and played upon them, but after that he was mightily sick and vomited sadly”--but there were no pins and needles! She further told how four gentlemen, privily stored away in the buttery and coal-hole, witnessed Hathaway’s gastronomic feats. Serjeant Jenner for the defence called several witnesses, who testified to the prisoner’s abstinence from food for quite miraculous periods. The force of this evidence was much shaken by the pertinent cross-examination of the judge, who asked the jury in his summing up, “Whether you have any evidence to induce you to believe it to be in the power of all the witches in the world, or all the Devils in Hell, to fast beyond the usual time that nature will allow: they cannot invert the order of nature.” The jury, “without going from the bar, brought him in Guilty.” He was sentenced to a fine, a sound flogging, the pillory, and imprisonment with hard labour. The last conviction for Witchcraft in England was that of Jane Wenham, at Hertford, in 1712. She was respited by the judge and afterwards pardoned. The case is not here reported. These trials throw a curious light on the ideas of the time; unfortunately they exhibit human nature in some of its worst aspects. The victims were women, old, poor, helpless, and the persecution to which they were subjected was due partly to superstition, partly to that delight in cruelty so strong in the natural man. The “confessions” of the accused are easily accounted for. The popular beliefs so impressed their imaginations that they believed in their own malevolent power, also the terror they inspired lacked not charm, it procured them consideration, some money, even some protection. Not seldom their “confessions” were merely terrified assents to statements made about them by witch-finders, clergymen, and justices. And the judges? Sometimes, alas! they callously administered a law in which they had no belief. Is there not still something inexplicable? Well, such things as mesmerism, thought-reading, and so forth exhibit remarkable phenomena. A former age ascribed all to Satan: we believe them natural though we cannot as yet solve all their riddles. I must add that the ancient popular horror of witches is partly explained by the hideous and grotesque details given at the trials, but those obscenities I dare not reproduce. A Pair of Parricides The State Trials--The Dry Bones of Romance--Pictures of the Past--Their Value for the Present--The Case of Philip Standsfield--The Place of the Tragedy--The Night of the Murder--The Scene in Morham Kirk--The Trial--“The Bluidy Advocate--Mackenzie”--The Fate of Standsfield--The Case of Mary Blandy, Spinster--The Villain of the Piece--The Maid’s Gossip--Death of Mr. Blandy--The “Angel” Inn at Henley-on-Thames--The Defence--Miss Blandy’s Exit.