ng them. So
strong was, nevertheless, the belief of nurses and mothers in their
actual transportation, that a sensible clergyman, mentioned in the
preface, who had resolved he would watch his son the whole night and see
what hag or fiend would take him from his arms, had the utmost
difficulty, notwithstanding, in convincing his mother that the child had
not been transported to Blockula during the very night he held him in
his embrace.

The learned translator candidly allows, "out of so great a multitude as
were accused, condemned, and executed, there might be some who suffered
unjustly, and owed their death more to the malice of their enemies than
to their skill in the black art, I will readily admit. Nor will I deny,"
he continues, "but that when the news of these transactions and
accounts, how the children bewitched fel into fits and strange unusual
postures, spread abroad in the kingdom, some fearful and credulous
people, if they saw their children any way disordered, might think they
were bewitched or ready to be carried away by imps."[53] The learned
gentleman here stops short in a train of reasoning, which, followed out,
would have deprived the world of the benefit of his translation. For if
it was possible that some of these unfortunate persons fell a sacrifice
to the malice of their neighbours or the prejudices of witnesses, as he
seems ready to grant, is it not more reasonable to believe that the
whole of the accused were convicted on similar grounds, than to allow,
as truth, the slightest part of the gross and vulgar impossibilities
upon which alone their execution can be justified?

[Footnote 53: Translator's preface to Horneck's "Account of what
happened in the Kingdom of Sweden." See appendix to Glanville's work.]

The Blockula, which was the object of their journey, was a house having
a fine gate painted with divers colours, with a paddock, in which they
turned the beasts to graze which had brought them to such scenes of
revelry. If human beings had been employed they were left slumbering
against the wall of the house. The plan of the devil's palace consisted
of one large banqueting apartment and several withdrawing-rooms. Their
food was homely enough, being broth made of coleworts and bacon, with
bread and butter, and milk and cheese. The same acts of wickedness and
profligacy were committed at Blockula which are usually supposed to take
place upon the devil's Sabbath elsewhere; but there was this parti