ike manner. I have not just now the most
recent information, but in the year 1857 and 1858, for instance, mobbing
and prosecutions growing out of a popular belief in witchcraft were
quite plentiful enough in various parts of Europe. No less than eight
cases of the kind in England alone were reported during those two years.
Among them was the actual murder of a woman as a witch by a mob in
Shropshire; and an attack by another mob in Essex, upon a perfectly
inoffensive person, on suspicion of having "bewitched" a scolding
ill-conditioned girl, from which attack the mob was diverted with much
difficulty, and thinking itself very unjustly treated. Some others of
those cases show a singular quantity of credulity among people of
respectability.

While therefore some of us may perhaps be justly thankful for safety
from such horrible follies as these, still we can not properly feel very
proud of the progress of humanity, since after not less than six
thousand years of existence and eighteen hundred of revelation, so many
believers in witchcraft still exist among the most civilized nations.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CHARMS AND INCANTATIONS.--HOW CATO CURED SPRAINS.--THE SECRET NAME OF
GOD.--SECRET NAMES OF CITIES.--ABRACADABRA.--CURES FOR CRAMP.--MR.
WRIGHT'S SIGIL.--WHISKERIFUSTICUS.--WITCHES' HORSES.--THEIR CURSES.--HOW
TO RAISE THE DEVIL.

It is worth while to print in plain English for my readers a good
selection of the very words which have been believed, or are still
believed, to possess magic power. Then any who choose, may operate by
themselves or may put some bold friend up in a corner, and blaze away at
him or her until they are wholly satisfied about the power of magic.

The Roman Cato, so famous for his grumness and virtue, believed that if
he were ill, it would much help him, and that it would cure sprains in
others, to say over these words: "Daries, dardaries, astaris, ista,
pista, sista," or, as another account has it, "motas, daries, dardaries,
astaries;" or, as still another account says, "Huat, huat, huat; ista,
pista, sista; domiabo, damnaustra." And sure enough, nothing is truer,
as any physician will tell you, that if the old censor only believed
hard enough, it would almost certainly help him; not by the force of the
words, but by the force of his own ancient Roman imagination. Here are
some Greek words of no less virtue: "_Aski, Kataski, Tetrax._" When the
Greek priests let out of their doors those w