escaping from the bottoms of quiet pools are attributed to the movements of the water-sprites which lurk beneath. DEMONOLOGY. A recent writer in _Blackwood's Magazine_ asks if Demonology "was not a vague spirit-worship, the ancient religion of the bulk of mankind?" "This Demonology" (he continues) "may be said to have been imported into Christianity in its early days. It was the universal belief of the Pagan world, and not easily to be eradicated; as the early Church accepted things pretty much as it found them, and turned them to account; teaching that these objects of heathen awe and reverence were fallen angels, whose power for evil had been permitted to exist uncontrolled till the advent of our Saviour. The early Roman Church elaborately imitated, if it did not exceed, the Greeks and Romans in their demonology. Every class of men had their guardians, who practically represented the _Dii minores_ or _minorum gentium_; the hills and dales and woods had their patrons, the successors of the Orcades, Napææ, and the Dryades; every kind of disease, from the toothache to the gout, had its special healer, and even birds and beasts their spiritual protectors." No one who has paid the most passing attention to the folk-lore of this country can have failed to note amongst us, even yet, the remnants of this curious superstition. In 1531, John Cousell, of Cambridge, and John Clarke, of Oxford, two learned clerks, applied for and obtained from Henry VIII. a formal license to practise sorcery, and to build churches, a quaint combination of evil and antidote. They professed power to summon "the sprytes of the ayre," and to make use of them generally, and particularly in the discovery of treasure and stolen property. Their seventh petition is to build churches, bridges, and chapels, and to have cognizance of all sciences. One of their petitions refers to a certain "noyntment" to see the sprytes, and to speak with them dayly. Strange that Henry VIII. should have granted this license, seeing that a statute was passed in his reign, making "witchcraft and sorcery felony, without benefit of clergy."[66] Bishop Jewell, preaching before Queen Anne, on the marvellous increase of witches and sorcerers, after describing how the victims pined away, even unto death, loyally concluded his sermon thus, "I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject." The following charm or spell against St. Vitus's Dance was, and very likely is still, in use in Devonshire. It was written on parchment, and carried about by an old woman so afflicted:-- "Shake her, good Devil, Shake her once well; Then shake her no more, Till you shake her in hell."