In 1692, the whole population of Salem and vicinity were under the influence of a terrible delusion concerning witchcraft. By yielding to the sway of their credulous fancies, allowing their passions to be worked up to a tremendous pitch of excitement, and running into excesses of folly and violence, they have left a dark stain upon their memory, that will awaken a sense of shame, pity, and amazement in the minds of their latest posterity. The principal causes that led to their delusion, and to the proceedings connected with it, were, a proneness to superstition, owing in a great degree to an ignorance of natural science, too great a dependence upon the imagination, and the power of sympathy. In contemplating the errors and sufferings which ignorance of philosophy and science brought upon our fathers, we should be led to appreciate more gratefully, and to improve with more faithfulness, our own opportunities to acquire wisdom and knowledge. But we would not be understood as saying, that mere intellectual cultivation is sufficient to banish every superstition. No. For who were ever better educated than the ancient Greeks and Romans? And yet, who were ever more influenced by a belief in signs, omens, spectres, and witches? We believe that, when the gospel, in its purity and simplicity, shall shed its divine light abroad, and pervade the hearts of men, superstition, in all its dark and hideous forms, will recede, and vanish from the world. In concluding our remarks under this head, we would add that, in a dictionary before us, a witch is designated as a woman, and _wizard_ as a man, that pretends to some power whereby he or she can foretell future events, cure diseases, call up or drive away spirits. The art itself is called _witchcraft_. If this is a correct definition, witches and wizards are quite a numerous class of people in society at the present day; for there are many among us who presume to practise these things. CHAPTER VIII. NECROMANCY AND FORTUNE TELLING. Although the belief in witchcraft has nearly passed away, the civilized world is yet full of necromancers and fortune tellers. The mystic science of "palmistry" is still practised by many a haggard and muttering vagrant.