of those brave men and women who, in the sixteenth century, enriched with their blood and ashes the soil from whence was to spring our political and religious freedom.  But no whit of admiration, hardly a glimmer of pity, is even casually evinced for those poor creatures who, neglected, despised, and abhorred, were, at the same time, dying the same agonizing death, and passing through the torment of the flames to that “something after death—­the undiscovered country,” without the sweet assurance which sustained their better-remembered fellow-sufferers, that beyond the martyr’s cross was waiting the martyr’s crown.  No such hope supported those who were condemned to die for the crime of witchcraft:  their anticipations of the future were as dreary as their memories of the past, and no friendly voice was raised, or hand stretched out, to encourage or console them during that last sad journey.  Their hope of mercy from man was small—­strangulation before the application of the fire, instead of the more lingering and painful death at most;—­their hope of mercy from Heaven, nothing; yet, under these circumstances, the most auspicious perhaps that could be imagined for the extirpation of a heretical belief, persecution failed to effect its object.  The more the Government burnt the witches, the more the crime of witchcraft spread; and it was not until an attitude of contemptuous toleration was adopted towards the culprits that the belief died down, gradually but surely, not on account of the conclusiveness of the arguments directed against it, but from its own inherent lack of vitality.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Mr. Lecky’s elaborate and interesting description of the demise of the belief in the first chapter of his History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe.]

83.  The history and phenomena of witchcraft have been so admirably treated by more than one modern investigator, as to render it unnecessary to deal exhaustively with a subject which presents such a vast amount of material for arrangement and comment.  The scope of the following remarks will therefore be limited to a consideration of such features of the subject as appear to throw light upon the supernaturalism in “Macbeth.”  This consideration will be carried out with some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological learning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into the interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who play such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian paganism.  It will be the object of the following pages to illustrate the contemporary belief concerning witches and their powers, by showing that nearly every characteristic point attributed to the sisters has its counterpart in contemporary witch-lore; that some of the allusions, indeed, bear so strong a resemblance to certain events that had transpired not many years before “Macbeth” was written, that it is not improbable that Shakspere was alluding to them in much the same off-hand, cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when writing “King Lear.”