"Annual" prints is a little gallery,) we feel disposed to particularize St. Mark's Place, Venice, by E. I. Roberts, from Mr. Prout's spirited pencil: the Mountain Torrent, exquisitely engraved by E. Goodall, and painted by W. Purser; every point flashes with romantic beauty: Adelaide, a life-breathing picture of loveliness and delicacy: Poesie, by W. Finden, from Carlo Dolci: and a pair of Indian scenes- the Maid of Rajast hau, and the Halt of the Caravan, with all the warmth and sunset glow of the clime. These six are admirable, and the remaining half dozen are of nearly equal excellence. A few cuts of "The Comic Offering" accompany these plates. The object of this work is to provide our fair countrywomen with "literary mirth," so as to rid society of the blues altogether. We like the design: the cuts are light, sketchy, and pleasant enough. By the way, few things are pleasanter than to join three or four tender-aged females in a good laugh. They have almost uniformly a nice perception of the humorous, and a ready relish for the ludicrous. The other evening at Drury Lane Theatre it did our hearts good to hear the female number of a party in an alto laugh at Liston's drolleries in a broad farce. We laughed too, again and again, although we had almost yawned at the same drollery an evening or two before without the lady accompaniment. The Selector; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. ACKERMANN'S FORGET-ME-NOT FOR 1831. We are unable to wait for the regular appearance of this elegant volumeusually first in the field-but must give the reader a foretaste of the humorous portion of its contents: The Haunted Hogshead- a Yankee "You don't live to Boston, then, do you? No; I calculate you are from the old country, though you speak English almost as well as I do. Now, I'm a Kentucky man, and my father was to Big-bone Creek, in old Kentuck, where he could lather every man in the state; but I could lick my father. Well, when I first came to Boston, I guess, I was a spry, active, young fellow, and cruel tall for my age; for it's a pretty considerable long time ago, I calculate. So first 6 I goes to look out for Uncle Ben-you've heard of him and his brown mar, I reckon-and I finds Uncle Ben at Major Hickory's Universal Transatlantic Hotel, by Charles Bay, in East Boston, taking a grain of mighty fine elegant sangaree, with Judge Dodge and President Pinkney the Rowdey, that built the powerful large log mansion-house in Dog's Misery, in the salt-marshes out beyond Corlear's Hook, in New York. I was always a leetle bit of a favourite with Uncle Ben, and so he says to me→→ 'Jonathan W.' says he-for he calls mé Jonathan W. for short- I'll tell you what it is,' says Uncle Ben; you come out mighty bright this morning, I motion that you take a drop of whisky-toddy or so.' 'Oh yes, Uncle Ben,' says I; 'I should admire to have a grain, if it's handsom.' Considerably superb,' says he; it's of the first grade, I guess; for Major Hickory keeps wonderfully lovely liquors; and I can tell you a genuine good story about them, such as, I guess, you never heard before, since you was raised.' And then he up and told such a tale, that the helps all crowded round him to hear it, and swore it was better than a sermon-so it was. And as you're a strannger from the old country, and seem a right-slick-away sort of a chap, without a bit of the gentleman about you, and are so mighty inquisitive after odd stories, why I don't mind telling it to the 'squire myself; and you may depend upon it that it's as true and genuine as if you had heard it from Uncle Ben himself, or July White, his old woolly-headed nigger. You must know, then, that the Universal Transatlantic Hotel was built an awful long time before I was raised; though my Uncle Ben remembered a powerful grand wood-house that stood there before it, of Colombia, kept by Jacobus Van Soak, which was called the Independent Star who came to Boston from the old, ancient, veteran Dutch settlers of New York. It was some time after fall in the year 77, that a mighty fierce squall of wind blew down some of the wall of the house where the cellar was, quite to the very foundation. I reckon that the old host was a leetle bit madded at this he was; though he bit in his breath, and thought to drive in some new stakes, put up fresh clap-boards, and soon have it all slick and grand again; but, in so doing, as he was taking out the piles underneath the house, what does he find but an awful great big barrel, and a cruel heavy one it was, and smelled like as if it was a hogshead of astonishingly mighty fine old ancient rum. I'll lay you'll never guess how they got it out of the cellar, where they found it— because they never moved it at all, I calculate; though some of the helps and neighbours pulled and tugged at it like natur! But the more they worked, the more the barrel wouldn't move; and my Uncle Ben said that mighty strannge sounds came out of it, just as if it didn't like to be disturbed and brought into the light; and that it swore at the helps and niggers in English and Spanish, Low German and High Dutch. At last, old Van Soak began, to be a leetle bit afeard, and was for covering it up again where he found it, till my Uncle Ben vowed it shouldn't be buried with out his having a drop out of it; for he was a bold, active man, that cared for nothing, and loved a grain of rum, or sangaree, or whisky-toddy, or crank, or any other fogmatic, to his heart, he did. So down in the cellar he sets himself, drives a spigot into the barrel, and draws him a glass of such mighty fine elegant rum, as was never seen before in all Boston. 