TO belief seems to have been more No universal than that in witches, ghosts, spirits, and devils; which, while it rests upon the most intangible and unsatisfactory evidence, springs from a profound consciousness, in the human soul, of a spiritual state and a hereafter.

From the beginning of history, man has persisted in prying into the mystery of the unknown, and has longed for the secrets of the future; and from the beginning he has been the prey of the crafty or the credulous. There have been periods when an idea, good or bad, true or false, has become epidemic, and has swept like a whirlwind over the land. It has invariably produced mischief; for, when reason ceases to guide, excesses are certain to ensue. Through the years 1644, 5 and '6, Matthew Hopkins, with two assistants, traveled through England as "the Witchfinder," going from town to town, and, for a small fee, searching out all witches. The prisons were soon filled with old women accused by him. They were those unhappy diseased people, whose faults of temper had made them disagreeable to their neighbors, and had led to the suspicion that they practiced witchcraft. The government was was obliged to send a special bench of judges to dispose of them, with whom went the Rev. Mr. Callamy, a friend of Baxter's. Fifteen of them were hanged at Chelmsford; sixteen at Yarmouth; sixty in Suffolk, and many more at various places.

Finally, the people became sick of the destruction, and then they mobbed Hopkins, and hunted him into obscurity.

In 1664, Sir Matthew Hale sat to judge two old feeble, soured women for

the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the wisest and most learned men in England, and believed in the teachings of Jesus. He refused to charge the jury as to the guilt of the parties, but said that, beyond doubt, witches did exist, as the scriptures distinctly asserted it, and they had only to decide whether these two were or were not witches. One of the first scholars in England, Sir Thomas Browne, agreed in this opinion.

In the town of Mohra, in Sweden, there was a panic about witches, in the year 1670. Seventy persons were brought before commissioners, charged by scores of children with having bewitched them. They all protested they were innocent; but the judges were earnest in urging them to confess, and twenty-three, with cries and tears, did confess that they were witches. Nearly all of the seventy were executed. Fifteen children also confessed they were witches, and were executed, and nigh fifty other children were condemned to be whipped-a part of them on every Sunday in the year.

No one now doubts that the whole of these were the victims of a delusion, and were sacrificed to the frightful terrors of an ignorant and superstitious populace.

These were succeeded by the Salem witchcraft (1692), which has so often been urged as a dark stain upon the New England people and theology; and it is well, therefore, to note the facts, as showing with what fatal tenacity the notion of witchcraft held the minds of men. It should, also, be remembered that, in Scotland (1697), five years after the Salem doings, seven persons were hanged for this crime, upon the testimony of one child, only eleven years old.

We come now to the year 1691-2.

The prevailing religious opinion of New England was strongly committed to the importance of the devil and his agents and his power, by many, was believed to be equal, if not superior to that of God. This belief has, in all times, given a singular importance to a priesthood, who were supposed to have influence with him, or to be able to withstand him; and it, of course, made the clergy of New England of consequence in the eyes of the people, as well as in their own. The few who urged the almighty power of God, and the certainty of evil being overcome with good, and did not yield to this belief, whether among the clergy or laity, were easily silenced by the cry of Sadduceeism, and infidelity, which was sure to be sprung upon them. Any kind of story, coming from any kind

a state, absolutely indivisible. It really is large enough to be divided into two parts by a line running north and south. The portion on the east of this line is the place in which some gentleman distributes money once in two years, before he goes to Washington, and is called the Eastern District. On the other side of the line lies the Western District, in which, at the present moment, sits your humble and corpulent servant, lotus, teres, atque rotundus.

For further geographical features, see Smith, Mitchell, and Ritter; for history, see Bancroft and Peterson.

Much as the state, in its entirety, has been slandered, this particular portion of it has suffered disproportionately; Bryant has enshrined, in poetry, a scandalous name, "Rogue's Island,"* which Connecticut malice, long ago, applied to us, because their neighbors, on the east, were so peculiar. It is well known that Massachusetts and Connecticut have both tried to swallow us at once. His Majesty's loyal colony of Plymouth claimed, that the present western boundary of our state was their western line; and His Majesty's equally loyal colony of Connecticut pretended that its domain extended to the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. It is maliciously declared, that a frightful war was avoided, by requiring commissioners from the two colonies to meet upon the disputed territory. It is affirmed that these worthy gentlemen only waited to exchange compliments, and then ran to their respective homes-each party desiring to leave the other in possession of such a land. And thus, they say, our little state actually owes its existence to its ugliness. Indeed, our pious brethren in Connecticut, flatter themselves that they support a missionary in this heathen ground. I have never seen any except those who are mounted on the tinpeddlers' carts, and whose words are as tinkling brass and sounding cymbals."

