tricks with. But, as is well and eloquently remarked by a modern
writer, [See article on Demonology, in the sixth volume of the "Foreign
Quarterly Review."] the subject has also its serious side. An Indian
deity, with its wild distorted shape and grotesque attitude, appears
merely ridiculous when separated from its accessories and viewed by
daylight in a museum; but restore it to the darkness of its own hideous
temple, bring back to our recollection the victims that have bled upon
its altar, or been crushed beneath its ear, and our sense of the
ridiculous subsides into aversion and horror. So, while the
superstitious dreams of former times are regarded as mere speculative
insanities, we may be for a moment amused with the wild incoherences of
the patients; but, when we reflect, that out of these hideous
misconceptions of the principle of evil arose the belief in
witchcraft--that this was no dead faith, but one operating on the whole
being of society, urging on the wisest and the mildest to deeds of
murder, or cruelties scarcely less than murder--that the learned and
the beautiful, young and old, male and female, were devoted by its
influence to the stake and the scaffold--every feeling disappears,
except that of astonishment that such things could be, and humiliation
at the thought that the delusion was as lasting as it was universal.

Besides this chief personage, there was an infinite number of inferior
demons, who played conspicuous parts in the creed of witchcraft. The
pages of Bekker, Leloyer, Bodin, Delrio, and De Lancre abound with
descriptions of the qualities of these imps and the functions which
were assigned them. From these authors, three of whom were
commissioners for the trial of witches, and who wrote from the
confessions made by the supposed criminals and the evidence delivered
against them, and from the more recent work of M. Jules Garinet, the
following summary of the creed has been, with great pains, extracted.
The student who is desirous of knowing more, is referred to the works
in question; he will find enough in every leaf to make his blood curdle
with shame and horror: but the purity of these pages shall not be
soiled by anything so ineffably humiliating and disgusting as a
complete exposition of them; what is here culled will be a sufficient
sample of the popular belief, and the reader would but lose time who
should seek in the writings of the Demonologists for more ample
details. He will gain