90 



ON THE GENERAL DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE. 



f er, has been ingenious enough to form imagi 

 nary monsters which have no existence, either 

 in heaven or on earth, nor the least foundation 

 in the scenes of external nature. He has not 

 only drawn false conclusions from the objects 

 which have a real existence, to increase his 

 fears ; but has created, in his imagination, an 

 ideal world, and peopled it with spectres, hob 

 goblins, fairies, satyrs, imps, wraiths, genii, 

 brownies, witches, wizards, and other fantas 

 tical ueings, to whose caprices he believes his 

 happiness and misery are subjected. An old 

 wrinkled hag is supposed to have the power of 

 rendering miserable all around her, who are the 

 objects of her hatred. In her privy chamber, it 

 is believed, she can roast and torment the absent, 

 and inflict incurable disorders both on man and 

 beast ;* she can transport herself through the 

 air on a spit or a broomstick ; or, when it serves 

 her purpose, she can metamorphose herself into 

 a cat or a hare ; and, by shaking a bridle over a 

 person asleep, can transform him into a horse ; 

 and, mounted on this new-created steed, can tra 

 verse the air on the wings of the wind, and visit 

 distant countries in the course of a night. A 

 certain being called a fairy, though supposed to 

 be at least two or three feet high, is believed to 

 have the faculty of contracting its body, so as to 

 pass through the key-hole of a door ; and though 

 they are a distinct species of beings from man, 

 they have a strong fancy for children ; and hence, 

 in the Highlands of Scotland, new-born infants 

 are watched till the christening is over, lest they 

 should be stolen or exchanged by those fantastic 

 existences. The regions of the air have been 

 peopled with apparitions and terrific phantoms 

 of different kinds, which stalk abroad at the dead 

 hour of night, to terrify the lonely traveller. In 

 ruined castles and old houses, they are said to 

 announce their appearance by a variety of loud 

 and dreadful noises ; sometimes rattling in the 

 old hall like a coach and six. and rumbling up 

 and down the staircase like the trundling of 

 bowls or cannon-balls. Especially in lonely 

 church-yards, in retired caverns, in deep forests 

 and dells, horrid sounds are said to have been 

 heard, and monstrous shapes to- have appeared, 

 by which whole villages have been thrown into 

 consternation.f 



The reader will find abundance of relations of 

 this kind in &quot; Satan s invisible world discovered,&quot; 

 a book which was long read with avidity by the vul 

 gar in this country, and which has frequently 

 caused emotions of terror among youthful groups 

 on winter evenings, while listening to its fearful re- 

 ations, which could never be eradicated, and has 

 endered them cowards in the dark, during all the 

 subsequent periods of their lives. 



+ That many of the superstitious opinions and 

 practices above alluded to, still prevail even within 

 the limits of the British empire, appears from the 

 following extract from the &quot; Monthly Magazine&quot; 

 for July 1813, p. 496. &quot;In Staffordshire, they burn 

 a calf in a farm-house alive, to prevent the other 

 calves from dying. In the same county, a woman 



Nor have such absurd notions been confined 

 to the illiterate vulgar ; men of considerabla 

 acquirements in literature, from ignorance of 

 the laws of nature, have fallen into the same 

 delusions. Formerly, a man who was endowed 

 with considerable genius and knowledge, was 

 reckoned a magician. Doctor Bartolo was 

 seized by the Inquisition at Rome, in the six 

 teenth century, because he unexpectedly cured 

 a nobleman of the gout; and the illustrious 

 Friar Bacon, because he was better acquainted 

 with experimental philosophy than most persons 

 of the age in which he lived, was suspected, 

 even by the learned ecclesiastics, of having 

 dealings with the devil. Diseases were at 

 those times imputed to fascination, and hundreds 

 of poor wretches were dragged to the stake for 

 being accessary to them. Mercatus, physician 

 to Philip II. of Spain, relates, that he had seen 

 a very beautiful woman break a steel mirror to 

 pieces, and blast some trees, by a single glance 

 of her eyes ! Josephus relates, that he saw a 

 certain Jew, named Eleazar, draw the devil out 

 of an old woman s nostrils, by the application 

 of Solomon s seal to her nose, in the presence 

 of Vespasian. Dr. Mynsight is said to have 

 cured several bewitched persons with a plaster 

 of assafoatida. How the assafoetida was effica 

 cious, was much disputed among the learned. 

 Some thought the devil might consider such an 

 application as an insult, and ran off in a passion ; 

 but others very sagely observed, that as devils 

 were supposed to have eyes and ears, it was 

 probable they might have noses too. James 

 VI. who was famed for his polemics and theo 

 logical acquirements, wrote a treatise in defence 

 of witchcraft, and persecuted those who opposed 



having kept a toad in a pot in her garden, her hus 

 band killed it, and she reproached him for it, sayiuc, 

 she intended the next Sunday to have taken the sa 

 crament, for the purpose of getting some of the 

 bread to feed him with, and make him thereby a 

 valuable familiar spirit to her. At Long Ashton, a 

 young farmer has several times predicted his own 

 end, from what he calls being tanked over; and his 

 mother arid father informed a friend of mine, (says 

 the relater) that they had sent to the While Witch 

 Doctor, beyond Bridge &quot;Water, by the coachman, for 

 a charm to cure him, (having paid handsomely fui 

 it;) but that he had now given him over, as her 

 spells were more potent than his. If not dead, he is 

 dying of mere fear, and all the parish of his class 

 believe it. There is also, in that parish, an old man 

 who sells gingerbread to the schools, who is always 

 employed to cure the red water in cows, by means 

 of charms and verses which he says to them. In 

 the Marsh, we have water doctors, who get rich ; 

 at the mines, diviners with rods, who find ores and 

 water ; and at Weston-super-Mare, they sec lights 

 before funerals, and are agreed that the people in 

 that parish always die by threes, i. e. three old, 

 three young, three men, three women, &c. Such 

 are a part only of the superstitions of the West in 

 1813!&quot; 



Everj one who is much conversant with the lower 

 ranks of society, will find, that such notions are stir 

 current and believed by a considerable portion of 

 the population, which is the only apology that can 

 be made for stating and counteracting such opi 

 nions. 



