e given up to a belief in wonders and apparitions.

This disposition of mind, altogether so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and
which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of
civilisation and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the
origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good
sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy
plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their
bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.
The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the
immorality of the age, was proved by their ascribing this frightful
affliction to the inefficacy of baptism by unchaste priests, as if
innocent children were doomed to atone, in after-years, for this
desecration of the sacrament administered by unholy hands. We have
already mentioned what perils the priests in the Netherlands incurred
from this belief. They now, indeed, endeavoured to hasten their
reconciliation with the irritated, and, at that time, very degenerate
people, by exorcisms, which, with some, procured them greater respect
than ever, because they thus visibly restored thousands of those who were
affected. In general, however, there prevailed a want of confidence in
their efficacy, and then the sacred rites had as little power in
arresting the progress of this deeply-rooted malady as the prayers and
holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly-revered
martyr St. Vitus. We may therefore ascribe it to accident merely, and to
a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond
the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices
of the St. Vitus's dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The
highly-coloured descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the
notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its
severity, and not a single fact is to be found which supports the opinion
that any one of the essential symptoms of the disease, not even excepting
the tympany, had disappeared, or that the disorder itself had become
milder in its attacks. The physicians never, as it seems, throughout the
whole of the fifteenth century, undertook the treatment of the Dancing
Mania, which, according to the prevailing notions, appertained
exclusively to the servants of the Church. Against demoniacal disorders
they had no remedies, and t