The first German glass-blowers in this country drove the witches out of their furnaces by throwing living puppies into them.

The greater or less amount of belief in witchcraft, necromancy and astrology, serves to show the relative amount of philosophical science in any country. Ignorance is always associated with superstition, which, presenting an endless variety of sources of hope and fear, with regard to the good or bad fortunes of life, keep the benighted mind continually harassed with groundless and delusive, but strong and often deeply distressing impressions of a false faith. For this disease of the mind there is no cure but that of philosophy. This science shews to the enlightened reason of man, that no effect whatever can be produced in the physical world without a corresponding cause. This science announces that the death bell is but a momentary morbid motion of the nerves of the ear, and the death watch the noise of a bug in the wall, and that the howling of the dog, and the croaking of the raven, are but the natural languages of the beast and fowl, and no way prophetic of the death of the sick. The comet, which used to shake pestilence and war from its fiery train, is now viewed with as little emotion as the movements of Jupiter and Saturn in their respective orbits.

An eclipse of the sun, and an unusual freshet of the Tiber, shortly after the assassination of Julius Cesar by Cassius and Brutus, threw the whole of the Roman empire into consternation. It was supposed that all the gods of heaven and earth were enraged, and about to ́take revenge for the murder of the emperor; but since the science of astronomy foretells in the calendar the time and extent of the eclipse, the phenomenon is not viewed as a miraculous and pertentous, but as a common and natural event.

That the pythoness and wizard of the Hebrews, the monthly soothsayers, astrologers and prognosticators of the Chaldeans, and the sybils of the Greeks and Romans, were mercenary impostors, there can be no doubt.

To say that the pythoness, and all others of her class, were aided in their operations by the intervention of familiar spirits, does not mend the matter; for spirits, whether good or bad, possess not the power of life and death, health and disease, with regard to man or beast. Prescience is an incommunicable attribute of God, and therefore spirits cannot foretell future events.

The afflictions of Job, through the intervention of Satan, were miraculous. The possessions mentioned in the New Testament, in all human probability, were maniacal diseases, and if, at their cures, the supposed evil spirits spoke with an audible voice, these events were also miraculous, and effected for a special purpose. But from miracles, no general conclusions can be drawn with regard to the divine government of the world.

The conclusion is, that the powers professed to be exercised by the occult science of necromancy and other other arts of divination, were neither more nor less than impostures.

Among the Hebrews, the profession of arts of divination was thought deserving of capital punishment, because the profession was of Pagan origin, and of course incompatible with the profession of theism, and a theocratic form of government. These jugglers perpetrated a debasing superstition among the people. They were also swindlers, who divested their neighbors of large sums of money and valuable presents without an equivalent.

On the ground then of fraud alone, according to the genius of the criminal codes of ancient governments, the offense deserved capital punishment.

But is the present time better than the past with regard to a superstitious belief in occult influences? Do no traces of the polytheism of our forefathers remain among their christian descendants? This inquiry must be answered in the affirmative. Should an almanacmaker venture to give out the christian calendar without the column containing the signs of the zodiac, the

calendar would be condemned as being totally deficient, and the whole impression would remain on his hands.

But what are those signs? They are the constellations of the zodiac, that is, clusters of stars, twelve in number, within and including the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. These constellations resemble the animals after which they are named. But what influence do these clusters of stars exert on the animal and the plant? Certainly none at all; and yet we have been taught that the northern constellations govern the divisions of living bodies alternately from the head to the reins, and in like manner the southern from the reins to the feet. The sign then makes a skip from the feet to Aries, who again assumes the government of the head, and so on.

About half of these constellations are friendly divinities, and exert a salutary influence on the animal and the plant. The others are malignant in their temper, and govern only for evil purposes. They blast during their reign the seed sown in the earth, and render medicine and the operations of surgery unsuccessful.

We have read of the Hebrews worshiping the hosts of heaven whenever they relapsed into idolatry; and these same constellations were the hosts of heaven which they worshiped. We, it is true, make no offering to these hosts of heaven, but we give them our faith and confidence. We hope for physical benefits from those of them whose dominion is friendly to our interests, while the reign of the malignant ones is an object of dread and painful apprehension.

Let us not boast very much of our science, civilization, or even christianity, while this column of the relics of paganism still disgraces the christian calendar.

I have made these observations with a view to discredit the remnants of superstition still existing among While dreams, the howling of the dog, and the croaking of a raven, are prophetic of future events, we are not good christians. While we are dismayed

us.

at the signs of heaven, we are for the time being pagans. Life has real evils enough to contend with, without imaginary ones.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Morals.

In the section of the country where my father lived, there was, for many years after the settlement of the country, "neither law nor gospel." Our want of legal government was owing to the uncertainty whether we belonged to the state of Virginia or Pennsylvania. The line which at present divides the two states, was not run until some time after the conclusion of the revolutionary war. Thus it happened, that during a long period of time we knew nothing of courts, lawyers, magistrates, sherifs or constables. Every one was therefore at liberty "to do whatever was right in his own eyes."

As this is a state of society which few of my readers have ever witnessed, I shall describe it as minutely as I can, and give in detail those moral maxims which in a great degree answered the important purposes of municipal jurisprudence.

In the first place, let it be observed that in a sparse population, where all the members of the community are well known to each other, and especially in a time of war, where every man capable of bearing arms is considered highly valuable as a defender of his country, public opinion has its full effect, and answers the purposes of legal government better than it would in a dense population and in time of peace.

Such was the situation of our people along the frontiers of our settlements. They had no civil, military

or ecclesiastical laws, at least none that were enforced; and yet "they were a law unto themselves," as to the leading obligations of our nature in all the relations in which they stood to each other. The turpitude of vice and the majesty of moral virtue were then as apparent as they are now, and they were then regarded with the same sentiments of aversion or respect which they inspire at the present time. Industry in working and hunting, bravery in war, candor, honesty, hospitality, and steadiness of deportment, received their full reward of public honor and public confidence among our rude forefathers, as well as among their better instructed and more polished descendants. The punishments which they inflicted upon offenders by the imperial court of public opinion, were well adapted for the reformation of the culprit, or his expulsion from the community.

The punishment for idleness, lying, dishonesty, and ill fame generally, was that of "hating the offender out," as they expressed it. This mode of chastisement was like the atimea of the Greeks. It was a public expression, in various ways, of a general sentiment of indignation against such as transgressed the moral maxims of the community to which they belonged, and commonly resulted either in the reformation or banishment of the person against whom it was directed.

At house-raisings, log-rollings and harvest-parties, every one was expected to do his duty faithfully. A person who did not perform his share of labor on these occasions was designated by the epithet of "Lawrence," or some other title still more opprobrious; and when it came to his turn to require the like aid from his neighbors, the idler soon felt his punishment in their refusal

to attend to his calls.

Although there was no legal compulsion to the performance of military duty; yet every man of full age and size was expected to do his full share of public service. If he did not do so, he was "hated out as a coward." Even the want of any article of war equipments,