He, or she, might just as probably be burned as
not, on the charge of sorcery, in the year of grace, 1685. However,
Professor Sinclair managed to rake together an odd enough set of legends,
"proving clearly that there are Devils," a desirable matter to have
certainty about. "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" is a very rare
little book; I think Scott says in a MS. note that he had great
difficulty in procuring it, when he was at work on his "infernal
demonology." As a copy fell in my way, or rather as I fell in its way, a
helpless victim to its charms and its blue morocco binding, I take this
chance of telling again the old tales of 1685.

Mr. Sinclair began with a long dedicatory Epistle about nothing at all,
to the Lord Winton of the period. The Earl dug coal-mines, and
constructed "a moliminous rampier for a harbour." A "moliminous rampier"
is a choice phrase, and may be envied by novelists who aim at distinction
of style. "Your defending the salt pans against the imperious waves of
the raging sea from the NE. is singular," adds the Professor, addressing
"the greatest coal and salt-master in Scotland, who is a nobleman, and
the greatest nobleman who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps it is
already plain to the modern mind that Mr. George Sinclair, though a
Professor of Philosophy, was not a very sagacious character.

Mr. Sinclair professes that his proofs of the existence of Devils "are no
old wife's trattles about the fire, but such as may bide the test." He
lived, one should remember, in an age when faith was really seeking aid
from ghost stories. Glanvil's books--and, in America, those of Cotton
Mather--show the hospitality to anecdotes of an edifying sort, which we
admire in Mr. Sinclair. Indeed, Sinclair borrows from Glanvil and Henry
More, authors who, like himself, wished to establish the existence of the
supernatural on the strange incidents which still perplex us, but which
are scarcely regarded as safe matter to argue upon. The testimony for a
Ghost would seldom go to a jury in our days, though amply sufficient in
the time of Mr. Sinclair. About "The Devil of Glenluce" he took
particular care to be well informed, and first gave it to the world in a
volume on--you will never guess what subject--Hydrostatics! In the
present work he offers us

"The Devil of Glenluce Enlarged
With several Remarkable Additions
from an Eye and Ear Witness,
A Person of undoubted
Honesty."

Mr.