there are innately evil powers or spirits who oppose the good. By following the same process the leader of these becomes an anti-type, Lucifer, or Satan, or arch-devil, the result being Dualism. In this we have a spirit endowed with incredible activity and power, who is only not omnipotent, and whose malignity far transcends anything attributed to the gods or devils of Polytheism. His constant aim is to damn all mankind to all eternity, and his power is so great that to save even a small portion of mankind from this fate, God himself, or His own Son, must undergo penance as a man--an idea found in the Buddhism of India. This is all the regular and logical sequence of Fetishism and Shamanism. Witchcraft, and the tales told of it, follow in the path of the religion of the age. In the earliest time women were apparently the only physicians--that is to say magicians--and as man was in his lowest stage the magic was a vile witchcraft. Then came the Shaman--a man who taught in Animism a more refined sorcery, which was, however, as yet the only religion. But the witch still existed, and so she continued to exist, pari passu, through all the developments of religion. And to this, day every form and phase of the magician and witch exist somewhere, it sometimes happening that traces of the earliest and most barbarous sorcery are plain and palpable in the most advanced faith. There may be changes of name and of association, but in simple truth it is all "magic" and nothing else. Gypsy, Hungarian, Slavonian, Indian, and Italian witches, however they may differ from those of Western Europe on theological grounds, agree with them in meeting for the purposes of riotous dancing and debauchery. It has been observed that this kind of erotic dancing appears to have been cultivated in the East, and even in Europe, from the earliest times, by a class of women who, if not absolutely proved to be gypsies, had at any rate many points of resemblance with them. "The Syrian girl who haunts the taverns round," described by Virgil, suggests the Syrian and Egyptian dancer, who is evidently of Indo-Persian--that is to say of Nuri, or gypsy--origin. The Spanish dancing girls of remote antiquity have been conjectured to have come from this universal Hindoo Romany stock. I have seen many of the Almeh in Egypt--they all seemed to be gypsyish, and many were absolutely of the Helebi, Nauar, or Rhagarin stocks. This is indeed not proved--that all the deliberately cultivated profligate dancing of the world is of Indo-Persian, or gypsy origin, but there is a great deal, a very great deal, which renders it probable. And it is remarkable that it occurred to Pierre Delancre that the Persian ballerine had much in common with witches. Now the dancers of India are said to have originated in ten thousand gypsies sent from Persia, and who were of such vagabond habits that they could not be persuaded to settle down anywhere. Of these Delancre says:--