But, before going into the proof of this position, let us observe, not without gratification, the point at which English knowledge of Ireland had arrived, so far back as the period at which Mr. Glanvil wrote. Nobody, it appears, could, with the most trifling chance of success, have attempted to make an enlightened British public believe, that Irishmen had hoofs on their heads! The thing Iwould have been scouted. Put the hoofs, indeed, at the other end, and the story might have found credit. But on the head? No-Englishmen, even in 1688, knew too much of Ireland to believe that.

And now, to prove that an old woman's flying out of the window, taking the shape of a cat, raising a storm, or giving suck to a young devil, may be accounted for by the rules of reason and philosophy:

:

"For the first then, that the confederate spirit should transport the witch through the air to the place of general rendezvous, there is no difficulty in conceiving it; and if that be true which great philosophers affirm, concerning the real separability of the soul from the body without death, there is yet less, for then 'tis easie to apprehend, that the soul having left its gross and sluggish body behind it, and being cloath'd only with its immediate vehicle of air, or more subtile matter, may be quickly conducted to any place it would be at, by those officious spirits that attend it. And though I adventure to affirm nothing concerning the truth and certainty of this supposition, yet I must needs say, it doth not seem to me unreasonable. And our experience of apoplexies, epilepsies, ecstacies, and the strange things men report to have seen during these deliquiums, look favourably upon this conjecture, which seems to me to contradict no principle of reason or philosophy, since death consists not so much in the actual separation of soul and body, as in the indisposition and unfitness of the body for vital union, as an excellent philosopher hath made good. On which hypothesis, the witch's anointing herself before she takes her flight, may perhaps serve to keep the body tenantable, and in fit disposition to receive the spirit at its return."

With respect to these spiritual flights, we may here quote a passage from Salverte:

"Two of the reputed sorcerers, sent

to sleep by the magic ointment, had given out that they would go to the Sabbat, and return from it, flying with wings. Both believed that this really happened, and were greatly astonished when assured of the contrary. One in his sleep even performed some movements, and struck out even as though he were on the wing. It is well known that, from the blood flowing towards the brain during sleep, it is not uncommon to dream of flying and rising into the air."

Cornelius Agrippa, in his book, "Of Occult Philosophy," tells us that "the soul is sometimes, through a vehement imagination or speculation, wholly snatched away out of the body." And we have adduced, in a former number of this magazine,* the testimony of Kaempfer, that on partaking of a drink which was in use among the Persians, he presently seemed to himself to sit on a flying horse, and to ride through the air.

Cardanus (who asserts that aconite produces the sensation of flying) mentions the composition of one of the witch-ointments, as deposed to by an accused person of the better-informed class it consisted of the fat of boys, mixed with the juice of parsley, aconite, solanum, pentaphylum and soot. In 1545, a pomatum composed of narcotic substances was found in the house of an accused sorcerer. Andrea Laguna, physician to Pope Julius III., was so little influenced by the superstition of the time, as to try the effect of this unguent upon a patient of his, who laboured under frenzy and loss of rest. The application produced an unbroken sleep of thirty-six hours.

After all, to dream of flying, and to believe, after waking, that you have really flown, are two very different things. Opiates, or "the blood flowing to the brain in sleep," may produce the one; but a true Mesmeric state, that is, according to Calmeil, a state of special cerebral disease, is necessary to the production of the other; and of this neither Eusebe Salverte, nor his English translator, appears to be gifted with an inkling.

With respect to the transformation of witches into the shapes of cats, hares, and the like, we are to remember that it is not the material body, in

its sanguineous and carnal grossness, that undergoes these changes of configuration, but the subtle aerial vehicle of the soul, over which the sleeping fantasy has an unlimited power. Mr. Glanvil says on this subject :—

"'Tis easie enough to imagine, that the power of imagination may form those passive and pliable vehicles into those shapes, with more ease than the fancy of the mother can the stubborn matter of the foetus in the womb, as we see it frequently doth in the instances that occur of signatures and monstrous singularities; and sometimes perhaps the confederate spirit puts tricks upon the senses of the spectators, and those shapes are only illusions.

"But then, when they feel the hurts in their gross bodies, that they receive in their airy vehicles, they must be sup. posed to have been really present, at least in these latter, and 'tis no more difficult to apprehend how the hurts of those should be translated upon their other bodies, than that diseases should be inflicted by the imagination, or how the fancy of the mother should wound the fœtus, as several credible relations do attest."

"And, for their being suck'd by the familiar, I say, we know so little of the nature of dæmons and spirits, that 'tis no wonder we cannot certainly divine the reason of so strange an action. And yet we may conjecture at some things that may render it less improbable. For some have thought that the genii (whom both the Platonical and Christian antiquity thought embodied) are recreated by the reeks and vapours of human blood, and the spirits that proceed from them... Or, perhaps, this may be only a diabolical sacrament and ceremony to confirm the hellish covenant. To which I add, that which to me seems most probable, viz., that the familiar doth not only suck the witch, but in the action infuseth some poysonous ferment into her, which gives her imaginations and spirits a magical tincture, whereby they become mischievously influential; and the word venefica intimates some such matter. Now, that the imagination hath a mighty power in operation, is seen in the just now mentioned signatures and diseases that it causeth; and that the fancy is modified by the qualities of the blood and spirits, is too evident to need proof. Which things supposed, 'tis plain to conceive that the evil spirit, having breathed some vile vapour into the body of the witch, it may taint her blood and spirits with a noxious quality, by which

To the objection, that it is very improbable that the devil, who is a wise and mighty spirit, should be at the beck of a poor hag, and have so little to do as to attend the errands and impotent lusts of a silly old woman, our F.R.S. replies well, that it is much more improbable that all the world should be deceived in matters of fact, and circumstances of the clearest evidence and conviction, than that the devil, who is wicked, should also be unwise, and that he that persuades all his subjects and accomplices out of their wits, should himself act like his own temptations and persuasions. Then it is to be considered that there are more devils than one, and that what one may not have time or disposition for, another may. Nor is it to be supposed that all devils are of the same capacity or judgment, while there is so infinite a diversity of these qualities in different men. When there are so many dolts on earth, who shall say there are none in hell? In fact," the devil," according to Mr. Glanvil, is a name for a body politic, in which there are very different orders and degrees of spirits, and perhaps in as much variety of place and state as among ourselves. And these familiars that enter into compact with old women, and do their behests, are, most likely, of the basest and most brutish sort in that invisible commonwealth-or commonbane, if the more suitable word may be used. With respect to the making of compacts, which, when we consider the character and probable destination of those who enter into them, would, no doubt, appear to be superfluous enough, it is a very ingenious conjecture of our author, that the dæmons, by whom those compacts with mankind are proposed or accepted, being of the lowest order in the kingdom of darkness, and having none to rule or

tyrannize over within the circle of their own nature and government, are glad to get them vassals or subjects out of another sphere, and that 'tis like enough to be provided and allowed by the constitution of their state and government, that every wicked spirit shall have those souls as his property, and particular servants and attendants, whom he can catch in such compacts, as those wild beasts that we can take in hunting are, by the allowance of the law, our own. As for the spirits of higher rank, it does not appear that they are inclined to trammel or compromise themselves by any express covenants with the human beings with whom they converse. At least, Mr. Glanvil cites, to this effect, the case of a Mr. Edwards, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Cambridge, who being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his repentance that the demon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion, and never required any compact from him. This

was a devil fit to converse with a gentleman and a scholar-a demon, in fact, to whom your aristocratic "hell" of the present day can furnish counterparts by the dozen, all " "looking like men of good fashion," and probably of a very different social standing at home from those ignoble and gutter fiends who chaffered for the souls of old women, and gave lessons in the art of riding a broom-stick, or pleasuring on the high seas in a sieve.

Having abundantly demonstrated, in the first part of his book, the possibility of witchcraft, our learned exRoyal Chaplain in Ordinary applies him, in the second, to place before his readers evidence of its real existence. This is amply afforded by the records of the witch-trials of the time, of which Mr. Glanvil adduces some halfdozen of the most remarkable, and with a few notices of which we shall close the present paper.

In the month of November, 1663, Elizabeth Hill, the daughter of Richard Hill, of Stoke Trister, in the county of Somerset, yeoman, being then about the age of thirteen, began to be attacked with strange fits, in which she cried out that one Elizabeth Style, of the same parish, a widow, appeared to her, and inflicted upon her various kinds of torments. She also described, in these fits, what

clothes Elizabeth Style had on at the time, which descriptions were, upon inquiry, found to be correct.

Here, let us observe, was a case of clairvoyance, as distinct as any of those which have been brought forward by Calmeil. The critical period of life in which the patient was when the fits appeared, is a circumstance which ought not to be left out of sight.

