their notions of immediate information, and precluded the unpleasant and toilsome necessity for delving on speculation for the discovery of their desired object.  But, alas, divining rods, like dogs, have had their day.  The want of faith in the operators, or the growth of a new and obstinate assortment of hazel twigs, threw discredit on the mummery and the mummers.  Still the passion existed; and in no case was it more observable than in that of the celebrated witch-finder.  An actual presence at the demoniacal rites of the broom-riding sisterhood would have been attended with much danger and considerable difficulty; indeed, it has been asserted that the visitors, like those at Almack’s, were expected to be balloted for, ticketed, and dressed in a manner suiting the occasion.  Any infringement of these rules must have been at the proper peril of the contumacious infringer; and as it is more than probable some of the brooms carried double, there was a very decent chance of the intruder’s discovering himself across one of the heavy-tailed and strong-backed breed, taking a trip to some distant bourne, from whence that compulsory aerial traveller would doubtless never have returned.  Still witches were evils; and proof of evil is what the law seeks to enable evil’s suppression.  Now and again one of these short-cut gentry, by some railroad system of mental calculation, discovered certain external marks or moles that at a glance betrayed “the secret, dark, and midnight hags;” and the witch-finding process was instantaneously established.  The outward and visible sign of their misdeeds authorised the further proceeding necessary for the clear proof of their delinquencies:  thus the pinchings, beatings, starvings, trials, hangings, and burnings were made the goal of the shortest of all imaginable short cuts; and old women who had established pin manufactories in the stomachs of thousands, instead of receiving patents for their inventions, divided the honour of illuminating the land with the blazing tar-barrels provided for their peculiar use and benefit.  Whether it was that aerial gambols on unsaddled and rough-backed broomsticks grew tiresome, or the small profit attending the vocation became smaller, or that all the elderly ladies with moles, and without anything else, were burnt up, we can’t pretend to say; but certain it is, the art of witchcraft fell into disrepute.  Corking, minikin, and all description of pins, were obliged to be made in the regular way; and cows even departed this world without the honour of the human immolations formerly considered the necessary sacrifice for the loss of their inestimable lives.  Since the abovetimes Animal Magnetism and Mesmerism have followed in the wake of what has been; and now, just as despair, already poised upon its outstretched sable wings, was hovering for a brief moment previous to making its final swoop upon the External Doctrine, Peter—­our Peter—­Peter Laurie—­the great, the glorious, the aldermanic Laurie—­makes despair, like the Indian Juggler who swallowed himself, become the victim of its own insatiate maw.