re
affected were a kind of sectarians, and on this account they hastened
their exorcisms as much as possible, in order that the evil might not
spread amongst the higher classes, for hitherto scarcely any but the poor
had been attacked, and the few people of respectability among the laity
and clergy who were to be found among them, were persons whose natural
frivolity was unable to withstand the excitement of novelty, even though
it proceeded from a demoniacal influence. Some of the affected had
indeed themselves declared, when under the influence of priestly forms of
exorcism, that if the demons had been allowed only a few weeks' more
time, they would have entered the bodies of the nobility and princes, and
through these have destroyed the clergy. Assertions of this sort, which
those possessed uttered whilst in a state which may be compared with that
of magnetic sleep, obtained general belief, and passed from mouth to
mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so
much the more zealous in their endeavours to anticipate every dangerous
excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have
been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions
were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth
century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in
consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all
events, in the course of ten or eleven months the St. John's dancers were
no longer to be found in any of the cities of Belgium. The evil,
however, was too deeply rooted to give way altogether to such feeble
attacks.

A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-
Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed
amounted to more than five hundred, and about the same time at Metz, the
streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred
dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops,
housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich
commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret
desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild
enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed
themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls
and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse
themselves at the dances of