crushing him; he told them that it was no use to expect him to yield; that there could be but one way of ending the matter, and that they might as well pile on the stones. Calef says, that as his body yielded to the pressure, his tongue protruded from his mouth, and an official forced it back with his cane.] The ministers of Boston and Charlestown drew up an address, warmly thanking the commissioners for their zeal, and expressing their hope that it would never be relaxed." There is no more painful reading than this except the trials of the witches themselves. "These," says Lowell, "awaken, by turns, pity, indignation, disgust, and dread,--dread, at the thought of what the human mind may be brought to believe not only probable, but proven. But it is well to be put upon our guard by lessons of this kind, for the wisest man is in some respects little better than a madman in a straight-waistcoat of habit, public opinion, prudence, or the like. Skepticism began at length to make itself felt, but it spread slowly, and was shy of proclaiming itself. The orthodox party was not backward to charge with sorcery whoever doubted their facts or pitied their victims. The mob, as it always is, was orthodox. It was dangerous to doubt, it might be fatal to deny." "The spirit of party," quaintly says Bayle, in his Critical Dictionary, discoursing of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, "the attachment to a sect, and even zeal for orthodoxy, produce a kind of ferment in the humors of our body; and hence the medium through which reason ought to behold these primitive ideas is clouded and obscured. These are infirmities which will attend our reason, as long as it shall depend upon the ministry of organs. It is the same thing to it, as the low and middle region of the air, the seat of vapors and meteors. There are but very few persons who can elevate themselves above these clouds, and place themselves in a true serenity. If any one could do it, we must say of him what Virgil did of Daphnis:-- 'Daphnis, the guest of Heaven, with wondering eyes, Views in the milky-way the starry skies; And far beneath him, from the shining sphere, Beholds the moving clouds and rolling year.'