Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1841. Excerpt: ... 167 THE WITCH MANIA. What wrath of gods, or wicked influence Of tears, conspiring wretched men t' afflict, Hath pour'd on earth this noyous pestilence, That mortal minds doth inwardly infect With love of blindness and of ignorance? Spencer's Tears of the Muses. Countrymen. Hang her --beat her --kill her Justice. How now? Forbear this violence 1 Mother Sawyer. A crew of villains--a knot of bloody hangmen set to torment me --I know not why. Justice. Alas neighbour Banks, are you a ringleader in mischief? Fie 1 to abuse an aged woman Banks. Woman --a she hell-cat, a witch To prove her one, we no sooner set fire on the thatch of her house, but in she came running, as if the Devil had sent her in a barrel of gunpowder. Ford's Witch of Edmonton. The belief that disembodied spirits may be permitted to revisit this world, has its foundation upon that sublime hope of immortality, which is at once the chief solace and greatest triumph of our reason. Even if revelation did not teach us, we feel that we have that within us which shall never die; and all our experience of this life but makes us cling the more fondly to that one repaying hope. But in the early days of " little knowledge," this grand belief became the source of a whole train of superstitions, which, in their turn, became the fount from whence flowed a deluge of blood and horror. Europe, for a period of two centuries and a half, brooded upon the idea, not only that parted spirits walked the earth to meddle in the affairs of men, but that men had power to summon evil spirits to their aid to work woe upon their fellows. An epidemic terror seized upon the nations; no man thought himself secure, either in his person or possessions, from the machinations of the devil and his agents. Every calamity that befell him, he attributed to...