weeks and months at the very centre and heart of Puritanism, by 'the most straitest sect' of that solemn order of men. Pastors, deacons, church-members, doctors of divinity, college professors, officers of state, crowded, day after day, to behold feats which have never been surpassed on the boards of any theater; which rivaled the most memorable achievements of pantomimists, thaumaturgists, and stage-players, and made considerable approaches toward the best performances of ancient sorcerers and magicians, or modern jugglers and mesmerizers." The brilliancy, fervor, and literary finish of that description of the public enthusiasm and bewilderment are truly worthy of admiration, while the picture is not, and probably could not be, overwrought. Still we must doubt the competency of the alleged authors of the excitement to perform the bewildering and frenzying acts ascribed to them. We have heard from of old, and could quasi believe, that mountains in labor brought forth mice. But it is only rarely one has earnestly and fervently sought and striven to entice the reading public to admit conviction that a dozen _enceinte_ mice could enwomb and give birth to a vast and terrific volcano. One must needs look in wondering astonishment upon that keenness of vision which, at the middle of the nineteenth century, penetrating through mold and debris which have, through a century and three fourths, been gathering over momentous events, sees clearly that they were the genuine offspring of youthful "cunning and imposture," even while the owner of such vision himself perceived that neither the learned, talented, and keen Deodat Lawson, nor any other one of all the many able and sagacious men who were lookers-on at the amazing feats while they were transpiring, _dreamed_ that the actings and sufferings could have been the results of cunning and imposture. The day of Lawson and his companion observers was too near the facts for any dreams about them. It required a peculiarly plastic modern brain, and the intervening lapse of eightscore years, for the generation and birth of such a _dream_. The reason of its non-appearance in 1692 is very plain. Known facts then left no vacancy in the brains of that day for storage of the fictions of dreamland.