belief in this respect from his own,
he does them a great injustice. Let him take at once Charles Lamb's
warning, and try to understand, rather than to judge them. We, who have
had the benefit of three hundred more years of experience and liberty of
thought than they, should have to hide our faces for very shame had we
not arrived at juster and truer conclusions upon those difficult topics
that so bewildered our ancestors. But can we, with all our boasted
advantages of wealth, power, and knowledge, truly say that all our aims
are as high, all our desires as pure, our words as true, and our deeds
as noble, as those whose opinions we feel this tendency to contemn? If
not, or if indeed they have anything whatsoever to teach us in these
respects, let us remember that we shall never learn the lesson wholly,
perhaps not learn it at all, unless, casting aside this first impulse to
despise, we try to enter fully into and understand these strange dead
beliefs of the past.

* * * * *

35. It is in this spirit that I now enter upon the second division of
the subject in hand, in which I shall try to indicate the chief features
of the belief in demonology as it existed during the Elizabethan period.
These will be taken up in three main heads: the classification, physical
appearance, and powers of the evil spirits.

36. (i.) It is difficult to discover any classification of devils as
well authenticated and as universally received as that of the angels
introduced by Dionysius the Areopagite, which was subsequently imported
into the creed of the Western Church, and popularized in Elizabethan
times by Dekker's "Hierarchie." The subject was one which, from its
nature, could not be settled _ex cathedra_, and consequently the subject
had to grow up as best it might, each writer adopting the arrangement
that appeared to him most suitable. There was one rough but popular
classification into greater and lesser devils. The former branch was
subdivided into classes of various grades of power, the members of
which passed under the titles of kings, dukes, marquises, lords,
captains, and other dignities. Each of these was supposed to have a
certain number of legions of the latter class under his command. These
were the evil spirits who appeared most frequently on the earth as the
emissaries of the greater fiends, to carry out their evil designs. The
more important class kept for the most part in a mystical seclusio