e bolder and more acute of his companions to the like
falsehoods; whilst those of weaker minds assented, either from fear of
punishment or the force of dreaming over at night the horrors which were
dinned into their ears all day. Those who were ingenuous, as it was
termed, in their confessions, received praise and encouragement; and
those who denied or were silent, and, as it was considered, impenitent,
were sure to bear the harder share of the punishment which was addressed
to all. It is worth while also to observe, that the smarter children
began to improve their evidence and add touches to the general picture
of Blockula. "Some of the children talked much of a white angel, which
used to forbid them what the devil bid them do, and told them that these
doings should not last long. And (they added) this better being would
place himself sometimes at the door betwixt the witches and the
children, and when they came to Blockula he pulled the children back,
but the witches went in."

This additional evidence speaks for itself, and shows the whole tale to
be the fiction of the children's imagination, which some of them wished
to improve upon. The reader may consult "An Account of what happened in
the Kingdom of Sweden in the years 1669 and 1670, and afterwards
translated out of High Dutch into English by Dr. Antony Horneck,"
attached to Glanville's "Sadducismus Triumphatus." The translator refers
to the evidence of Baron Sparr, Ambassador from the Court of Sweden to
the Court of England in 1672; and that of Baron Lyonberg, Envoy
Extraordinary of the same power, both of whom attest the confession and
execution of the witches. The King of Sweden himself answered the
express inquiries of the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His
judges and commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and
children, to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence as was
brought before them. But whether the actions confessed and proved
against them were real, or only the effects of strong imagination, he
was not as yet able to determine"--a sufficient reason, perhaps, why
punishment should have been at least deferred by the interposition of
the royal authority.

We must now turn our eyes to Britain, in which our knowledge as to such
events is necessarily more extensive, and where it is in a high degree
more interesting to our present purpose.

LETTER VIII.

The Effects of the Witch Superstition are to be traced in