"Turn the weeding hook aside
And spare the symbol dear."

But the age has fairly outgrown them, and they are falling away by a
natural process of exfoliation. The wonderland of childhood must
henceforth be sought within the domains of truth. The strange facts of
natural history, and the sweet mysteries of flowers and forests, and
hills and waters, will profitably take the place of the fairy lore of
the past, and poetry and romance still hold their accustomed seats in
the circle of home, without bringing with them the evil spirits of
credulity and untruth. Truth should be the first lesson of the child
and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the
inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking of it, the knowledge of truth,
which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the
enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK.

FASCINATION, saith Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in the fiftieth chapter of
his first book on Occult Philosophy, "is a binding which comes of the
spirit of the witch through the eyes of him that is bewitched, entering
to his heart; for the eye being opened and intent upon any one, with a
strong imagination doth dart its beams, which are the vehiculum of the
spirit, into the eyes of him that is opposite to her; which tender
spirit strikes his eyes, stirs up and wounds his heart, and infects his
spirit. Whence Apuleius saith, 'Thy eyes, sliding down through my eyes
into my inmost heart, stirreth up a most vehement burning.' And when
eyes are reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined
to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to
that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves
inflamed." Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is
still practised to a very great extent among us. The best we can say of
it is, that the business seems latterly to have fallen into younger
hands; its victims do not appear to regard themselves as especial
objects of compassion; and neither church nor state seems inclined to
interfere with it.

As might be expected in a shrewd community like ours, attempts are not
unfrequently made to speculate in the supernatural,--to "make gain of
sooth-saying." In the autumn of last year a "wise woman" dreamed, or
somnambulized, that a large sum of money, in gold and silver coin, lay
buried in the centre of the