when a combination of skill and fraud imposed
upon the vulgar, is easily settled. The priests of the ancient
mythology, the adepts of the middle ages, turned their knowledge of
chemistry and mechanics and their proficiency in legerdemain to account;
and before we denounce the latter as impostors, we should bear in mind
the ignorance of the times in which they lived. People would not have
believed any natural explanation, though they might have felt inclined
to persecute the man when stripped of his magical character: we should
also consider how far the general belief might influence even the man
himself; how far he could in his inmost mind draw the distinction
between what we call natural philosophy and what the age considered
magic--a lawful if a riskful power over nature and spirits, by means of
occult knowledge. An allowance is further to be made for the stories as
they have come down to us; a distinction is to be drawn between the
actual facts and the fancy of the narrator, between the reality and the
romance of magic.

Sorcery and witchcraft (to which, notwithstanding its title, Mr.
Wright's book chiefly relates) was a more vulgar pursuit, and is a more
difficult matter to determine. The true magician was a master over both
the seen and the unseen world. His art could _compel_ spirits or demons
to obey him, however much against their will. It seems a question
whether a spell of sufficient potency could not control Satan himself.
The witch or wizard was a vulgar being, a mere slave of the Evil One,
with no original power, very limited in derived power, and, it would
appear, with no means of acting directly except upon the elements. The
facts relating to witchcraft, being often matter of legal record, are
more numerous and more correctly narrated than those relating to magic.
The difficulty of fixing the exact boundary between truth and falsehood,
guilt and innocence, in the case of witchcraft, is not so easily settled
as the sciolist in liberal philosophy imagines. Of course we all know
that men and women could not travel through the air on broomsticks, or
cause storms, or afflict cattle. Their innocence of the intention is
not always so certain: their power over a nervous or weakly person,
especially in bad health, might really, through the influence of
imagination, produce the death threatened, and the miserable patient
might pine away as his real or supposed waxen image slowly melted before
the fire. At a time w