supernatural visitation must have a fatal tendency in such a disorder as the small-pox. As an astonishing proof of the folly of certain persons on this occasion, I shall quote the following paragraphs from the London Chronicle, vol. XI. p. 74, which conclude a string of questions and answers, put to, and received from the horrid girl, who, young as she was, richly deserved hanging, with her prompters. "What must occasion credulity is, the afflicting an _innocent child_, whom this Spirit acknowledges to be so, and that it is not the part of a good Spirit so to do, while, _she knocks that she is_, and permitted by God, not by Satan, to appear. _What is more astonishing_, that she will not cease troubling the child after satisfaction had. There is such a mixture _of truth_ and _contradictions_, that a person _cannot help doubting_ of the veracity of this knocker. It is, we humbly presume, fit to be enquired into, for the satisfaction of the publick, and to bring to exemplary punishment the impostor or impostors, _if any_, to relieve a distressed family, to preserve the reputation of the innocent, or to vindicate the cause of the injured. The publick are desired to rest satisfied, as the fraud, _if any_, will be discovered soon; of which they may rest assured. "The gentleman intended to be accused in this affair, of perpetrating upon two wives the most atrocious of all crimes, was married about six months since, to a very agreeable young lady, with a fortune of 3000_l._ The unhappy situation in which they must both be, from so horrid an aspersion upon the former, may be more easily conceived than expressed." This shameful affair terminated in the manner described in the ensuing words, extracted from one of the newspapers published in February 1762. "February 1. On this night many gentlemen, eminent for their rank and character, were, by the invitation of the Rev. Mr. Aldrich, of Clerkenwell, assembled at his house, for the examination of the noises supposed to be made by a departed Spirit, for the detection of some enormous crime. About ten at night, the gentlemen met in the chamber, in which the girl supposed to be disturbed by a Spirit had, with proper caution, been put to bed by several ladies. They sat rather more than an hour, and hearing nothing went down stairs; when they interrogated the father of the girl, who denied, in the strongest terms, any _knowledge or belief_ of fraud. The supposed Spirit had before publicly promised, by an affirmative knock, _that it would attend_ one of the gentlemen _into the vault_, under the Church of St. John's Clerkenwell, where the body is deposited, and give a token of _her presence there_, by a knock upon her coffin. It was therefore determined to make this trial of the existence or veracity of the supposed Spirit.