Had Calef's mind embraced perception that those whom he and nearly all others then deemed the great devil, and smaller ones,--heaven-born, but fallen,--were in fact what all clairvoyants, then and in all subsequent days, have said they resembled,--and what they claimed to be,--that is, men and women originally earth-born, and then earth-emancipated spirits, requiring no more special permission from the Omnipotent One than man does for using the forces of external nature,--could he have perceived that such beings might be the performers of all the marvelous works of witchcraft, he would have become free to admit possible solidity in some Catholic ground; free to have set at least one foot upon it, and having done that, he could have dispensed with that heaven-born devil whom he supposed God commissioned, but whom Mather believed man had to help God commission before he could harass mankind; would have been free to do thus because he then would have seen possibility that other, lesser, or less formidable agents have power to work marvels, would have seen that such could have lifted Margaret Rule, and thus made the words of those who described their wonderful works credible, and exempted himself from attack of Mather at points where the striker was greatest sufferer from the blows. When attacking some barbarous beliefs and customs of Christendom, Calef was very successful, and became a very great public benefactor; but he failed, if such was ever his design, to refute the positive occurrence of such marvelous facts as Mather's descriptions set forth. The general accuracy of the clergyman's allegations was not made questionable by the merchant's writings, even though he did present the man himself in some ludicrous aspects, and often attempted that, when more knowledge of spirit forces and agents than he possessed would have taught him that future time might smile at the smiler and the would-be provoker of smiles. COTTON MATHER. The phases in which the writings of Cotton Mather present their author are so varied, and the estimation in which he has been held by subsequent writers is so diverse, that there is difficulty in characterizing him to one's own satisfaction. He was neither wholly saint, nor wholly sinner; was not unmingled wisdom, nor all folly. We do not very eagerly undertake to outline his character. But since, apart from records of courts, his pen furnished more valuable and more numerous facts pertaining to New England witchcraft in the seventeenth century than have come down from any other pen, there seems to be a call upon us to comment upon his competency and trustworthiness as observer and as reporter or recorder of facts.