into confessing herself a witch." "There was no motive, it seems, to hang this Tituba"-not at all; "she was saved as a living witness to the reality of witchcraft." As the affair proceeded, our friend Parris, backed by "Cotton Mather, who had staked his own reputation for veracity on the reality of witchcraft, first prayed for a good issue; and then Brother Parris proceeded to demand of his niece, the girl of twelve years of age, the names of the devil's instruments who bewitched the band of the afflicted; and then became at once informer and witness."

In those days there was no prosecuting officer, and Parris was at hand to question his Indian servants and others, himself prompting the answers and acting as recorder to magistrates.

The recollection of the old controversy in the parish could not be forgotten, and Parris, moved by personal malice as well as by blind zeal, stifled the accusations of some-such is the testimony of the people of his own village-and at the same time, vigilantly promoting the accusations of others, was the beginner and procurer of the sore afflictions to Salem and the country. Women, the older, the more harmless and unprotected the better, seem first to have been the helpless objects of his ecclesiastical solicitude, and having hung a score or two of them, and one very decrepid old woman of fourscore, he gained, at length, through impunity, the spiritual courage to do that which he had long wished, through such bloody inspiration to do, namely: attack a live man-one George Burroughs, who had been his rival.

Burroughs, it seems, had preached with great unction in Salem, and had friends "who desired he should be there." He, too, was a skeptic in witchcraft, and "the gallows was to be set up, not for those who professed themselves witches, for they were carefully protected as the seed of the faith, "but for those who rebuked the delusion." So George Burroughs, who seems to have been a very fine specimen of a young Sam, as one of the chief accusations against him was that he was possessed of incredible strength, was condemned to be hanged by the evidence of dumb witnesses, and our favorite Cotton Mather pronounces the facts of this dumbness and of the incorrigible having given evidence of preternatural muscular strength, "enough!"

If his spiritual friends of New England had happened to have caught Sam himself, in the body, asleep, with his head pillowed on the hills, they would have been sure to have built a fire in the valleys under him, in the hope to set the pines in a blaze and roast him-ungrateful friends!

But the execution of the doughty George Burroughs was likely to be stayed-first, because it was a novelty to hang a minister, and next, because he repeated the Lord's Prayer with great clearness on the scaffold. To be sure, he also made an eloquent plea against witchcraft and in defense of his innocence, but that went as for nothing until his repetition of the prayer, which, it was believed, those possessed of the devil were unable to do, touched at last upon their convictions, and "the spectators were like to hinder the execution," when the amiable Cotton Mather, whose self-love was touched by Burroughs' absolute denial that there was or could be any such thing as witchcraft, appeared on horseback among the crowd, and addressed the people, caviling at the ordinance of Burroughs as though he had been no true minister, insisting on his guilt, and hinting that the devil could sometimes assume the appearance of an angel of light, thus pleading might and main for the hanging, "and the hanging proceeded!"

Thus this loving couple, Parris and Mather, were sustained, and their pet "invisibles" vindicated! But this amusement had to stop somewhere, of course, and poor Cotton Mather, in his despair at the loss thereof, "had temptations to atheism and to the abandonment of all religion," as he relates himself in his diary. What is styled "the inexorable indignation" of the awakened people, only drove the cunning sportsman, Parris, from the village. Terrible punishment this, compared with the deeds of the man; but Sam, about these parts, was always "inexorable," according to his pet historians, especially when engaged in stringing up old men and women to please the whims of two of his parsons, we would suggest. Amiable Sam!

But let us take a farewell glance at this delectable Reverend Cotton Mather, D. D., F. R. S. A few extracts from his master work, entitled "Magnalia Christi Americana," will shed a flood of light upon his peculiarly amiable character.

""Tis very likely that the evil angels may have a particular

energy and employment, oftentimes in mischiefs done by thunder. There (in the air) Satan can do mighty thingscommand much of the magazine of Heaven. Satan let loose by God can do wonders in the air. He can raise storms, he can discharge the great ordinance of Heaven, thunders and lightning; and by his art can make them more terrible and dreadful than they are in their own nature. "Tis no heresy or blasphemy to think that the prince of the power of the air hath as good share in Chemistry as goes to the making of Aurum fulminans.

"The devil is the prince of the power of the air, and when God gives him leave, he has vast power in the air, and armies that can make thunder in the air. A great man has, therefore, noted it, that thunders break oftener on churches than any other houses, because the demons have a peculiar spite at houses that are set apart for the peculiar service of God."

Quitting the direct agency of the devil, the doctor details many other prodigies, which he supposes ominous of great events, and which he probably imputed to the good angels, one or more of whom he believed presided in the air, over every town and village. A short time prior to Philip's war he relates, in a grave and serious manner, that noises were heard in the air, similar to the discharge of artillery and small arms, accompanied with the beating of drums as in a battle. In several places invisible troops of horse are said to have been heard, riding through the air. His naval apparition must not be omitted. A ship sailed from a port in New England for Europe, with many passengers, and was supposed to be foundered at sea; but as the event was doubtful, the people remained in suspense. At length, behold! a ship rigged out in every part similar to the one that had been lost, entered the harbor of New Haven, and winged its way through the air, directly in the face of the wind, until it arrived near the wharf, when its masts and rigging went overboard, and many signals of distress were displayed; but soon the whole vanished from the sight. "Now," adds the sage, "prepare for the event of those prodigies; but count me not struck with a Livian superstition in reporting prodigies, for which I have such incontestable proofs." Many other extraordinary and unaccountable phenomena are also detailed

with great minuteness by the doctor; but it is believed the reader will be satisfied with those already given.

"In the days of Moses, it seems the deserts were counted very much the habitation of devils. Who can tell whether the envy of the devils at the favor of God unto men, may not provoke them to affect retirement from the sight of populous and prosperous regions, except so far as they reckon their work of tempting mankind, necessary to be carried on? "Whatever becomes of the observations which we have hitherto been making, there has been too much cause to observe that the Christians who were driven into the American desert, which is now called New England, have, to their sorrow, seen Azazel dwelling and raging in very tragical instances. The devils have doubtless felt a more than ordinary vexation, from the arrival of these Christians, with their sacred exercises of Christianity in this wilderness. But the sovereignty of heaven has permitted them still to remain in the wilderness for our vexation as well as their own."

Saintly Cotton in this manner is dismissed.

But it seems this was not the only instance in which Sam dealt in the black arts; we have insinuated that in the temper of his Body of Rights originated the slave trade. Here is the direct statement: "A ship of one Thomas Keyser, or one James Smith, the latter a member of the church of Boston, first brought upon the colonies the guilt of participating in the traffic in African slaves. They openly sailed for Guinea to trade for negroes;" but here follows the amusing justification of Puritanism: "But throughout Massachusetts the cry of justice was raised against them as malefactors and murderers, the guilty men were committed for the offense, and after advice with the elders the representatives of the people bearing witness against the heinous crime of man-stealing, ordered the negroes to be restored, at the public charge, to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the General Court of their wrongs."+

We can hear the stentorian mirth of Sam on hearing this ingenious story, shaking the hills far away to the nethermost ocean. Ho! "a letter expressing the indignation of the General Court!" Ha! ha! who was there to read the letter in Guinea?

Bancroft, page 178-volume 1st.

† Idem, page 173-vol. 1st.