It was one fatal effect of the perseverance with which Satan and his dealings were thus brought before the view of every one, that thousands of weak and depraved minds were actually led into the belief that they had formed a connection with the evil being, and that the visions which had so long haunted the brain of Sprenger and his associates had been realized in their own case. In this way alone can we in some measure account for the strange confessions which form the great peculiarity in the witch trials, where unhappy creatures, with the full knowledge of their fate, admit their intercourse with Satan, their midnight meetings, incantations, their dealings with spirits, " white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery," the grotesque horrors of the sabbath,-in short, every wild and impossible phantasm which had received colour and a body in the ' Malleus/-and seemed to be perfectly satisfied that they had fully merited the fiery trial to which their confession immediately subjected them. When we read these trials, we think of the effect of the Jew's fiddle in Grimm's fahy tale; we see the delusion spreading like an epidemic from one to another, till first the witnesses, then the judges, and lastly the poor criminals themselves, all yield to the giddy whirl, and go off like dancing Dervises under its influence.

* Some of our readers may wish to see a specimen of this precious production. We shall take a stanza or two, descriptive of the joke of wliich the poor witch was the victim.

Ein Hexen hat man gefangen, zu Zeit die war sehr reich Mit der man lang mnbgaben ehe sie bekannte gleich, Dann sie blieb darauf bestàndig es gescheh ilu* Unrecht gross, E is man ihr macht nothwendig diesen artlichen Poss (!),

Das ich mich drûber wunder ; man schickt ein Henkersknecht Zu ihr ins Grefangniss 'nunter, den man hat kleidet recht Mit einer Barnhaute als wenns der Teufel war ; Als ihm die Drut anschaute meynts ihr Buhl kam daher.

Sie sprach zu ihm behende, wie lestu mich so lang In der Obrigkeit Hânde ? Hilf mir aus ihren Zwang, Wie du mir hast verheissen, ich bin ja eben dein ; Thu mich aus der Angst entreissen, o liebster Bide mein !

Sie thet sich selbst verratiien, mid gab Anzeigung viel

Sie hat nit geschmeckt denBraten, was das war fur ein Spiel (!).

Er trôstet sie und saget, ich will dir helfen wold ;

Darum sey unverzaget, Morgens geschehen soli.

It bears the colophon "Printed at Smalcald in the year 1627".

+ When these horrors were thus versified, it is not wonderful to find them " improved" by the preachers of the time. At Riga, in 1626, there appeared c Nine Select Witch Sermons, by Hermann Sampsomus, superintendent at Riga,' and many others in the course of that century.

True it is that, in many of the cases, and particularly those which occur in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, when the diabolical doctriiies of Sprenger and Delrio were in their full vigour, the confessions on which these convictions proceeded were elicited by torture, moral and physical, and frequently retracted, till a fresh application of the rack produced a fresh admission. One instance from Delrio may stand in place of a thousand. He mentions that an unfortunate gentleman in Westphalia had been twenty times put to the rack, " vicies ssevse questioni subditum," in order to compel him to confess that he was a werewolf ! All these tortures he resisted, till the hangman gave him an intoxicating draught, and under its influence he confessed that he was a were-wolf after all. " En judicum clemens arbitrium," says Delrio, " quo se porrigat in illis partibus aquilo-naribus."-See how long-suffering we judges are in the north ! we never put our criminals to death till we have tried them with twenty preliminary courses of torture ! This is perfectly in the spirit of another worthy in Germany, who had been annoyed with the pertinacity of a witch, who, like the poor lycanthrope, persisted in maintaining her innocence. " Da Hess ich sie tiichtig foltern," says the inquisitor-"und sie gestand;"-I tortured her tightly (the torture lasted four hours), and she confessed ! Who indeed under such a system would not have confessed? Death was unavoidable either way, and the great object was to attain that consummation with the least preparatory pain. " I went," says Sir George Mackenzie, " when I was a Justice Depute, to examine some women who had confessed judicially. One of them, who was a silly creature, told me that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person hereafter would give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the world. Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said*." In other cases, the torture was applied not only to the individual accused, but to his relations or friends, to secure confession. In Alison Pearson's casef, it appears that her daughter, a girl of nine years of age, had been placed in the pilliewinks, and her son subjected to about fifty strokes in the boots. Where the torture was not corporeally applied, terror, confusion, and the influence of others frequently produced the same effect on the weak minds of the accused. In the case of the New England witches in 1696, six of the poor women who were liberated in the general gaol-delivery which took place after this reign of terror began to decline, (and who had all confessed previously that they had been guilty of the witchcrafts imputed to them,) retracted their confessions in writing, attributing them to the consternation produced by their sudden seizure and imprisonment. " And indeed," said they, " that confession which it is said we made was no other than what was suggested to us by some gentlemen, they telling us we were witches, and they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so, and our understanding, our reason, and our faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition. And most of what we said was but a consenting to what they said*".

* Criminal Law. Tit. x.

+ Records of Justiciary. Trial of the Master of Orkney.

But though unquestionably great part of these confessions, which at first tended so much to prolong this delusion, were obtained by torture, or contrary to the real conviction and belief of the accused, it is impossible to deny that in many cases the confessions were voluntary, and proceeded from actual belief. Nor was it to be wondered at that persons of a weak and melancholy temperament should, more particularly at a time when the phenomena of nature and of the human body were so little understood, be disposed to set down every occurrence which they could not explain, and every wild phantasm which crossed their minds, to the direct and immediate agency of an evil power. At that period even the most natural events were ascribed to witchcraft. If a child, after being touched by a suspected individual, died or became ill, the convulsions were ascribed to diabolical interference, as in Wenham's case, so late as 1712*. If, on the contrary, she cured instead of killing, the conclusion was the same, although the only charm employed might be a prayer to the Almighty f. If an old woman's cat, coming to the door at night, took part in a concert with other cats, this was nothing but a witch herself in disguise J. In the case of Robert Erskine of Dun§, tried for the murder of his nephews, he is indicted for making away with them by poisoning and witchcraft, as if the poisoning was not of itself amply sufficient to account for their death.

* Calef s Journal.