entice said, his design also was
only diversion; and that, as his master was a tooth-drawer, the gag was
what they sometimes used in their business. These excuses, frivolous as
they were, were of some avail to them; and, as they had not manifested
any evil design by an overt act, they were acquitted.

But the Counsellor, who had foreseen what would happen, through the
insufficiency of evidence, had provided another stroke for them. No
sooner were they discharged from the civil power, but the Apparitor of
the Archbishop of Paris seized them, and conveyed them to the
Ecclesiastical Prison; and, in three days more, they were tried and
convicted of a scandalous profanation, by assuming to themselves the
names, characters, and appearances, of an holy apostle and a blessed
angel, with an intent to deceive a pious and well-meaning woman, and to
the scandal of religion. On this they were condemned to be publicly
whipped, burnt on the shoulder by a hot iron, with the letters G.A.L.
and sent to the galleys for fourteen years.

The sentence was executed on them the next day, on a scaffold in the
_Place de Greve_, amidst an innumerable crowd of spectators: many of
whom condemned the superstition of the lady, when perhaps they would
have shewn the same on a like occasion; since, it may be supposed, that
if many of _their_ stories of apparitions, of saints, and angels, had
been judiciously examined, they would have been found, like the above,
to be either a gross fraud, or the dreams of an over-heated,
enthusiastic imagination.

I shall make no reflections on the above fact; but leave it to the
impartial consideration of the reader.

THE

FEMALE SPRITES.

In September 1764, the following extraordinary incident happened in the
family of a clergyman then living in Bartholomew Close.

The gentleman and his wife returning home about eleven o'clock from a
friend's house, where they had been to spend the evening, desired the
maid to get them warm water to mix with some wine. There being no fire
in the parlour, they went into the kitchen; and while the water was
heating, the gentleman ordered the maid to get a pan of coals, and warm
the bed. The servant had not long been gone up stairs, when the
gentleman and his wife heard an uncommon noise over their heads, like
persons walking without shoes: and, presently after, a woman enters the
kitchen, without any other clothes on than her shift and cap. Their
astonishment at such a