mercurial nature of the man. If he could make a brilliant point against the priesthood, he took little care to verify its truth. He held Christianity responsible with its life for many antiquated theories which since his time have parted with much of the prestige that had embalmed them in the odor of sanctity, and which are now by no means considered as essential elements of an orthodox creed. His famous, or rather infamous, watchword, which has usually been thought to apply to the founder of the Christian religion, was more probably directed against the pretensions of pontifical authority; but he was always too hasty and careless a thinker to seek out an essential difference under apparent resemblances. Still, in his airy, mocking way, Voltaire was no doubt a lover of humanity. He had a keen sense of the evils of modern society, and a certain half-ironical hope that they were not past redemption. He felt for the "oppressions that were done under the sun," but it was less a feeling of love of the oppressed than hatred of the oppressor. In his application of remedies for the miseries of the race, he is like the Mephistophelean surgeon in the wards of a hospital who approaches his patient with a demonic grin instead of a cheerful smile, and handles the limb which is racked by rheumatic agonies with a cynical laugh at the pain. rather than a tender sympathy with the sufferer.

With all his remarkable gifts of brilliant execution, the nature of Voltaire was essentially meagre and thin, never rising to the loftiest heights of feeling or descending to the profoundest depths of thought. Both his moral and mental qualities were vitiated by an incurable taint of frivolity. His convictions appear to have been sincere; that is, he cherished no doubt of the absurdity which he dragged to light from beneath the mask of plausibility; but we find no traces of the passion for truth, the master sentiment which inspires the soarings of philosophy and fructifies the vigils of science. In this respect he compares unfavorably with Rousseau, whose wildest speculations were marked by intense earnestness, and who pleaded for his convictions, not as the fruits of a nimble fancy, but as vital truths for the regeneration' of the race. Voltaire not only adapted himself to the spirit of the age; he presented its most conspicuous type and characteristic expression; he was the apostle, and prophet, and high priest of the eighteenth century, of which the philosophy was restricted within the domain of the senses, and its ethics a cunning contrivance for the highest degree of selfish enjoyment. The present century has opened a new era in which Voltaire would find himself a stranger and a foreigner. His influence has left but few traces on the intellectual development of the age; his genius for sarcasm and mockery has grown pale before the rising dawn of devout earnestness and the profound seriousness of inquiry which mark the researches of modern science; and the hollow and selfish cynicism of his morality

has been thrown into eclipse, even by the impassioned appeals of Auguste Comte, who, in this respect at least, has approached the borders of the Christian faith, in claiming a regard to the welfare of our neighbor, no less than of ourselves, as the supreme legitimate principle of human action. The spirit of the nineteenth century calls for guides and teachers of different metal from that of Voltaire. Let the mocking spectre repose unmolested in the realms of shade; let no violence be offered to his aged bones as they rest in their laurelled though moss-grown sepulchre, but let him not be honored as the intellectual sovereign of the present or the coming age. The sceptre has departed from the sage of Ferney; let his name be no longer invoked as the law-giver of thought; but while he is dethroned from his intellectual supremacy over a superficial age, let us not fail to do justice to his higher qualities as the armed foe of superstition and the alert champion of the freedom of the human mind.

THE

Charles Wentworth Upham.

BORN in St. John, N. B., 1802. DIED at Salem, Mass., 1875.

THE VICTIMS OF SALEM.

[Salem Witchcraft. 1867.]

HE whole force of popular superstition, all the fanatical propensities of the ignorant and deluded multitude, united with the best feelings of our nature to heighten the fury of the storm. Piety was indignant at the supposed rebellion against the sovereignty of God, and was roused to an extreme of agitation and apprehension in witnessing such a daring and fierce assault by the Devil and his adherents upon the churches andthe cause of the gospel. Virtue was shocked at the tremendous guilt of those who were believed to have entered the diabolical confederacy; while public order and security stood aghast, amidst the invisible, the supernatural, the infernal, and apparently the irresistible attacks that were making upon the foundations of society. In baleful combination with principles, good in themselves, thus urging the passions into wild operation, there were all the wicked and violent affections to which humanity is liable. Theological bitterness, personal animosities, local controversies, private feuds, long-cherished grudges, and professional jealousies, rushed forward, and raised their discordant voices, to swell the horrible din; credulity rose with its monstrous and ever-expanding

form, on the ruins of truth, reason, and the senses; malignity and cruelty rode triumphant through the storm, by whose fury every mild and gentle sentiment had been shipwrecked; and revenge, smiling in the midst of the tempest, welcomed its desolating wrath as it dashed the mangled objects of its hate along the shore.

The treatment of the prisoners, by the administrative and subordinate officers in charge of them, there is reason to apprehend, was more than ordinarily harsh and unfeeling. The fate of Willard prevented expressions of kindness towards them. The crime of which they were accused put them outside of the pale of human charities. All who believed them guilty looked upon them, not only with horror, but hate. To have deliberately abandoned God and heaven, the salvation of Christ, and the brotherhood of man, was regarded as detestable, execrable, and utterly and forever damnable. This was the universal feeling at the time when the fanaticism was at its height; or, if there were any dissenters, they dared not show themselves. What the poor innocent sufferers experienced of cruelty, wrong, and outrage from this cause, it is impossible for words to tell. It left them in prison to neglect, ignominious ill-treatment, and abusive language from the menials having charge of them; it made their trials a brutal mockery; it made the pathway to the gallows a series of insults from an exasperated mob. If dear relatives or faithful friends kept near them, they did it at the peril of their lives, and were forbidden to utter the sentiments with which their hearts were breaking. There was no sympathy for those who died, or for those who mourned.