The child's sufferings continuing, the father, about a fortnight before Christmas, went to Elizabeth Style, and in the presence of three neighbours, told her that "his daughter spoke much of her in her fits, and did believe that she was bewitched by her." The three neighbours, contrary to what commonly happened in such cases, took part with the accused person, and moved her to complain to the justice against Hill for defaming her. But she, having met this suggestion in an evasive way, and being again urged by the others not to submit to so great an affront, said "she would do worse than fetch a warrant." From this time the girl grew worse, her fits becoming so violent that, "though held in her chair by four or five people, sometimes six, by the arms, legs, and shoulders, she would rise out of her chair, and raise her body about three or four feet high." To these terrible convulsions another torment was added, her wrists, face, neck, and other parts of her body being, during the fits, pricked with thorns, which, on recovering the power of speech, she declared were thrust into her by the Widow Style. The afflicted family, as was very proper, sent for the parson of the parish, whose depositions to what he saw, taken before a neighbouring magistrate, and preserved by Mr. Glanvil, we here present to the reader.

"William Parsons, Rector of Stoke Trister, in the County of Somerset, examined the 26th of January, 1664, before Robert Hunt, Esq., concerning the bewitching of Richard Hill's daughter, saith, that on Monday night after Christmas Day then last past, he came into the room where Elizabeth Hill was in a fit, many of his parishioners being present and looking on. He there saw the child held in a chair by main force by the people, plunging far beyond the strength of nature, foaming and catching at her own arms and clothes with her teeth. This fit he conceived held

she pointed with her finger to the left side of her hand, next to her left arm, and then to her left hand, &c.; and where she pointed he perceived a red spot to arise, with a small black in the middle of it like a thorn. She pointed to her toes one after another, and expressed great sense of torment. This latter fit, he guesses, continued about a quarter of an hour, during most or all of which time her stomach seemed to swell, and her head where she seemed to be pricked did so very much. She sate foaming much of the time, and the next day after her fit, she showed examinant the places where the thorns were stuck in, and he saw the thorns in those places.

"Taken upon oath before me,

"ROBERT HUNT."

The depositions of the child's father, and of a neighbour named Nicholas Lambert, are to the same effect, as to the manner in which the thorns made their appearance. Hill says, "in her fits she would have holes made in her hand-wrists, &c., which the informant and others that saw them, conceived to be with thorns. For they saw thorns in her flesh, and some they hooked out. That upon the child's pointing with her finger from place to place, the thorns and holes immediately appeared to the informant and others looking on. The child hath been so tormented and pricked with thorns for several nights, at which time the informant and many other people have seen the flesh rise up in little bunches, in which holes did appear." And Lambert says, "that in her fits, not being able to speak, she would wrest her body as one in great torment, and point with her finger to her neck, head, hand-wrists, arms, and toes. And he, with the rest, looking on the places to which she pointed, saw on the sudden little red spots arise, with black ones in the middle, as if thorns were stuck in them, but the child then only pointed, without touching her flesh with her fingers."

This reminds us of "stigmatization," so common among the ecstatics of the Roman Catholic church. In particular, what the clergyman mentions as to the swelling of the child's hand at the time it appeared pricked, seems to have close affinity with what is related of the Tyrolean nun, Maria Hueber :

"As she once laid to heart the crowning of our Saviour with thorns, her head, in the fervour of her sympathy, swelled up immoderately, with such piercing pains, that all believed her to be at the point of death. Her confessor was hastily summoned, and having obtained from her a confession of the cause of the phenomenon, he succeeded in so moderating her sympathy, through the power of obedience, that the swelling of her head subsided in a manner visible to all eyes."

Of Giovanna della Croce, another nun of the Tyrol, it is related that on a similar occasion her head swelled enormously, and at several points a deep redness presented itself, as if blood were on the point of breaking forth. These are remarkable instances of the similarity prevailing between the symptoms of theomania (to adopt Calmeil's expression) and demonomania.

Another circumstance deposed to by Richard Hill is, that his daughter, at the end of each fit, predicted the time at which another would happen, saying, that she had this information from her tormentor, Style. This was also the case in the instances of demonopathy referred to by Calmeil, and it is one of the most constant phenomena connected with mesmeric somnambulism.

