moon,
Or draw the fix'd stars from their eminence,
And still the midnight tempest,"--

the supernatural agents, the goblins, the witches, the fairies, the
satyrs, the elves, the fauns, the "shapes that walk," the

"Uncharnel'd spectres, seen to glide
Along the lone wood's unfrequented path"--

the being and active existence of all these was considered "true as
holy writ" by our ancestors of the Elizabethan age. On this subject we
will transcribe a beautifully illustrative passage from Warton:--

"Every goblin of ignorance" (says he) "did not vanish at the first
glimmerings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons
still to linger, which she chose to retain in her service under the
guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that
spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them _airs from
heaven, or blasts from hell_; that the ghost was duly relieved from
his prison of torment at the sound of the curfew, and that fairies
imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this
credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound
speculation. Prospero had not yet _broken and buried his staff_, nor
_drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound_. It was now that
the alchemist and the judicial astrologer conducted his occult
operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who
came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest
services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of
time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic
philosophers to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a
gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves,
appeared in robes of transcendant lustre. The Shakspeare of a more
instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician
darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the
cauldron of incantation."

It were endless, and indeed out of place here, to attempt to specify
the numberless minor superstitions to which this credulous tendency of
the public mind gave birth or continuation; or the marvels of
travellers,--as the Anthropophagi, the Ethiops with four eyes, the
Hippopodes with their nether parts like horses, the Arimaspi with one
eye in the forehead, and the Monopoli who have no head at all, but a
face in their breast--which were all devoutly credited. One potent
charm, however, we are