The following is one that witches (white witches, we presume) use at the gathering of their medicinable herbs:

"Haile be thou, holie hearbe,

Growing on the ground,

All in the Mount Calvarie

First wert thou found;
Thou art good for manie a sore,
And healest manie a wound;

In the name of sweet Jesus,

I take thee from the ground."

Besides several general defences against witches, of which the most popular was the horse-shoe, still to be seen nailed to many a threshold in the country, there are many ways of detecting and averting their machinations, of which we select a specimen from Scott:

"To find out a witch:-In die dominico sotularia juvenem axungia seu pinguedine porci, ut moris est, pro restauratione fieri perungunt: and when she is once come into the church, the witch can never get out, untill the searchers for hir give hir expresse leave to depart.

"To be utterlie rid of the witch, and to hang hir up by the haire, you must prepare an image of the earth of a dead man, to be baptized in another man's name, where on the name, with a character, must be written; then must it be perfumed with a rotten bone, and then these psalmes read backward: Domine, Dominus noster, Dominus illuminatio mea, Domine exaudi orationem meam, Deus laudem meam ne tacueris: and then burie it, first in one place, and afterwards in another.

"A charme to find hir that bewitched your kine. Put a pair of breeches upon the cowe's head, and beate hir out of the pasture with a good cudgell upon a Fridaie, and she will runne right to the witche's dore, and strike thereat with hir hornes.

"Another, for all that have bewitched anie kind of cattell. When anie of your cattell are killed with witchcraft, haste you to the place where the carcase lieth, and traile the bowels of the beast unto your house, and drawe them not in at the doore, but under the threshhold of the house into the kitchen, and there make a fier, and set over the same a grediron, and thereupon laie the inwards or bowels; and as they wax hot, so shall the witche's entrailes be molested with extreame heat and paine. But then you must make fast your doores, least the witch come, and fetch awaie a cole of your fier: for then ceaseth hir torment. And we have knowne, saith M. Mal. when the witch could not come in, that the whole house hath been so darkened, and the aire round about the same so troubled, with such horrible noise and earthquakes, that except the doore had beene opened, we had thought the house would have fallen on our heads."

Witches were detected by their inability to shed tears; by their not sinking when placed upon water with their hands and feet tied across, the right hand to the left foot, and the left hand to the right foot; by their mistaking, or omitting, when they attempted to repeat the Lord's prayer; by insensible excrescencies upon their body, supposed to be the Devil's marks; by an extra teat; by being watched till their familiar (in the shape of some animal, but distinguished from a real animal by the impossibility of catching or killing it) came for its daily meal of the witche's blood; by the testimony of the bewitched party; by the accusation of other witches; and by being made to walk incessantly till they were fatigued and bewildered into confession. King James assigns an ingenious reason for the trial by water:

"For, as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse bee at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of bloud, as if the bloud were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appointed that secret supernaturall signe, for triall of that secret unnaturall crime, so it appeares that God hath appointed (for a supernaturall signe of the monstrous impietie of witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken

off them the sacred water of baptisme, and wilfully refused the benefite thereof: no, not so much as their eyes are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as ye please,) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime,) albeit the women-kind especially be able otherways to shed teares at every light occasion when they will-yea, although it were dissemblingly, like the crocodiles."

For the trial of tears the Romish Inquisitors had a set form of adjuration, which we cannot separate from the expression of manly reprobation with which Scott introduces it:

'But, alas, that teares should be thought sufficient to excuse or condemne in so great a cause, and so weightie a triall! I am sure that the worst sort of the children of Israel wept bitterlie; yea, if there were any witches at all in Israel, they wept. For it is written, that all the children of Israel wept. Finallie, if there be any witches in hell, I am sure they weepe; for there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. But God knoweth, many an honest matrone cannot sometimes in the heaviness of hir heart shed teares; the which oftentimes are more readie and common with craftie queanes and strumpets, than with sober women. For we read of two kinds of teares in a woman's eie, the one of true greefe, the other of deceipt. And it is written, that Dediscere flere fœminam est mendacium: which argueth that they lie which saie that wicked women cannot weepe. But let these tormenters take heed, that the teares in this case which runne down the widowe's cheeks, with their crie, spoken of by Jesus Sirach, be not heard above. But, lo, what learned, godlie, and lawful meanes these Popish Inquisitors have invented for the triall of true or false teares.

"I conjure thee, by the amorous teares which Jesus Christ, our Saviour, shed upon the crosse for the salvation of the world; and by the most earnest and burning teares of his mother, the most glorious Virgine Marie, sprinkled upon his wounds late in the evening; and by all the teares which everie saint and elect vessell of God hath poured out heere in the world, and from whose eies he hath wiped awaie all teares, that if thou be without fault thou maist poure downe teares aboundantlie; and if thou be guiltie, that thou weepe in no wise: In the name of the Father, of the Sonne, and of the Holie Ghost,-Amen. And note, saith he, that the more you conjure, the lesse she weepeth."

Inquisitors and controversialists were made of sterner stuff than to feel any difficulty in the question, why there were so many more witches than wizzards? and very harshly did the inquiry lead them to treat the fair sex. They scandalized our Mother Eve, and Gaule whispers that she was a little guilty in this way. James declares their greater frailty, and intimates that the Serpent's success with Eve had “ made him the home

lier with that sex sensine." Vairus (Lib. de fascinatione) ascribes it to their stronger passions, and marvellous fickleness of nature; while Hen. Institor fetches an argument from the derivation of the word famina. For, he saith, it comes from fe and minus; "fe is the same as fi, and fi stands for fides; and thence comes the word fœmina, quia minorem fidem habent." The same author derives Diabolus from duo and bolus, because he makes but two morsels of body and soul.

The witch was always deserted by the Devil, when she was detected. He was supposed to prefer the immediate possession in his own dominions of another soul, to the contingency of what evil might be effected in the world by her instrumentality. His right to such possession seems very disputable, as the abandonment must often have been a direct breach of the compact; and the compact itself an illegal instrument, not pleadable in the courts of heaven. Public opinion however decided, very unmercifully, that his known character for falsehood exonerated him from any obligation to faithfulness in his engagements, and established the validity of the witch's deed of gift. Perhaps it was owing to some lurking doubt on this subject, that, when he did interpose, it was to make all sure, and by various contrivances to prevent any symptoms of penitence. Sometimes he appeared at the trial, to the witches only, in horrid shapes, and used the most appalling threatenings to prevent their confessing. Sometimes he kept up false hopes of deliverance till the very moment of execution. One instance occurs in which he carried the witch through the roof, or wall, of the prison, only to let her fall in the street, where he left her, a ruptured and crippled victim for the ministers of the law. Their earthly career ended, they became, as we have already seen, the very Helots and Gibeonites of the Infernal Kingdom, the imps of future witches, vampire spirits, doing the dirty work of the wretchedest mortals for their daily meal of blood, to the annoyance of villagers, the perplexity of lawyers, the weariness of hangmen, the scandal of religion, the joy of exorcists, the irritation of controversialists, and the trouble of Retrospective Reviewers.

There are very faint traces, if any, of witchcraft in this country prior to the Reformation. Magic, sorcery, astrology, and apparitions, were not uncommon. Hubert, Earl of Kent, was accused (A. D. 1232) of drawing royal favour to himself by sorcery, and stealing from the King's jewel-house a stone that would make a man invisible. About thirty years after, Roger Bacon was twice summoned to Rome to give an account of his conjurations. The story of King Duffus of Scotland, and his sweating sickness, caused by the roasting of a waxen image, in the tenth century, is probably apocryphal, and if not,