I am not aiming to advance my own interests, by pretending to show the attractions of this goodly land, like that modest worshiper of genius, who has placed a bust of Milton in Westminster Abbey, and devoted two lines of a long epitaph to the poet, and the rest to himself. Therefore, I do not pause to tell you how I came here.

I am at present among the two-legged men. Not that men, generally, in these regions, have not those two useful appendages, with which they continually prevent bodily contact with the ground in the act of falling fowardvulgo, walking. The epithet, two-legged, here means that the person to whom it is applied wears both legs of his pantaloons over his boots, and is used to distinguish such bipeds from the citizens of two neighboring towns, in one of which, one pantaloons' leg is thrust into the boot, and in the other of which, nothing but boots is visible below the knees. Our Manhattan readers will remember that their ancestors chose to distinguish themselves from the world by the number of their breeches. Cur erudite ethnologists may, perhaps, find in these facts material for meditation.

Between these bipeds, unipeds, and no-peds, no love is lost. Last night I wended my way to the village store, to hear the village-talk. A tall, indolent fellow, called Labe, who did little but tell stories for a livelihood, was amusing his comrades with his tales, when in stepped one of the rarest specimens of the unipeds. He was tall and gaunt as famine herself; his matted hair seemed never to have been combed, except by the shrubs through which his townsmen are said to run bare-headed, once in six weeks, to perform the work of hairdressing. His upper jaw protruded far beyond the lower, and wide spaces were visible between his long, greenish teeth. The teeth seemed to be loose, and they moved in the jaw every time that the mouth was opened and shut. His chin receded so rapidly that he seemed scarcely to have one. His mouth seemed to be in his neck. A line drawn from the crown of his head to the end of his upper teeth, and another one from the teeth to his breast-bone, would have quite well represented his profile.

"How d'ye dew, Sim ?" says Labe to the new comer; "how d'ye dew? rather cold, aint ye? I see you've got your leg ready to draw up like a rooster in a frosty morning. Ye've seen 'em stand, aint ye?"

66

I'll tell you what," says Sim, in a husky, mumbling voice, "you'll find, if you don't shet your oyster-shell, that

that leg can straighten some. I aint afeard on you, wi' all your pack around you."

Words ran high, and hostilities seemed about to commence, when Labe's face suddenly gleamed with a new idea. "Look 'ere," said he; "this 'ere fighting is bad business; it on'y makes sewing for our old women, and a sale for plaster. You all know that Sim is a reg'lar beauty-famous, even up in his parts. I don't say nothin' about my looks, but I'll bet that I will make up a face so as to look more like Sim than he does himself. If I dew it, I beat, and Sim shall treat, and we'll be friends; if I don't, I'll stand treat."

Every one said that this was fair, and Sim was obliged to yield to this trial. Umpires were chosen, and the combatants were seated, each upon a candlebox, and a tallow candle was held close before their faces. Labe looked for a moment at Sim, smiled, and then said, in a desponding tone: "It is a hard one; forgive me, mother, for ever trying to twist my face into that shape, but here goes." And then he pulled down his hair, stuck out his jaw, and drew back his chin, till really his resemblance to Sim was striking. Then he snivelled up his nose, and said, in Sim's husky voice, "Aint we a pretty pair!" The effect was irresistible. Even the grave umpires burst into laughter. The candie-holder dropped the melting tallow into Sim's fair hair, and the whole company shouted out, " Labe has beatLabe has beat." Sim was obliged to pay the forfeit, and the two Dromios parted with a hearty shake of the hand.

To-day, law, with even balance, has weighed out justice to our village. The honorable court has been in session. It consisted of a sleepy man, who is a turner-not that he belongs to any of your foreign clans, or Turn-vereins, but he makes bobbins in his lathe, when he is not too somnolent. Anotorious scoundrel was arraigned for pilfering "beans, cabbage, potatoes, and other agricultural products," from a man less dishonest than himself by one degree. No one, except the parties themselves, and the learned counsel, seemed to care who should triumph. The hon. justice of the peace was seated in a chair; while the spectators, who did not choose to sit on sticks of wood placed on end, were obliged to stand." Two youngsters

brought the milking-stools from the barn-yard, and stationing themselves on each side of the judge, sat like priests upon their tripods. The mouth of his honor seemed to be parched and dry, as his attempts at spitting evinced. This did not escape the eagle eye of the astute counsel for the defendant. He knew the idiosyncrasies of the court, and promptly offered his honor a plug of tobacco. Shrewd casuists, who trace connections between all sorts of causes and effects, may hang a loop upon this innocent roll of pressed leaves, and spin a thread of sequences down to the final decision. Of that, I say nothing. The witnesses were called. It seemed difficult to prove anything against the defendant, except that he had shot a couple of the plaintiff's Muscovy drakes. Indeed, he confessed that.

