er-sheriff at
the execution; and it is said that he refused the culprit some
trifling favour at the gallows, whereupon Arrowsmith denounced
a curse upon him--to wit, that whilst the family could boast of
an heir, so long they should never want a cripple: which
prediction was supposed by the credulous to have been literally
fulfilled.

What a strange and appalling history would be that of superstition!
how humiliating, how degrading to the boasted dignity of our nature!
In all ages this teeming source of error has yielded abundantly all
varieties of phantasms--the sublime, the solemn, the horrible, and the
ridiculous--a mildew, a blight, on the fairest blossoms of truth; an
excrescence; a coat of rust, which eateth as a canker, and makes
religion, which was given as a blessing and a boon to our perishing
race, a burden and a curse. And yet neither good nor evil is unmixed.
Such is the nature even of our most baneful impressions that instances
do arise where good may come from so corrupt a source. The connection
between material and immaterial, between mind and matter, so operates,
that sometimes, and in proportion to the strength of the impression, a
change is wrought by the mere control of the mind over the bodily
functions.

To this operation may be ascribed the wonder-workings of these latter
days. We do not question the effects thereby produced; but totally,
unhesitatingly, deny the cause. Imagination at times doth so usurp the
mastery over the animal and bodily faculties, that she has been known
to suspend their ordinary processes, and to render the frame
insensible even to the attacks of pain itself.

In one of the northern divisions of the county--we know not the
precise situation, nor is it needful to our purpose that we
inquire--there dwelt a comely maiden, who, at a period of little more
than twenty summers from her birth, found herself in the undisturbed
possession, if not enjoyment, of an abundant income, with a domain of
more than ordinary fertility and extent. Her parents dying during the
period of her youth, she, as the only offshoot of the family, held her
dominion uncontrolled. That the possessor of such an abundant stock of
liberty should wish to wear a chain is verily a marvel not easily
resolved. But so it was; and she seemed never so well pleased as when
the links were firmly riveted. The forging of this invisible chain was
a work performed in secret. She felt her