rmation, of a Spaniard who attempted
to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy
which he had taken to the first sight of the King.

--The cause which to that act compell'd him
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him.]

[Footnote 2: There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit
themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no
consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as
happen every day; and this I have observed more frequently among the
Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the
minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if
it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as
well as accent and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly
tolerable.--_Hints towards an Essay on Conversation_.]

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for
fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved
in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible
world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an
historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world
was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits
assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or
proportion--of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable
absurd--could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission
of any particular testimony?--That maidens pined away, wasting
inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire--that corn was
lodged, and cattle lamed--that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry
the oaks of the forest--or that spits and kettles only danced a
fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind
was stirring--were all equally probable where no law of agency was
understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the
flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the
weak fantasy of indigent eld--has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood
_a priori_ to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or
standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the
devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolized by
a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that _he_ should come
sometimes in that body, a