It may seem strange to us, at this distance of time, and with the intelligence prevalent in this age, that persons of such known, established, and eminent reputation as many of those whose cases have been particularly noticed, could possibly have been imagined guilty of the crime imputed to them. The question arises in every mind. Why did not their characters save them from conviction, and even from suspicion? The answer is to be found in the peculiar views then entertained of the power and agency of Satan. It was believed that it would be one of the signs of his coming to destroy the Church of Christ, that some of the "elect" would be seduced into his service-that he would drag captive in his chains, and pervert into instruments to further his wicked cause, many who stood among the highest in the confidence of Christians. This belief made them more vehement in their proceedings against ministers, church-members, and persons of good repute, who were proved, by the overwhelming evidence of the "afflicted children," and the confessing witches, to have made a compact with the Devil. There is reason to fear that Mr. Burroughs, and all accused persons of the highest reputation before for piety and worth, especially all who had been professors of

religion and accredited church-members, suffered more than others from the severity of the judges and executive officers of the law, and from the rage and hatred of the people. It was indeed necessary, in order to keep up the delusion and maintain the authority of the prosecutions, to break down the influence of those among the accused and the sufferers who had stood the highest, and bore themselves the best through the fiery ordeal of the examinations, trials, and executions.

It is indeed a very remarkable fact, which has justly been enlarged upon by several who have had their attention turned to this subject, that, of the whole number that suffered, none, in the final scene, lost their fortitude for a moment. Many were quite aged; a majority women, of whom some, brought up in delicacy, were wholly unused to rough treatment or physical suffering. They must have undergone the most dreadful hardships, suddenly snatched from their families and homes; exposed to a torrent of false accusations imputing to them the most odious, shameful, and devilish crimes; made objects of the abhorrence of their neighbors, and, through the notoriety of the affair, of the world; carried to and fro, over rugged roads, from jail to jail, too often by unfeeling sub-officials; immured in crowded, filthy, and noisome prisons, heavily loaded with chains, in dungeons; left to endure insufficient attention to necessary personal wants, often with inadequate food and clothing; all expressions of sympathy for them withheld and forbidden, those who ought to have been their comforters denouncing them in the most awful language, and consigning them to the doom of excommunication from the church on earth and from the hope of heaven. Surely, there have been few cases in the dark and mournful annals of human suffering and wrong, few instances of "man's inhumanity to man," to be compared with what the victims of this tragedy endured. Their bearing through the whole, from the arrest to the scaffold, reflects credit upon our common nature. The fact that Wardwell lost his firmness, for a time, ought not to exclude his name from the honored list. Its claim to be enrolled on it was uobly retrieved by his recantation and his manly death.

There is one consideration that imparts a higher character to the deportment of these persons than almost any of the tests to which the firmness of the mind of man has ever been exposed. There was nothing outside of the mind to hold it up, but everything to bear it down. All that they had in this world, all on which they could rest a hope for the next, was the consciousness of their innocence. Their fidelity to this sense of innocence-for a lie would have saved them-their unfaltering allegiance to this consciousness; the preservation of a calm, steadfast, serene mind; their faith and their prayers, rising above the maledictions of a maniac mob, in devotion to God and forgiveness to men, and, as in

the case of Martha Corey and George Burroughs, in clear and collected expressions, this was truly sublime. It was appreciated, at the time, by many a heart melted back to its humanity, and paved the way for the deliverance of the world, we trust forever, from all such delusions, horrors and spectacles. The sufferers in 1692 deserve to be held in grateful remembrance for having illustrated the dignity of which our nature is capable; for having shown that integrity of conscience is an armor which protects the peace of the soul against all the powers that can assail it; and for having given an example, that will be seen of all and in all times, of a courage, constancy, and faithfulness of which all are capable, and which can give the victory over infirmities of age, weaknesses and pains of body, and the most appalling combination of outrages to the mind and heart that can be accumulated by the violence and the wrath of man. Superstition and ignorance consigned their names to obloquy, and shrouded them in darkness. But the day has dawned; the shadows are passing away; truth has risen; the reign of superstition is over; and justice will be done to all who have been true to themselves, and stood fast to the integrity of their souls, even to the death.

The place selected for the executions is worthy of notice. It was at a considerable distance from the jail, and could be reached only by a circuitous and difficult route. It is a fatiguing enterprise to get at it now, although many passages that approach it from some directions have since been opened. But it was a point where the spectacle would be witnessed by the whole surrounding country far and near, being on the brow of the highest eminence in the vicinity of the town. As it was believed by the people generally that they were engaged in a great battle with Satan, one of whose titles was "the Prince of the Power of the Air," perhaps they chose that spot to execute his confederates, because, in going to that high point, they were flaunting him in his face, celebrating their triumph over him in his own realm.

"Witch Hill" is a part of an elevated ledge of rock on the western side of the city of Salem, broken at intervals; beginning at Legg's Hill, and trending northerly. The turnpike from Boston enters Salem through one of the gaps in this ridge, which has been widened, deepened, and graded. North of the turnpike, it rises abruptly to a considerable elevation, called "Norman's Rocks." At a distance of between three and four hundred feet, it sinks again, making a wide and deep gulley; and then, about a third of a mile from the turnpike, it reappears. in a precipitous and, at its extremity, inaccessible cliff, of the height of fifty or sixty feet. Its southern and western aspect, as seen from the rough. land north of the turnpike, is given in the headpiece of the Third Part, at the beginning of this volume. Its sombre and desolate appearance