n and brought forward, under
these circumstances and for this purpose. It contains much of which I
shall avail myself, to illustrate the position and the views of Mather,
at the time. The length to which this article is extended, by the method
I have adopted of quoting documents so fully, is regretted; but it seems
necessary, in order to meet the interest that has been awakened in the
subject, by the article in the _North American Review_, to make the
enquiry as thorough as possible.

Only a part of the work is devoted to the main purpose for which it was
ostensibly and avowedly designed. That I shall first notice. It is
introduced as follows: "I shall no longer detain my reader from his
expected entertainment, in a brief account of the Trials which have
passed upon some of the Malefactors lately executed at Salem, for the
witchcrafts whereof they stood convicted. For my own part, I was not
present at any of them; nor ever had I any personal prejudice at the
persons thus brought upon the Stage; much less, at the surviving
relations of those persons, with and for whom I would be as hearty a
mourner, as any man living in the world: _The Lord comfort them!_ But
having received a command so to do, I can do no other than shortly
relate the chief _Matters of Fact_, which occurred in the trials of some
that were executed; in an abridgement collected out of the _Court
Papers_, on this occasion put into my hands. You are to take the
_Truth_, just as it was."--_Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 54._

He singles out five cases and declares: "I report matters not as an
_Advocate_, but as an _Historian_."

After further prefacing his account, by relating, _A modern instance of
Witches, discovered and condemned, in a trial before that celebrated
Judge, Sir Matthew Hale_, he comes to the trial of George Burroughs. He
spreads out, without reserve, the spectral evidence, given in this as in
all the cases, and without the least intimation of objection from
himself, or any one else, to its being _admitted_, as, "with other
things to render it credible" enough for the purpose of conviction. Any
one reading his account, and at the same time examining the documents on
file, will be able to appreciate how far he was justified in saying,
that he reported it in the spirit of an historian rather than an
advocate.

Let, us, first, see what the "Court papers, put into his hands,"
amounted to; as we find them in the files.

"The Deposition o