Her case must be catalogued among the marvelous, though the proving of the nature and character of her offense, erroneously so called, was unattended by the absurdities and cruelties which attach to many cases where spectral evidence was admitted, and barbarous processes were resorted to for extorting a plea to an indictment. As a witchcraft trial, hers was exceptionally inoffensive to modern views of propriety. The testimony throughout was based on experiences and observations by external senses, and would be admissible in any court and any age. The extra-common powers or susceptibilities of the accused were clearly proved. Therefore the monstrous creed which then blinded and tyrannized over all minds took her life legitimately. Good men, humane men, could do no less than pronounce her guilty before the law and before that creed which engendered the law. Before we denounce or even disparage those who condemned her, let us pause for reflection. "A creed sometimes remains outside of the mind, incrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature, manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in."--_John Stuart Mill._ We requote as follows:-- "The nobler tendency of culture, and above all of scientific culture, is to honor the dead without groveling before them--to profit by the past without sacrificing it to the present." The early colonists of the old Bay State deserve to be held in high esteem and admiration; all noble sentiments conspire to honor them. Culture and enlightenment will be derelict to their high calling if they traduce that people before they turn thought backward through two centuries, scan the imported creeds then prevalent here, observe circumstances then existing, and enter into feelings and views then bearing resistless sway. Having done that, let them calmly determine whither duty led true-hearted, clear-headed, strong, courageous, and devout men in relation to witchcraft matters. Many old beliefs may be discarded; many mistakes and errors of the past be shunned. We are not called to grovel before our ancestors; but shame, shame be to us if we brand them with egregious "credulity and infatuation," solely or mainly because their senses perceived and they described events which we cannot explain if we grant to them clear, sagacious, and well-balanced intellects for reporting facts which they observed. They were our peers in most good qualities and powers, and deserve our admiration. Did we know the spot where the dust of Charlestown's gifted physician reposes, we might desire to see a modest monument there bearing the following inscription:--