The counsel for the plaintiff labored earnestly to show, that while there was strong ground for believing that the defendant had crept into the plaintiff's garden, and stolen his "airly sass," he was willing magnanimously to waive that "pint," and ask for justice only in the name of the slaughtered ducks. "Yer honor," he concluded, "has seen 'em, these 'ere ducks, a-sailin' along so pooty and peaceful, scarcely waggin' their tails once in three minutes, as tho'f they knowed that justice and purtection, in the form of yer honor, lived next door, and so seemin' as innercent and calm as yer honor's own pure heart and conscience. And now they're laid low; that 'ere canniball has eat 'em up. Shall sich things be allowed under our constitootion? No, sir! I know yer honor will slap the fines and costs on to him, as the law directs; and so I leave the case to your honor's consideration."

The counsel for the defense briefly reviewed the charges, and said that his opponent might well try to seem magnanimous about the "sass," for thero was no shadow of proof that his client was a man of so little taste as ever to wish to get into the garden of such a man as the plaintiff. He was not without thoughts of suing for damages, on account of the plaintiff's defamation of the fair character for which his client had so long been distinguished. But as to these ducks, he proposed to show, to the satisfaction of the court, and the intelligent audience (and he was glad to be able to vindicate his client before

sue.

Through the years 1644, 5 and '6, Matthew Hopkins, with two assistants, traveled through England as "the Witchfinder," going from town to town, and, for a small fee, searching out all witches. The prisons were soon filled with old women accused by him. They were those unhappy diseased people, whose faults of temper had made them disagreeable to their neighbors, and had led to the suspicion that they practiced witchcraft. The government was was obliged to send a special bench of judges to dispose of them, with whom went the Rev. Mr. Callamy, a friend of Baxter's. Fifteen of them were hanged at Chelmsford; sixteen at Yarmouth; sixty in Suffolk, and many more at various places.

Finally, the people became sick of the destruction, and then they mobbed Hopkins, and hunted him into obscurity.

In 1664, Sir Matthew Hale sat to judge two old feeble, soured women for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the wisest and most learned men in England, and believed in the teachings of Jesus. He refused to charge the jury as to the guilt of the parties, but said that, beyond doubt, witches did exist, as the scriptures distinctly asserted it, and they had only to decide whether these two were or were not witches. One of the first scholars in England, Sir Thomas Browne, agreed in this opinion.

In the town of Mohra, in Sweden, there was a panic about witches, in the

year 1670. Seventy persons were brought before commissioners, charged by scores of children with having bowitched them. They all protested they were innocent; but the judges were earnest in urging them to confess, and twenty-three, with cries and tears, did confess that they were witches. Nearly all of the seventy were executed. Fifteen children also confessed they were witches, and were executed, and nigh fifty other children were condemned to be whipped-a part of them on every Sunday in the year.

No one now doubts that the whole of these were the victims of a delusion, and were sacrificed to the frightful terrors of an ignorant and superstitious populace.

These were succeeded by the Salem witchcraft (1692), which has so often been urged as a dark stain upon the New England people and theology ; and it is well, therefore, to note the facts, as showing with what fatal tenacity the notion of witchcraft held the minds of men. It should, also, be remembered that, in Scotland (1697), five years after the Salem doings, seven persons were hanged for this crime, upon the testimony of one child, only eleven years old.

We come now to the year 1691-2.

The prevailing religious opinion of New England was strongly committed to the importance of the devil and his agents; and his power, by many, was believed to be equal, if not superior to that of God. This belief has, in all times, given a singular importance to a priesthood, who were supposed to have influence with him, or to be able to withstand him; and it, of course, made the clergy of New England of consequence in the eyes of the people, as well as in their own. The few who urged the almighty power of God, and the certainty of evil being overcome with good, and did not yield to this belief, whether among the clergy or laity, were easily silenced by the cry of Sadduceeism, and infidelity, which was sure to be sprung upon them. Any kind of story, coming from any kind