A list of persons burned in Salzburg for participation in witchcraft between the years 1627 and 1629 in an outbreak of this frenzy, which had its origin in an epidemic among the cattle, enumerates children of 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, years of age; which in some degree reconciles one to the fate of the fourteen canons, four gentlemen of the choir, two young men of rank, a fat old lady of rank, the wife of a burgomaster, a counsellor, the fattest burgess of Wartzburg, together with his wife, the handsomest woman in the city, and a midwife of the name of Schiekelte, with whom (according to an N.B. in the original report) the whole mischief originated. To amateurs of executions in those days the fatness of the victim was evidently a point of consideration, as is shown by the specifications of that quality in some of the victims in the above list. Were men devils _then_? By no means; there existed then as now upon earth, worth, honour, truth, benevolence, gentleness. But there were other ingredients, too, from which the times are not yet purged. A century ago people did not know--do they now?--that vindictive punishment is a crime; that the only allowable purpose of punishment is to prevent the recurrence of the offence; and that restraint, isolation, employment, instruction, are the extreme and only means towards that end which reason and humanity justify. Alas, for human nature! Some centuries hence, the first half of the nineteenth century will be charged with having manifested no admission of principle in advance of a period, the judicial crimes of which make the heart shudder. The old lady witches had, of course, much livelier ideas than the innocent children, on the subject of their intercourse with the devils.