How dreadful are the results to which these data lead ! If we take 157 as a fair average of the executions at Wurtzburg (and the catalogue itself states that the list was by no means com-plete), the amount of executions there in the course of the century preceding 1628 would be 15,700. We know that from 1610 to 1660 was the great epoch of the witch trials, and that so late as 1749 Maria Renata was executed at Wurtzburg for witchcraft ; and though in the interval between 1660 and that date it is to be hoped that the number of these horrors had diminished, there can be little doubt that several thousands must be added to the amount already stated. If Bamberg, Paderborn, Treves, and the other Catholic bishoprics, whose zeal was not less ardent, furnished an equal contingent, and if the Protestants, as we know*, actually vied with them in the extent to which these cruelties were carried, the number of victims from the date of Innocent's bull to the final extinction of these persecutions must considerably exceed 100,000 in Germany.

* Christoph von Ranzow, a nobleman of Holstein, burned eighteen at once on one of his estates.

Even the feeling of horror excited by the perusal of the Wurtzburg murders is perhaps exceeded by that to which another document relative to the state of matters in 1629 must give rise: namely a ballad on the subject of these executions, detailing in doggrcl verses the sufferings of the unfortunate victims, " to be sung to the tune of Dorothea"-a common street-song of the day. It is entitled the i Druten Zeitung/ or Witches' Chronicle, " being an account of the remarkable events which took place in Franconia, Bamberg, and Wurtzburg, with those wretches who from avarice or ambition have sold themselves to the devil, and how they had their reward at last j set to music, and to be sung to the air of Dorothea." It is graced also with some hideous devices in wood, representing three devils seizing on divers persons by the hair of their heads, legs, etc., and dragging them away. It commences and concludes with some pious reflections on the guilt of the witches and wizards, whose fate it commemorates with the greatest glee and satisfaction. One device in particular, by which a witch who had obstinately resisted the torture is betrayed into confession- namely, by sending into her prison the hangman disguised as her familiar (Buhl Teufel)-seems to meet with the particular approbation of the author, who calls it an excellent joke; and no doubt the point of it in his eyes was very much increased by the consideration that upon the confession, as it was called, so obtained, the unhappy wretch was immediately committed to the flames*. What are we to think of the state of feeling in the country where these horrors were thus made the subject of periodical ballads, and set to music for the amusement of the populace f ?