the other to logic. The judge is never at fault in his work: the
person brought before him is certainly guilty, the more so if he makes
a defence. Justice need never beat her head, or work herself into a
heat, in order to distinguish the truth from the falsehood. Everyhow
she starts from a foregone conclusion. Again, the logician, the
schoolman, has only to analyse the soul, to take count of the shades
it passes through, of its manifold nature, its inward strifes and
battles. He had no need, as we have, to explain how that soul may grow
wicked step by step. At all such niceties and groping efforts, how, if
even he could understand them, would he laugh and wag his head! And,
oh! how gracefully then would quiver those splendid ears which deck
his empty skull!

Especially in treating of the _compact with the Devil_, that awful
covenant whereby, for the poor profit of one day, the spirit sells
itself to everlasting torture, we of another school would seek to
trace anew that road accursed, that frightful staircase of mishaps and
crimes, which had brought it to a depth so low. Much, however, cares
our fine fellow for all that! To him soul and Devil seem born for each
other, insomuch that on the first temptation, for a whim, a desire, a
passing fancy, the soul will throw itself at one stroke into so
horrible an extremity.

* * * * *

Neither do I find that the moderns have made much inquiry into the
moral chronology of witchcraft. They cling too much to the connection
between antiquity and the Middle Ages; connection real indeed, but
slight, of small importance. Neither from the magician of old, nor the
seeress of Celts and Germans, comes forth the true Witch. The harmless
"Sabasies" (from Bacchus Sabasius), and the petty rural "Sabbath" of
the Middle Ages, have nothing to do with the Black Mass of the
fourteenth century, with the grand defiance then solemnly given to
Jesus. This fearful conception never grew out of a long chain of
tradition. It leapt forth from the horrors of the day.

At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I say unfalteringly,
"In the age of despair:" of that deep despair which the gentry of the
Church engendered. Unfalteringly do I say, "The Witch is a crime of
their own achieving."

I am not to be taken up short by the excuses which their sugary
explanations seem to furnish. "Weak was that creature, and giddy, and
pliable under temptation. She was drawn toward