“The other shape, If shape it might be call’d that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint or limb; Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d, For each seem’d either,—black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seem’d his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand.”[49] From the history of Demonology and Witchcraft, as given in the works of Bodin, Bekker, Leloyer, De Lancre, Garinet, Mackay, Lecky, Nevins, Upham, Benson, Goodwin and Sir Walter Scott, demons of both sexes had existed in the world, ever since the fall of Adam. They increased and multiplied with wonderful rapidity; inhabited the air and had no fixed residence or abode, and when they congregated, windstorms, hurricanes and earthquakes resulted. They were supposed to delight in destroying the beauties of nature and the possessions of man and entered the bodies of individuals with their breath and caused pains and sickness and bad dreams. All these demons were at the command of any person who would barter his soul to them and his or her evil purpose was then accomplished, but no good action would be undertaken. In France and England the witches were supposed to ride astride broom-sticks, while in Italy and Spain, the Devil, himself, in the shape of a goat, carried them on his own back.[50] This belief prevailed for many centuries all over Europe and in certain sections of the world the belief in witchcraft and sorcery is not entirely eradicated today.[51] In 1627, a ballad entitled the “Druten Zeitung,” or “Witches Gazette” was quite popular in Germany. The sufferings of the witches burned at Würzburg, Bamberg, Franconia and other cities and provinces of the German Empire, were minutely described, by the poet, who grew quite witty in his descriptions of the contortions produced by pain, when the flames brought forth shrieks from the poor wretches who were burned alive.[52] The “Amber Witch,” by William Meinhold, being the most interesting trial for witchcraft, of Mary Schweidler, is one of the most exceptional and interesting of the books of fiction, based upon the delusion of witchcraft. But let us draw the curtain upon this continuous human tragedy enacted for two and a half centuries, in Europe, in the name of the law, cataloguing the long list of judicial murders, upon the stage where superstition and delusion alone held sway. It is sad, in the extreme, to contemplate the long list of human beings whose lives were forfeited, in the early days of “little knowledge,” by those who thus: “Hoped to merit Heaven, by making earth a Hell.”