ngs, no longer at war with their
nobility, had time to pass some good laws; the human mind learned some
little wisdom from hard experience, and, casting off the slough of
superstition in which the Roman clergy had so long enveloped it, became
prepared to receive the seeds of the approaching Reformation. Thus did the
all-wise Disposer of events bring good out of evil, and advance the
civilisation and ultimate happiness of the nations of the West by means of
the very fanaticism that had led them against the East. But the whole
subject is one of absorbing interest, and, if carried fully out in all its
bearings, would consume more space than the plan of this work will allow.
The philosophic student will draw his own conclusions; and he can have no
better field for the exercise of his powers than this European
madness--its advantages and disadvantages, its causes and results.

[Illustration: ARRAS.]

THE WITCH MANIA.

What wrath of gods, or wicked influence
Of tears, conspiring wretched men t' afflict,
Hath pour'd on earth this noyous pestilence
That mortal minds doth inwardly infect
With love of blindness and of ignorance?
_Spencer's Tears of the Muses_.

_Countrymen._ Hang her! beat her! kill her!

_Justice._ How now? Forbear this violence!

_Mother Sawyer._ A crew of villains--a knot of bloody hangmen! set
to torment me! I know not why.

_Justice._ Alas, neighbour Banks! are you a ringleader in
mischief? Fie! to abuse an aged woman!

_Banks._ Woman! a she hell-cat, a witch! To prove her one, we no
sooner set fire on the thatch of her house, but in she came
running, as if the devil had sent her in a barrel of gunpowder.

_Ford's Witch of Edmonton_.

The belief that disembodied spirits may be permitted to revisit this world
has its foundation upon that sublime hope of immortality which is at once
the chief solace and greatest triumph of our reason. Even if revelation
did not teach us, we feel that we have that within us which shall never
die; and all our experience of this life but makes us cling the more
fondly to that one repaying hope. But in the early days of "little
knowledge" this grand belief became the source of a whole train of
superstitions, which, in their turn, became the fount from whence flowed a
deluge of blood and horror. Europe,