aused by those ocular hallucinations of which medical
science has supplied full and satisfactory solution. There is no
argument which so long maintained its ground in support of witchcraft
as that which was founded on the confessions referred to. It was the
last plank clung to by many a witch-believing lawyer and divine. And
yet there is none which will less bear critical scrutiny and
examination, or the fallacy of which can more easily be shown, if any
particular reported confession is taken as a test and subjected to a
searching analysis and inquiry.

[Footnote 61: The confession in the "Amber Witch" is a true picture,
drawn from the life. What is there, indeed, unlike truth in that
wonderful fiction?]

It is said that we owe to the grave and saturnine Monarch, who
extended his pardon to the seventeen convicted in 1633, that happy
generalisation of the term, which appropriates honourably to the sex
in Lancashire the designation denoting the fancied crime of a few
miserable victims of superstition. That gentle sex will never
repudiate a title bestowed by one, little given to the playful sports
of fancy, whose sorrows and unhappy fate have never wanted their
commiseration, and who distinguished himself on this memorable
occasion, at a period when

"'twas the time's plague
That madmen led the blind,"

--in days when philosophy stumbled and murder arrayed itself in the
robes of justice--by an enlightened exercise of the kingly prerogative
of mercy. Proceeding from such a fountain of honour, and purified by
such an appropriation, the title of witch has long lost its original
opprobrium in the County Palatine, and survives only to call forth the
gayest and most delightful associations. In process of time even the
term _witchfinder_ may lose the stains which have adhered to it from
the atrocities of Hopkins, and may be adopted by general usage, as a
sort of companion phrase, to signify the fortunate individual, who, by
an union with a Lancashire witch, has just asserted his indefeasible
title to be considered as the happiest of men.

J.C.

THE
WONDERFVLL
DISCOVERIE OF
WITCHES, &c.

THE
WONDERFVLL
DISCOVERIE OF
WITCHES IN THE COVNTIE
OF LANCASTER.

With the Arraignement and Triall of
Nineteene notorious WITCHES, at the Assizes and
generall Gaole deliuerie, holden at the Castle of
LANCASTER, _vpon Munday, the seuenteenth_
_of August last_,
1612.

Before Sir IAMES ALTHAM, and
Sir E