[Footnote 2: There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit
themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no
consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as
happen every day; and this I have observed more frequently among the
Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the
minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if
it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as
well as accent and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly
tolerable.--_Hints towards an Essay on Conversation_.]




WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS


We 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 opened, 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