These fearful forms of pestilence were accompanied by moral epidemics more appalling than the physical. Of these the two following may serve as examples:— Vast assemblages of men and women formed circles hand in hand, dancing, leaping, shouting, insensible to external impressions; some seeing visions and spirits whose names they shrieked out; others in epileptic convulsions with foaming at the mouth; all continuing to make the most violent muscular exertions for hours together, until they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. Lookers-on were seized with an uncontrollable impulse to join in these wild revels. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, servants their masters, boys and girls their parents, women their domestic duties, and men their business, thus to spend days and nights; these infatuated crowds passing furiously through streets, along highways, over fields, and from town to town. This madness pervaded the least barbarous countries of Europe for upwards of two centuries, under the name of the “Dancing Mania.” It was universally attributed to demoniacal possession, and its cure was attempted by exorcism. It was one expression and outlet of the violent passions of that time, imposture and profligacy playing principal parts in this strange drama. More pernicious than this madness was the mania of cruelty, an especial manifestation of which was the ferocious persecution of the Jews, who were put to death by hundreds and thousands, under the accusation that they had poisoned the wells. At Basle a number of this nation, whose European history proves them to have been everywhere amongst the most inoffensive of the people, were enclosed in a wooden building and burnt with it. At Strasburg two thousand were burnt alive. Whoever showed them compassion and endeavoured to protect them were put upon the rack and burnt with them. In numerous instances these unhappy people, driven to despair, assembled in their own habitations, to which they set fire and consumed themselves with their families. The noble and the mean bound themselves by an oath to extirpate them from the face of the earth by fire and sword. In England this relentless cruelty took particularly the shape of burning innocent people under the name of witches; an infatuation which pervaded all classes from the highest to the lowest, affording a melancholy exemplification of the close alliance between credulity and cruelty.[13] Footnote 13: