epared under circumstances which prevented a
thorough investigation of the subject. Leisure and freedom from
professional duties have now enabled me to prosecute the researches
necessary to do justice to it.

The "Lectures on Witchcraft," published in 1831, have long been out of
print. Although frequently importuned to prepare a new edition, I was
unwilling to issue again what I had discovered to be an insufficient
presentation of the subject. In the mean time, it constantly became
more and more apparent, that much injury was resulting from the want
of a complete and correct view of a transaction so often referred to,
and universally misunderstood.

The first volume of this work contains what seems to me necessary to
prepare the reader for the second, in which the incidents and
circumstances connected with the witchcraft prosecutions in 1692, at
the village and in the town of Salem, are reduced to chronological
order, and exhibited in detail.

As showing how far the beliefs of the understanding, the perceptions
of the senses, and the delusions of the imagination, may be
confounded, the subject belongs not only to theology and moral and
political science, but to physiology, in its original and proper use,
as embracing our whole nature; and the facts presented may help to
conclusions relating to what is justly regarded as the great mystery
of our being,--the connection between the body and the mind.

It is unnecessary to mention the various well-known works of authority
and illustration, as they are referred to in the text. But I cannot
refrain from bearing my grateful testimony to the value of the
"Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society" and the
"New-England Historical and Genealogical Register." The "Historical
Collections" and the "Proceedings" of the Essex Institute have
afforded me inestimable assistance. Such works as these are providing
the materials that will secure to our country a history such as no
other nation can have. Our first age will not be shrouded in darkness
and consigned to fable, but, in all its details, brought within the
realm of knowledge. Every person who desires to preserve the memory of
his ancestors, and appreciate the elements of our institutions and
civilization, ought to place these works, and others like them, on the
shelves of his library, in an unbroken and continuing series. A debt
of gratitude is due to the earnest, laborious, and disinterested
students who are contri