ing of the dawn after the long-protracted darkness.
The tribunals no longer condemned witches to execution by hundreds in a
year. Wurzburg, the grand theatre of the burnings, burned but one,
where, forty years previously, it had burned three score. From 1660 to
1670, the electoral chambers in all parts of Germany constantly
commuted the sentence of death passed by the provincial tribunals into
imprisonment for life, or burning on the cheek.

A truer philosophy had gradually disabused the public mind. Learned
men freed themselves from the trammels of a debasing superstition, and
governments, both civil and ecclesiastical, repressed the popular
delusion they had so long encouraged. The Parliament of Normandy
condemned a number of women to death, in the year 1670, on the old
charge of riding on broomsticks to the Domdaniel; but Louis XIV.
commuted the sentence into banishment for life. The Parliament
remonstrated, and sent the King the following remarkable request. The
reader will, perhaps, be glad to see this document at length. It is of
importance, as the last effort of a legislative assembly to uphold this
great error; and the arguments they used, and the instances they
quoted, are in the highest degree curious. It reflects honour upon the
memory of Louis XIV. that he was not swayed by it.

"REQUEST OF THE PARLIAMENT OF ROUEN TO THE KING, IN 1670.

"SIRE,

"EMBOLDENED by the authority which your Majesty has committed into our
hands in the province of Normandy, to try and punish offences, and more
particularly those offences of the nature of witchcraft, which tend to
the destruction of religion and the ruin of nations, we, your
Parliament, remonstrate humbly with your Majesty upon certain cases of
this kind which have been lately brought before us. We cannot permit
the letter addressed by your Majesty's command to the Attorney-General
of this district, for the reprieve of certain persons condemned to
death for witchcraft, and for the staying of proceedings in several
other cases, to remain unnoticed, and without remarking upon the
consequences which may ensue. There is also a letter from your
Secretary of State, declaring your Majesty's intention to commute the
punishment of these criminals into one of perpetual banishment, and to
submit to the opinion of the Procureur-General, and of the most learned
members of the Parliament of Paris, whether, in the matter of
witchcraft, the jurisprudence of the Parliament of Rou