The Hills were not the only sufferers, whose accusations of witchcraft Elizabeth Style had to meet. During her examination before the abovementioned Justice Robert Hunt, that enlightened magistrate observed that a certain Richard Vining, present in court, looked very earnestly upon him; and, asking if this man had anything to say relative to the matter before him, received answer, that Style had also bewitched his (Vining's) wife, Agnes. And, on further interrogation, this Vining related, that about two or three years before St. James's day, three years since, or thereabouts, his said wife, Agnes, fell out with Elizabeth Style, and within three days after she was taken with a grievous pricking in her thigh, which pain continued for a long time, till, after some physic taken from one Hallet, she was at some ease for three or four weeks. About the Christmas after the mentioned St. James's day, Style came to Vining's house, and gave

Agnes, his wife, two apples, one of them a very fair red apple, which Style desired her to eat which she did, and in a few hours was taken ill, and worse than ever she had been before. Upon this, Vining went to one Master Compton, who lived in the parish of Ditch Eate, for physic for his wife. Compton told him he could do her no good, for that she was hurt by a near neighbour, who would come into his house, and up into the chamber where his wife was, but would go out again without speaking. After

Vining came home, being in the chamber with his wife, Style came up to them, but went out again without saying a word. Agnes continued in great pain till Easter-eve following, and then died. Before her death, her hip rotted, and one of her eyes swelled out; and she declared to her husband in her last moments, as she had done several times before, that she believed Elizabeth Style had bewitched her, and was the cause of her death.

While Vining deposed to these things, Elizabeth Style seemed appalled and concerned; and the justice saying to her, "You have been an old sinner, &c.-you deserve little mercy," she replied, "I have ask't God's mercy for it." Mr. Hunt then asking her, why she still continued in such ill courses, she said, the devil tempted her; and, after this, she no longer declined to make confession of her crimes. We give the confession, as preserved by Glanvil.

"Elizabeth Styles, her confession of her witchcrafts, January 26th and 30th, and February 7th, 1664, before Robert Hunt, Esq.-She then confessed, that the devil, about ten years since, appeared to her in the shape of a handsome man, and after, of a black dog. That he promised her money, and that she should live gallantly, and have the pleasure of the world for twelve years, if she would, with her blood, sign his paper, which was to give her soul to him, and observe his laws, and that he might suck her blood. This, after four solicitations, the examinant promised him to do. Upon which he prickt the fourth finger of her right hand, between the middle and upper joynt, (where the sign at the examination remained) and with a drop or two of her blood, she signed the paper with an O. Upon this, the devil gave her sixpence, and vanished with the paper.

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That, since, he hath appeared in the

shape of a man, and did so on Wednesday seven-night past; but more usually he appears in the likeness of a dog, and cat, and a fly like a millar, in which last he usually sucks in the poll, about four of the clock in the morning, and did so, January 27; and that it usually is pain to her to be so suckt.

"That when she hath a desire to do harm, she calleth the spirit by the name of Robin, to whom, when he appeareth, she useth these words, ' O Sathan, give me my purpose." She then tells him what she would have done. And that he should so appear to her, was part of her contract with him.

"That, about a month ago, he appearing, she desired him to torment one Elizabeth Hill, and to thrust thorns into her flesh, which he promised to do, and the next time he appeared, he told her he had done it.

"That a little above a month since, this examinant, Alice Duke, Anne Bishop, and Mary Penny, met about nine of the clock in the night, in the common near Trister gate, where they met a man in black clothes, with a little band, to whom they did courtesie and due observance, and the examinant verily believes that this was the devil. At that time, Alice Duke brought a picture in wax, which was for Elizabeth Hill; the man in black took it in his arms, anointed its forehead, and said, 'I baptize thee with this oyl,' and used some other words. He was godfather, and the examinant and Anne Bishop godmothers. They called it Elizabeth, or Bess. Then the man in black, this examinant, Anne Bishop, and Alice Duke stuck thorns into several places of the neck, hand-wrists, fingers, and other parts of the said picture. After which, they had wine, cakes, and roast meat (all brought by the man in black), which they did eat and drink. They danced, and were merry; were bodily there, and in their clothes.

"She further saith, that the same persons met again, at or near the same place, about a month since, when Anne Bishop brought a picture in wax, which was baptized John, in like manner as the other was; the man in black was godfather, and Alice Duke and this examinant, godmothers. As soon as it was baptized, Anne Bishop stuck two thorns into the arms of the picture, which was for one Robert Newman's child of Wincaunton. After they had eaten, drank, danced, and made merry, they departed.

That she, with Anne Bishop and Alice Duke, met at another time in the night, in a ground near Marnhul, where also met several other persons. The devil then also there in the former shape