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the Lord of the Forest so he called his superior who was judged to be the devil. He was,
by his master s power, transformed into the likeness and performed the usual functions of a
wolf, and was attended in his course by one larger, which he supposed the Lord of the Forest
himself. These wolves, he said, ravaged the flocks, and throttled the dogs which stood in their
defence. If either had not seen the other, he howled, after the manner of the animal, to call
his comrade to his share of the prey; if be did not come upon this signal, he proceeded to
bury it the best way he could.
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Such was the general persecution under Messieurs Espiagnel and De Lancre. Many similar
scenes occurred in France, till the edict of Louis XIV. discharging all future prosecutions for
witchcraft, after which the crime itself was heard of no more.
While the spirit of superstition was working such horrors in France, it was not, we may
believe, more idle in other countries of Europe. In Spain, particularly, long the residence of
the Moors, a people putting deep faith in all the day-dreams of witchcraft, good and evil genii,
spells and talismans, the ardent and devotional temper of the old Christians dictated a severe
research after sorcerers as well as heretics, and relapsed Jews or Mahommedans. In former
.
times, during the subsistence of the Moorish kingdoms in Spain, a school was supposed to
be kept open in Toboso for the study, it is said, of magic, but more likely of chemistry, algebra,
and other sciences, which, altogether mistaken by the ignorant and vulgar, and imperfectly
understood even by those who studied them, were supposed to be allied to necromancy, or at
least to natural magic. It was, of course, the business of the Inquisition to purify whatever
such pursuits had left of suspicious Catholicism, and their labours cost as much blood on
accusations of witchcraft and magic as for heresy and relapse.
Even the colder nations of Europe were subject to the same epidemic terror for witchcraft,
and a specimen of it was exhibited in the sober and rational country of Sweden about the
middle of last century, an account of which, being translated into English by a respectable
clergyman, Doctor Horneck, excited general surprise how a whole people could be imposed
upon to the degree of shedding much blood, and committing great cruelty and injustice, on
account of the idle falsehoods propagated by a crew of lying children, who in this case were
both actors and witnesses.
The melancholy truth that the human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked, is by nothing proved so strongly as by the imperfect sense displayed by children of
the sanctity of moral truth. Both the gentlemen and the mass of the people, as they advance
in years, learn to despise and avoid falsehood; the former out of pride, and from a remaining
feeling, derived from the days of chivalry, that the character of a liar is a deadly stain on their
honour; the other, from some general reflection upon the necessity of preserving a character
for integrity in the course of life, and a sense of the truth of the common adage, that honesty
is the best policy. But these are acquired habits of thinking. The child has no natural love of
truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are
charged with fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a false-
hood to excuse it. Nor is this all: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoy-
ing importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at
any time overcome the sentiment of truth, so weak is it within them. Hence thieves and
housebreakers, from a surprisingly early period, find means of rendering children useful in
their mystery; nor are such acolytes found to evade justice with less dexterity than the more
advanced rogues. Where a number of them are concerned in the same mischief, there is
something resembling virtue in the fidelity with which the common secret is preserved.
Children, under the usual age of their being admitted to give evidence, were necessarily often
examined in witch trials; and it is terrible to see how often the little impostors, from spite or in
mere gaiety of spirit, have by their art and perseverance made shipwreck of men s lives. But it
would be hard to discover a case which, supported exclusively by the evidence of children
(the confessions under torture excepted), and obviously existing only in the young witnesses
own imagination, has been attended with such serious consequences, or given cause to so
extensive and fatal a delusion, as that which occurred in Sweden.
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The scene was the Swedish village of Mohra, in the province of Elfland, which district had
probably its name from some remnant of ancient superstition. The delusion had come to a
great height ere it reached the ears of government, when, as was the general procedure,
Royal Commissioners were sent down, men well fitted for the duty entrusted to them; that is,
with ears open to receive the incredibilities with which they were to be crammed, and hearts
hardened against every degree of compassion to the accused. The complaints of the com-
mon people, backed by some persons of better condition, were that a number of persons,
renowned as witches, had drawn several hundred children of all classes under the devil s
authority. They demanded, therefore, the punishment of these agents of hell, reminding the
judges that the province had been clear of witches since the burning of some on a former
occasion. The accused were numerous, so many as threescore and ten witches and sorcer-
ers being seized in the village of Mohra; three-and-twenty confessed their crimes, and were
sent to Faluna, where most of them were executed. Fifteen of the children were also led to
death. Six-and-thirty of those who were young were forced to run the gauntlet, as it is called,
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