ame prepared to receive the seeds of the
approaching Reformation. Thus did the all-wise Disposer of events bring
good out of evil, and advance the civilization and ultimate happiness
of the nations of the West, by means of the very fanaticism that had
led them against the East. But the whole subject is one of absorbing
interest; and if carried fully out in all its bearings, would consume
more space than the plan of this work will allow. The philosophic
student will draw his own conclusions; and he can have no better field
for the exercise of his powers than this European madness; its
advantages and disadvantages; its causes and results.

THE WITCH MANIA.

What wrath of gods, or wicked influence
Of tears, conspiring wretched men t' afflict,
Hath pour'd on earth this noyous pestilence,
That mortal minds doth inwardly infect
With love of blindness and of ignorance?

Spencer's Tears of the Muses.

Countrymen: "Hang her!--beat her!--kill her!"
Justice: "How now? Forbear this violence!"
Mother Sawyer: "A crew of villains--a knot of bloody hangmen!
set to torment me!--I know not why."
Justice: "Alas! neighbour Banks, are you a ringleader in mischief?
Fie I to abuse an aged woman!"
Banks: "Woman!--a she hell-cat, a witch! To prove her one, we no
sooner set fire on the thatch of her house, but in she came
running, as if the Devil had sent her in a barrel of
gunpowder."

Ford's Witch of Edmonton.

The belief that disembodied spirits may be permitted to revisit this
world, has its foundation upon that sublime hope of immortality, which
is at once the chief solace and greatest triumph of our reason. Even
if revelation did not teach us, we feel that we have that within us
which shall never die; and all our experience of this life but makes us
cling the more fondly to that one repaying hope. But in the early days
of "little knowledge," this grand belief became the source of a whole
train of superstitions, which, in their turn, became the fount from
whence flowed a deluge of blood and horror. Europe, for a period of two
centuries and a half, brooded upon the idea, not only that parted
spirits walked the earth to meddle in the affairs of men, but that men
had power to summon evil spirits to their aid to work woe upon their
fellows. An epidemic terror seized upon the nations; no man thought
himself secure, either in his person or possess