If we could ever learn the true explanation of this story, we should probably find that the cry was led by some clever mischievous boy, who wished to apologise to his parents for lying an hour longer in the morning by alleging he had been at Blockula on the preceding night; and that the desire to be as much distinguished as their comrade had stimulated the bolder and more acute of his companions to the like falsehoods; whilst those of weaker minds assented, either from fear of punishment or the force of dreaming over at night the horrors which were dinned into their ears all day.  Those who were ingenuous, as it was termed, in their confessions, received praise and encouragement; and those who denied or were silent, and, as it was considered, impenitent, were sure to bear the harder share of the punishment which was addressed to all.  It is worth while also to observe, that the smarter children began to improve their evidence and add touches to the general picture of Blockula.  “Some of the children talked much of a white angel, which used to forbid them what the devil bid them do, and told them that these doings should not last long.  And (they added) this better being would place himself sometimes at the door betwixt the witches and the children, and when they came to Blockula he pulled the children back, but the witches went in.”

This additional evidence speaks for itself, and shows the whole tale to be the fiction of the children’s imagination, which some of them wished to improve upon.  The reader may consult “An Account of what happened in the Kingdom of Sweden in the years 1669 and 1670, and afterwards translated out of High Dutch into English by Dr. Antony Horneck,” attached to Glanville’s “Sadducismus Triumphatus.”  The translator refers to the evidence of Baron Sparr, Ambassador from the Court of Sweden to the Court of England in 1672; and that of Baron Lyonberg, Envoy Extraordinary of the same power, both of whom attest the confession and execution of the witches.  The King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve.  “His judges and commissioners,” he said, “had caused divers men, women, and children, to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence as was brought before them.  But whether the actions confessed and proved against them were real, or only the effects of strong imagination, he was not as yet able to determine”—­a sufficient reason, perhaps, why punishment should have been at least deferred by the interposition of the royal authority.

We must now turn our eyes to Britain, in which our knowledge as to such events is necessarily more extensive, and where it is in a high degree more interesting to our present purpose.

LETTER VIII.