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They are, if the belief and practice of witchcraft among them is any test; for in all those countries there are witches. I take up one of the New York City dailies of this very morning, and find in it the advertisements of seven Witches. In 1858, there were in full blast in New York and Brooklyn sixteen witches and two wizards.
When you read the authentic histories of any popular illusion, such as the spurious inspirations of the Jansenist Convulsionaries, the apparitions that invaded convents, as deposed in the trial of Urbain Grandier, the confessions of witches and wizards in places the most remote from each other, or, at this day, the tales of 'spirit-manifestation' recorded in half the towns and villages of America, do not all the superstitious impressions of a particular time have a common family likeness?
In the Cove it was as light as day, one could count each wave as it rose and fell, and see distinctly the white foam at its edge as it broke on the beach. The sands gleamed like silver in the sad white light save where the rocks threw dark shadows. All round the coast the witches and wizards were busy manufacturing their spells.
The poisoned chalice, the glittering dagger suspended over the head of the sleeper; wizards and phantoms with terrific masks, those half-dim shadows more alarming than the approach of fire or the somber face of midnight, these, and such as these, he had made the companions of his more pleasing pictures.
As pontiff of a college of wizards, Daniel may have known the future. As Minister of Wisdom, Ezra may have known, what is quite as difficult, the past. For the moment there was but the present. Over it ruled Belshazzar.
They pointed toward the tower with crucifixes, invoking their hearers to pull it stone from stone and slay the wizards within, the wizards who had conspired with the accursed Jews even beneath the eyes of his Holiness the Pope, to bring doom on Avignon. The eighth morn broke at length, and its first red rays discovered Hugh and Dick kneeling side by side behind the battlements of the gateway.
The Puritans and Presbyterians, taking the Bible for their rule, "suffered not a witch to live;" and, not content with burning the books of those who "used curious arts" after the manner of the Ephesians, they sacrificed the students themselves on the same pile. Hence we hear little of learned and scientific wizards in New England.
But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be regarded primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards, it becomes probable that the same explanation applies not only to the flaming discs which are hurled into the air, but also to the burning wheels which are rolled down hill on these occasions; discs and wheels, we may suppose, are alike intended to burn the witches who hover invisible in the air or haunt unseen the fields, the orchards, and the vineyards on the hillside.
So surely as he is a barbarian he will believe in witches. If he contents himself with imagining wizards and spooks, he may find recreation enough in the dark, but when he accuses other people of practising against him, and gets them hanged or roasted, his imagination has become too frisky to be at large.
"Oh, listen, your highness!" cried Thusnelda, after having hastily perused the contents of the ducal missive. "'I hope I have succeeded to surprise you! Demons and wizards have closed your doors, And weeping you slept on the stairway alone. All witchcraft has now disappeared. Go seek The surprise that from Berlin I brought you, Which I now offer for an atonement."
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