religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth-the one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, "You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth-oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received upon the most sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed —and how far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self-watchfulness—if it did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. "You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers

The

may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came with his usual peremptory notice. Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it --so much for tea-I, in humble imitation, tendering mine -for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible-and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great surprise not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbour, "Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House?" and the question operated as soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter.

81

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.

WE

E are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be open, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion-of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd—could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? -That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire—that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed-that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest-or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring-were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld-has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood à priori to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolised by a goat, was it to be wondered. at so much, that he should come sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor.-That the intercourse was opened at all between both worlds was perhaps the mistake—but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one attested story of this nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be criticised.

I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in the days of received witchcraft; that I could not have slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder, or more obtuse, Amidst the

universal belief that these wretches were in league with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple justice of the peace seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them -as if they should subpœna Satan!-Prospero in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers.What stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces—or who had made it a condition of his prey that Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait-we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that country.

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet the history of the Bible by Stackhouse occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with which it abounds-one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot-attracted my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes; and there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could manage, from the situation which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with the objection appended to each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked to that. The objection was a summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to the credibility of the history by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary excess of candour. The solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and

antidote were both before you. To doubts so put, and so
quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever.
The dragon
lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on.
But-like as was rather feared than realized from that slain
monster in Spenser-from the womb of those crushed errors
young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess of so
tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The habit of
expecting objections to every passage set me upon starting
more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of my
own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, a sceptic
in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had read,
or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of
impression, and were turned into so many historic or chro-
nologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners.
I was not to disbelieve them, but-the next thing to that—
I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or
had disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel
is the letting him know that there are infidels at all.
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a
babe and a suckling!-I should have lost myself in these
mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sus-
tenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece
of ill-fortune which about this time befell me. Turning
over the picture of the ark with too much haste, I un-
happily made a breach in its ingenious fabric-driving my
inconsiderate fingers right through the two larger quadru-
peds, the elephant and the camel, that stare (as well they
might) out of the two last windows next the steerage in
that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was
henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted treasure.
With the book, the objections and solutions gradually cleared
out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any force
to trouble me. But there was one impression which I had
imbibed from Stackhouse which no lock or bar could shut
out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves
rather more seriously. That detestable picture!

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The nighttime, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings