fear of a Satan of the future-a sort of ban-dog of Priestcraft, held in its leash and ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,-our toiling brothers of past ages have permitted their human task-masters to convert God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of Rhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution, the truth of which, reason, revelation and conscience unite in attesting, as the necessary result of the preservation and continuance in another state of existence, of the soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their cpecial benefit, to convert our Common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Better is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil. Holier and more acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the crushing submission of slavish terror. The heart which has felt the "beauty of holi ness," which has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony, which now, as of old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on earth and good will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the night-curtains of guilt, and startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor. There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouquè's Miniature Romances, “DIE KOHLERFAMILIE.' The fierce spectre, which rose, giant-like, in its blood-red mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever increasing in size and terror with the growth of evil and impure thought in the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer and penitence, and patient watchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle visitation of soft light and meekest melody," a beautiful radiance at times hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the bushes and foliage of the mountain forest-a lustre strange and lovely, such as the soul may conceive, but no words express. He felt its power in the depths of his being-felt it like the mystic breathing of the spirit of God." V. "It is confessed of all that a magician is none other than Divinorum cultor et interpres, a studious observer and expounder of divine things."-SIR WALTER RALEIGH. THE old tales of New England witchcraft are familiar to all. I shall therefore speak only of some of the more recent manifestations of glamour and magic which have been vouchsafed to an unbelieving generation, which, as King James lamented in his time, "maintains y old error of ye Sadducees, ye denying of spirits." I give the incidents in the order in which they occur to my memory. Some forty years ago, on the banks of the pleasant little creek separating Berwick in Maine from Somersworth in N. H., within sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of the Society of Friends, named Bantum. He passed, throughout a circle of several miles, as a conjuror, and skillful adept in the art of magic. To him resorted farmers who had lost their cattle, matrons whose household gear, silver spoons, and table linen had been stolen, or young maidens whose lovers were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited old man received them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his " conjuring book," which my mother describes as a large clasped volume in strange language and black letter type, and after due reflection and consideration gave the required answers without money and without price. The curious old volume is still in the possession of the conjuror's family. Apparently inconsistent as was this practice of the Black Art with the simplicity and truthfulness of his religious. profession, I have not been able to learn that he was ever subjected to censure on account of it. Still later another member of the Friend's Society in Vermont, of the name of Austin, in answer, as he supposed, to prayer, and a long-cherished desire to benefit his afflicted fellowcreatures, received, as he believed, a special gift of healing. For several years applicants fiom nearly all parts of New England visited him with the story of their sufferings, and praying for a relief, which, it is averred, was in many instances really obtained. Letters from the sick who were unable to visit him, describing their diseases, were sent him, and many are yet living who believe that they were restored miraculously at the precise period of time when Austin was engaged in reading their letters. One of my uncles was commissioned to convey to him a large number of letters from sick persons in his neighborhood. He found the old man sitting in his plain parlor, in the simplest garb of his sect-grave, thoughtful, venerable-a drab-coated Prince Hohenlohe. He received the letters in silence, read then slowly, casting them one after another upon a large pile of similar epistles in a corner of the apartment. many years had borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look of one-a combination of form, voice, and features, which would have made the fortune of an English witch-finder in the days of Mathew Paris, or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction in King James' High Court of Justiciary. She was accused of divers ill doings, such as preventing the cream in her neighbor's churn from becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at huskings and quilting parties. "She roamed the country far and near, Bewitched the children of the peasants; Dried up the cows and lamed the deer, And sucked the eggs and killed the pheasants." The poor old woman was at length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate reputation that she took the trouble to go before a Justice of the Peace, and make solemn oath that she was a Christian woman and no witch. Not many years since a sad-visaged, middle-aged man might be seen in the streets of one of our sea-board towns, at times suddenly arrested in the midst of a brisk walk, and fixed motionless for some minutes in the busy thoroughfare. No effort could induce him to stir until, in his opinion, the spell was removed, and his invisible tormentor suffered him to proceed. He explained his singular detention as the act of a whole family of witches, whom he had unfortunately offended during a visit down east. It was rumored that the offence consisted in breaking off a matrimonial engagement with the youngest member of the family, a sorceress, perhaps, in more than one sense of the word, like that "winsome wench and walie," in Tam O'Shanter's witchdance at Kirk Alloway. His only hope was that he should out-live his persecutors; and it is said that at the very hour in which the event took place, he exultingly assured his friends that the spell was forever broken, and that the last of the family of his tor mentors was no more. (To be Continued.) In the town of Kingston, N. H., there lived a few years ago a family of reputed dealers in magic. There were two poor old sisters who used to frighten schoolurchins and "children of a larger growth," as they rode by on their gaunt skeleton horses, strung over with baskets for the Newburyport market. They were aware of the popular notion concerning them, and not unfrequently took advantage of it to levy a sort of black mail upon their credulous neighbors. An attendant at the funeral of one of these sisters, who when living was about as unsubstantial as Ossian's ghost through which the stars were visible, told me that her coffin was so heavy that four stout men could barely lift it. One of my earliest recollections is that of an old woman residing at Rocks village in Haverhill, about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for THE MAN THAT KILLED A SPIRIT. AN IRISH LEGEND. Yis-ye may laugh, but it's truth I'm telling yees-I seen a man that killed a spirit! And it's often and often I heered him tell the story himself on my own father's flure. Och, by this and by that! there's not a word of a lie in it, and the man that did it was Tom Malloy. May be yees wouldn't mind him, for he was an ould man and laid under the green sod, whin I was but a bit of a thing, not far past seventeen, and that's many a long year agone, but this was the way of it. Ye see Tom Malloy was once young, and troth, by all accounts, there wasn't a wilder divil in the whole kingdom. Thim was wild times to be sure, and it was rather a credit than the contrair, to be up to all kinds of diviltry; and so Tom Malloy wouldn't be behind the best, that is the worst, in all the pranks and divarsions that was setting forrard. If there was a fight at a fair, sure Tom was in the thick of it, laying about wid his thorn stick, and bating the world before him. If there was a race or a fox-hunt in the country, oh, who but Tom, to be sure, must ride the crack horse, or folly on wid the hounds. Och he was the nate rider and the powerful; there wasn't the horse in all Ireland, and after that av coorse ye may say in all the world, that he'd be afeared to back. It was always a great strife among the gentry, which of 'em should get Tom to ride for 'em, for he was sure to win the race. And thin he had such a pleasant turn, and could sing all sorts of songs, jist to suit the 'casion, wid a voice that was clear as a black-bird's, and he was so full of his jokes and his puns, that he was always a great favorite wid the wild young jantlemen, who used to come all the way from Dublin and other furren parts in the sporting saison. More was the pity for Tom, for he grew mighty concaited, and larned all their bad ways to the back of his own; not contint wid the drinking and fightin' which kem to him naturally along wid his mother's milk, he took to bettin' and cursin' and spakin' free and disrespectful of the clargy; and left off mindin' his duties intirely, and may be wouldn't hear mass from year's ind to year's ind,—and indeed he couldn't be worse if he'd been a lord or a marquis itself. Well, things wint on in this way for one while, and no harm kem to Tom Malloy. He was the gayest bachelor going, and for all his bad carackter nivir wanted a partner at a dance. It wasn't one, but twenty girls would have given their eyes for him; but he only divarted himself wid their schamings, purtending to be dying in love wid one or the other of 'em, and not a word did he spake from his heart all the while. Well! well! there's many like Tom Malloy, and may be 'twould be for their health to take warnin' by what happened him. His turn kem at last, and, contrairy-like, what must he do but fall in love in raal arnest wid the only girl in the country that wouldn't look at him! Mary Delany was the purtiest as well as the best girl in thim parts, as indeed she had the good right to be, seeing the priest was her mother's own brother. All her people were dacent, and well to do, and her father, old Murtough Delany, was a snug man, and had laid up something in bank as a portion for Mary when she'd marry ;she was all the child he had, and his heart was full of her only. It wasn't a likely thing that Murtough Delany would be consinting to the suit of sich a ne'er-do-well as Tom Malloy; and it only shewed how set up he was in his own concait to dhrame of the thing for a moment. But dhrame of it he did, sleepin' and wakin'; and it wasn't long before he tould the same to Mary herself. Well, if he thought 'twas only askin' and havin', Mary showed him the differ, and altho' the color kem an wint in her face, and she spoke very mild and gentle, her words were not plasin' to Tom Malloy, for she tould him nivir to think of her more, or mintion his love agin, for that frinds was all they could ever be to each other. Well, to be sure, Tom was in a terrible takin', and if it had been his life he was pladin' for he couldn't have said or done more. The words kem warm from his heart that time; and he looked so tindherly at her wid his handsome black eyes, and the tones of his voice were so soft and beguiling, that altogether it might have melted a harder heart nor Mary Delany's. May be she felt it too, but if she did she nivir let on to Tom, but said the same as before, only that her voice trimbled a little, and her cheek grew white as a snow-drop-and whin Tom would know the raison why, she tould him truly that 'twas all along of his bad carackter; and how it would break her father's heart if she should think to marry the likes of him; and that her uncle the priest had warned her agin him time out of mind, and wouldn't be by no means plased at her keepin' his company that long even; and wid these words she bid him good night, and turned away very short, so that he couldn't see the large tears that were standin' in her eyes. The black despair was wid Tom Malloy thin, he was struck to the heart, and stud looking afther Mary till she turned the corner, widout as much as raising his little finger, and whin he had got the last look of her, he started like a man out of a drhame, and walked away like mad, nivir minding the road at all, but goin' thro' fields and bogs-and down by the ditch-any way, jist as it come. And so he got at last to the public,-troth, it came so natʼral to him, that he could have gone there in his sleep,—and what does he do but walks into the place and calls for the raal stuff, nothing less than the potsheen itself would sarve his turn. Och! but the sound of his voice gave Mrs. Murphy a fright; and whin she handed him the drink he glared upon her like a tiger, and clutched, not the glass, plase ye' but the whole canteen; and faix, but he nivir tuk it from his lips till he had swally'd the last dhrop. Well, he set it down wid a thunderin' thump, and says he, "Biddy Murphy! if harm come to me this night, it's Mary Delany that's done it ;" and wid that out of the house wid him, as if the whole world was at his heels, and wouldn't stop for all that could be said, -and it Hallowe'en too, of all nights in the year. Sure they bawled afther him as loud as they could bawl, and tould him he was sartin to be deludhed wid the fairies, if nothing worse should come of it. Och, they might have saved their breath, for he was past minding sinse, if an angel had spoke it. He just turned about wid an awful look, and says he : "There's a worse divil in my own heart than I'll meet the night." And thin he was off again before any one could stop him; and the way he wint was straight out of the town off to the moor, where the ould stones laya place where the haythins used to w rship in the ancient ould times, before St. Pathrick (blessed be his name!) druv thim out of it. Troth at any time of the year it was bad to be there afther nightfall-but a Hallowe'en night! the boldest and the best might be afeared to vinture, and no shame to him. It would have taken all father Maguire's Latin, and the bishop's to the back of that, to have made a clear way thro' the spirits of all sorts that kem there as thick as blackberries. It was a kind of randyvoos, that's to say, an assimbling place, where they met to exult over their misdoings, the black-hearted thieves! and conthrive new mischiefs and bedivilments for the destruction of sowls and bodies. And into the middle of thim walked Tom Malloy wid all his ignorance and his sins, and not even a good thought as a purtection. The moon was at the full, but she wouldn't be shining down bright and clear on sich a company; so she only glimmered out a pale beam or two now and thin, through the heavy black clouds, frightened like to see what they were doin', and av coorse there wasn't much light to go by-but Tom Malloy could see filling the air all about him, horrid ould witches and ghosts widout any flesh on their bones, pointin' their long fingers at him, and grinnin' wid all their might, by way of showin' how glad they wor to see him, and there on the very top of the heap of stones stud the awfullest spirit he ever seed or heared of! May be it wasn't Satan himself, but 'twas his own twin brother. Tom shuk as if he'd the aguy, and his hair stud out straight from his head, and he struv hard to remimber a prayer; but the divil had power over him thin, and not the laste holy word would come into his mind,-nothing but oaths and curses, sich as suited the place he was in,—so out he rapped wid the biggest he knew, and indeed there wasn't many could bate him at that; and whinivir the spirits, and witches, and divils heared him a swearin' at 'em, they fell to laughin' and roarin' wid fun, and shouted out his name, "Tom Malloy for ivir!" and "you'll be one of us, Tom!" just as if 'twas a mimber they wor makin' him. And some peeped into his face wid great eyes that burned like coals, and some pinched him all over wid their red hot fingers, and more whispered in his ears their wicked invintions till he felt their fiery breath scorchin' him up. But nothing come up to the rejoicins of the spirit (on the top of the stones; he kicked out his long legs, that wor crooked, for all the world like raping hooks, wid great claws at the ind of 'em, and held the two sides of him, jist as if he'd be afeared of breakin' in two; and as soon as he got breath to spake : "Arrah, Tom, darlint," says he, "you're the boy I'm looking for,-and only say some more of thim purty words, if ye dare, and I'll be wid ye for ivir, dear.' Well, Tom's blood was up at that, to be sure, and so he shuk his fist at the spirit, and says he, "Do ye dare me, you ould villain! here's for you, thin!"—and out they come, as fast as he could spake-och, but I wouldn't for more nor I could mintion, tell you the laste of 'em! Well, thin there was a greater noise than ivir; and the spirit on the top of the stones laughed out so loud that the heap trimbled undher him, and many of the great stones that had stud there since the flood, rattled down as if there was an arthquake. "I'm wid you now, Tom Malloy," says the spirit, wid the howl of a wolf, and one jump brought him upon Tom's shoulders, where he set like a mountain of lead, clutching him round the neck, till he was like to choke him. Thin all the rest of the gang jined hands and danced round 'em by the light of blue fires that started up out of the ground, and the dridful laughter begun agin. It wasn't anything like Christian fun or jollity; the most piercin' cry of grief was a joyful sound in comparison! And Tom jined in, overcome wid madness and terror, and roared and screamed till all power left him, and he sunk down on the ground and never knew no more that night. Whin he come to his sinses next morning, he was all alone on the bare moor, and the great heap of stones standing by the side of him, jist as if nothing at all had happened and Tom thought in his own mind, 'twas bad dhrames he'd been havin'; but he hadn't that comfort long, for whin he stud on his feet, and thought to go home, a trimblin' tuk him, and he felt a dead weight on his shoulders, and he knew the spirit was wid him jist as it had said. He walked off as fast as he could wid such a load, but his heart a most died widin him, for all the while the spirit did be whisperin' in his ear all sorts of aggravatin' things; and betimes it would bring round its ugly face, right forenenst his own, wid a look of triumph that made Tom amost ragin' mad. From that out the spirit nivir left him. Night an' day it was by him in some shape or other, temptin', tasin' and mockin' of him, till he was most worn out wid the misery. Betimes 'twould be a black dog stickin' close to his skirts, and fearin' him wid its horrid snarls; and when he'd get beside himself like, and go to strike him down wid his stick, the divil a bit would it stir for all he could do, and down would go the stick right thro' it, and there'd be the black dog to the good, shewin' its great teeth and laughin' ready to burst, as if 'twas the best joke in life. Thin it would be struttin' before him in the likeness of a big ould turkey-cock, makin' Tom bile over most wid the concaited ways it tuk on itself. And so that was the way it wint on, takin' the form of some ugly bird or baste, and more oftener wearin' its own hateful looks, which was hardest of all to bear, so that Tom hadn't no pace in life, but guv himself up intirely. Och, but it was a pity of him! he that was the most light-hearted, free-spoken boy in the country, and so handsome and brisk, to be brought to such a pass! Every body was sorry for Tom Malloy, for wid all his faults he had got a hoult of people's hearts. Ye see there was nivir no maneness about Tom, and he'd go thro' fire and water to sarve a frind, so the whole country tuk part wid him, and put the whole blame of his trouble on Mary Delany. Poor crathur, she didn't need that to add to her distresh; for she was soft-hearted enough by natur, and whin she see the way Tom Malloy was in, it amost fretted the life out of her. |