Indeed, it was not, says Maury, till
the first quarter of the eighteenth century that one might safely publish
his incredulity in France. In Scotland, witches were burned for the last
time in 1722. Garinet cites the case of a girl near Amiens possessed by
three demons,--Mimi, Zozo, and Crapoulet,--in 1816.
The two beautiful volumes of Mr. Upham are, so far as I know, unique in
their kind. It is, in some respects, a clinical lecture on human nature,
as well as on the special epidemical disease under which the patient is
laboring. He has written not merely a history of the so-called Salem
Witchcraft, but has made it intelligible by a minute account of the place
where the delusion took its rise, the persons concerned in it, whether as
actors or sufferers, and the circumstances which led to it. By deeds,
wills, and the records of courts and churches, by plans, maps, and
drawings, he has recreated Salem Village as it was two hundred years ago,
so that we seem wellnigh to talk with its people and walk over its
fields, or through its cart-tracks and bridle-roads. We are made partners
in parish and village feuds, we share in the chimney-corner gossip, and
learn for the first time how many mean and merely human motives, whether
consciously or unconsciously, gave impulse and intensity to the passions
of the actors in that memorable tragedy which dealt the death-blow in
this country to the belief in Satanic compacts.
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