'Handsom! considerably handsom! mighty smart rum, I guess,' says my Uncle Ben, as he turned it down; mild as mother's milk, and bright as a flash of lightning! By the pipe of St. Nicholas, I must have another grain!' So he filled him another glass; and then Jacobus plucked up heart, and he took a grain or two, and the helps and by standers did the same; and they all swore it was superbly astonishing rum, and as old as the Kaatskill mountains, or the days of Wouter Van Twiller, the first Dutch Governor of New York.Well, I calculate that they might at last be a leetle bit staggered, for the rum ran down like water, and they drank about, thinking you see, that all the strength was gone; and as they were in the dark cellar, they never knew that the day was progressing powerfully fast towards night; for now the barrel was quiet again, and they began to be mighty merry together. But the night came on cruel smart and dark, I reckon, with a pretty terrible loud storm; and so they all thought it best to keep under shelter, and especially where such good stuff was to be had free, gratis, for nothing, into the bargain. Nobody knows now what time it was, when they heard a mighty fierce knocking on the top of the barrel, and presently a hoarse voice from the inside cried out, Yo ho, there, brothers! open the hatchway and let me out!--which made them all start, I calculate, and sent Van Soak reeling into a dark corner of the cellar, considerably out of his wits with fright and stout old rum. Don't open the hogshead,' cried the helps and neighbours, in mighty great fear; 'it's the devil!' 'Potstausend!' says my Uncle Ben-for you must know that he's a roistering High-German—' you're a cowardly crew,' says he, that good liquor's thrown away upon.' 'Thunder and storm!' called out the voice again from the barrel, 'why the Henker don't you unship the hatches? Am I to stay here these hundred years?? Stille! mein Herr!' says my Uncle Ben, says he, without being in the least bit afeared, only a leetle madded and wondered he was; 'behave yourself handsom, and don't be in such a pretty particular considerable hurry. I'll tell you what it is, before you come out, I should like to make an enquerry of you. Who are you? where were you raised? how have you got along in the world? and when did you come here? Tell me all this speedily, or I shall decline off letting you out, I calculate. 'Open the hogshead, brother!' said the man in the tub, says he, and you shall know all, and a pretty considerable sight more, and I'll take mighty good care of you for ever, because you're an awful smart, right-slick-away sort of a fellow, and not like the cowardly land-lubbers that have been sucking away my rum with you.' Hole mich der Teufel!' said my Uncle Ben, but this is a real rig'lar Yankee spark, a tarnation stout blade, who knows what a bold man should be; and so by the Henker's horns, I'll let him out at once.' So, do you see, Uncle Ben made no more ado but broke in the head of the barrel; and what with the storm out of doors, and the laughing and swearing in the cask, a mighty elegant noise there was while he did it, I promise you; but at last there came up out of the hogshead a short, thick - set, truculent, sailorlooking fellow, dressed in the old ancient way, with dirty slops, tarnished gold-laced hat, and blue, stiff-skirted coat, fastened up to his throat with a mighty sight of brass buttons, Spanish steel pistols in a buffalo belt, and a swingeing cutlass by his side. He looked one of the genuine privateer, bulldog-bred, and his broad, swelled face, where it was not red with rage, or the good rum, was black, or purple, marked, I reckon, with a pretty considerable many scars, and his eyes were almost starting out of his head. If the helps and neighbours were afeard before, they were now astounded outright, and 'specially so when the strange sailor got out of his hogshead, and began to lay about him with a fist as hard and as big as a twelve-pounder cannon-shot, crying like a bull-frog in a swamp-'Now I shall clear out! A plague upon ye all for a crew of cowardly, canting, lubberly knaves! I might have been sucked dry, and staid in the barrel for ever, if your comrade had borne no stouter a heart than you did.' Well, I guess, that by knocking down the helps and the neighbours he soon made a clear ship; and then, striding up to my Uncle Ben, who warn't not at all afeard, but was langhing at the fun, he says to him, says he, 'As for you, brother, you're a man after my own kidney, so give us your fin, and we'll be sworn friends, I warrant me.' But as soon as he held out his hand, Uncle Ben thought he saw in it the mark of a red horse-shoe, like a brand upon a nigger, which some do say was the very stamp that the devil put upon Captain Kidd, when they shook hands after burying the treasure at Boston, before he was hanged. Hagel!' says my Uncle Ben, says he, 'what's that in your right hand, my friend?' What's that to you?' said the old sailor. We mariners get many a broad and deep red scar, without talking about, or marking them; but then we get the heavy red gold, and broad pieces along with them, and that's a tarnation smart plaster, I calculate.' Then,' says my Uncle Ben again, says he, may I make an enquerry of you? Where were you raised? and who's your Boss ?' 'Oh!' says the sailor, I was born at Nantucket, and Cape Cod, and all along shore there, as the nigger said; and for the captain I belong to, why he's the chief of all the fierce and daring hearts which have been in the world ever since time began.' And pray, where's your plunder?' says my Uncle Ben to the strannge sailor; and how long have you been in that hogshead?' Over long, I can tell you, brother; I thought I was never going to come out, I calculate. As for my plunder, I reckon I don't show every body my locker; but you're a bold fellow enough, and only give me your paw to close the bargain, and I'll fill your pouch with dollars for life. I've a stout ship, and comrades ready for sea, and there's plunder every where for lads of the knife and pistol, I reckon; though the squeamish Lord Bellamont does watch them so closely.' 'Lord who?' says Uncle Ben, a leetle bit madded and wondered. Why, Lord Bellamont, to be sure,' answered the strannge sailor, the English governor of New England, and admiral of the seas about it, under King William the 6 Third.' 'Governor and admiral in your Teeth!' says my Uncle Ben again; for now his pluck was up, and there warn't no daunting him then; what have we to do with the old country, your kings, or your governors? This is the free city of Boston, in the independent United States of America, and the second year of liberty, seventy-seven, I reckon. And as for your William the Third, I guess he was dead long before I was raised, and I'm no cockerell. I'll tell you what it is, now, my smart fellow, you've got pretty considerably drunk in that rum cask, if you've been there ever since them old ancient days; and, to speak my mind plain, you're either the devil or Captain Kidd. But I'd have you to know I'm not to be scared by a face of clay, if you were both; for I'm an old Kentuck Rowdey, of Town-Fork by the Elkhorn; my breed's half a horse and half an alligator, with a cross of the earthquake! You can't poke your fun at me, I calculate! and so, here goes upon you for a villain, any way!' My Uncle Ben's pluck was now all up, for pretty considerably madded he was, and could bite in his breath no longer; so he flew upon the strannge sailor, and walked into him like a flash of lightning into a gooseberry bush-like a mighty, smart, active man as he was. Hold of his collar laid my Uncle Ben, and I reckon they did stoutly struggle together for a tarnation long time, till at last the mariner's coat gave way, and showed that about his neck there was a halter, as if he had been only fresh cut down from the gibbet! Then my Uncle Ben did start back a pace or two, when the other let fly at him with a pretty considerable hard blow, and so laid him right slick sprawling along upon the ground.Uncle Ben said he never could guess how long they all laid there; but when they came to, they found themselves all stretched out like dead men by the niggers of the house, with a staved rum cask standing beside them. But nowmark you this well-on one of the headboards of the barrel was wrote, 'W. K. The Vulture, 1701,' which was agreed by all to stand for William Kidd, the pirate. And July White, Uncle Ben's woolly-headed old nigger, said he was once a loblolly boy on board that very ship, when she was a sort of pickarooning privateer. Her crew told him that she sailed from the old country the very same year marked on the cask, when Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, and that they brought his body over to be near the treasure that he buried; and as every body knows that Kidd was tied up twice, why, perhaps he never died at all, but was kept alive in that mighty elegant rum cask, till my Uncle Ben let him out again, to walk about New York and Boston, round Charles Bay and Cape Cod, the Old Sow and Pigs, Hellegat, and the Hen and Chickens. There was a fat little Dutch parson, who used to think that this story was only a mighty smart fable, because nobody could remember seeing the pirate besides Uncle Ben; and he would sometimes say, too, that they were all knocked down by the rum, and not by the captain, though he never told Uncle Ben so, I calculate; for he always stuck to it handsomly, and would'nt 'bate a word of it for nobody. When Uncle Ben had finished, he says-Jonathan W.' says he, I'll tell you what it is: I'll take it as a genuine favour if you'll pay Major Hickory for the sangaree and the toddy, and we'll be quits another day.' And so I paid for it every cent; but would you believe it? though I've asked for it a matter of twenty times, and more than that, Uncle Ben never gave me back the trifle that he borrowed of me, from that time to this!'"' THE PAINTER PUZZLED. Like one of those kind substantives In vain I sit and strive to think, A blank my canvass still remains, It still keeps crying' Tint!' But works of art are works indeed, ་ Yet painting pictures some folks think But, zounds! if they could sit in this They'd very soon be glad enough Oh! who can tell the pang it is With all my canvass spread, and yet Till, mad at last to find I am Amongst such empty skullers, SPIRIT OF THE Public Hournals HORRORS OF WITCHCRAFT. HOOD. FROM the earliest ages of Chris tianity, it is certain that the belief of witchcraft existed, and must occasionally have been employed by strong minds as an instrument of terror to the weak; but still the frame of society itself was not shaken; nor, with one exception,* does the crime begin to make any figure in history till the bull of Innocent VIII. in 1414, stirs up the slumbering embers into a flame. Of the extent of the horrors which for two centuries and a half followed, our readers, we suspect, have but a very imperfect idea. We remember, as in a dream, that on this accusation persons were occasionally burnt; and one or two remarkable relations from our own annals, or those of the continent, may occur to our recollection. But of the extent of these judicial murders, no one who has not dabbled a little in the history of dæmonology has any idea. No sooner has Innocent placed his commission of fire and sword in the hands of Sprenger and his brethren, and a regular form of process for the trial of this offence being laid down in that unparalelled performance, the Malleus Maleficarum, which was intended as a theological and juridical commentary on the bull, than the race of witches seems at once to increase and multiply, till it replenishes the earth. The original edict of persecution was enforced by the suc cessive bulls of the infamous Alexander VI., in 1494 (to whom Satan might indeed have addressed the remonstrance 'et tu Brute !') of Leo X. in 1521, and of Adrian VI. in 1522. Still the only effect of these commissions was to ren * The trials at Arras, in 1459. Vide Monstrelet's Chronicle, vol iii p. 84. Ed. Paris: 1572. But these were rather religious prosecutions against supposed beretics, and the crime of witchcraft only introduced as aggravating their offences. der the evil day more formidable, till at last, if we are to believe the testimonies of contemporary historians, Europe was little better than a large suburb or outwork of Pandemonium. One-half of the population was either bewitching or bewitched. Delrio tells us, in his preface, that 500 witches were executed in Geneva in three months, about the year 1515. A thousand, says Bartholomæus de Spina, were executed in one year in the diocese of Como, and they went on burning, at the rate of a hundred per annum, for some time after. In Lorraine, from 1580 to 1595, Remigius boasts of having burnt 900. In France, the multitude of executions about 1520, is incredible; Danæus, in the first part of his dialogue concerning witches, calls it infinitum pene veneficorum numerum.' The well-known sorcerer, Trois Echelles, told Charles IX. while he was at Poictou, the names of 1,200 of his associates. This is according to Mezeray's more reasonable version of the story, for the author of the Journal du regne de Henry III. makes the number 3,000; and Bodinus, not satisfied even with this allowance, adds a cipher, and makes the total return of witches denounced by Trois Echelles 30,000; though he does at the same time express some doubt as to the correctness of this account. In Germany, to which indeed the bull of Innocent bore particular reference, this plague raged to a degree almost inconceivable. Ramberg, Paderborn, Wurtzburg, and Treves, were its chief seats, though for a century and a half after the introduction of the trials under the commission, no quarter of that great empire was free from its baneful influence. It would be wearisome and revolting to go through the details of these atrocities, but 'ab uno disce omnes.' A catalogue of the executions at Wurtzburg, for the period from 1627, to Feb. 1629, about two years and two months, is printed by Hauber, in the conclusion of his third volume of the Acta et Scripta Magica. It is regularly divided into 29 burnings, and contains the names of 157 persons, Hauber stating at the same time that the catalogue is not complete. It is impossible to peruse this list without shuddering with horror. The greater part of this catalogue consists of old women, or foreign travellers, seized, it would appear, as foreigners were at Paris, during the days of Marat and Robespierre it contains children of twelve, eleven, ten, and nine years of age; fourteen vicars of the cathedral, two boys of noble families, the two little sons (söhnlein) of the senator Stolzenburg, a stranger boy, a blind girl, Gobel Babelin, the handsomest girl in Wurtzburg, &c. Sanguine placârunt Deos et virgine cæsa! And yet, frightful as this list of 157 persons executed in two years appears, the number is not (taking the population of Wurtzburg into view) so great as in the Lindheim process from 1660 to 1664. For in that small district, consisting at the very utmost of six hundred inhabitants, thirty persons were condemned and put to death, making a twentieth part of the whole population consumed in four years. How dreadful are the results to which these data lead! If we take 157 as a fair average of the executions at states that the list was by no means Wurtzburg (and the catalogue itself there in the course of the century precomplete), the amount of executions ceding 1628 would be 15,700. We know that from 1610 to 1660 was the great epoch of the witch trials, and that so late as 1749 Maria Renata was executed in the interval between 1660 and that at Wurtzburg for witchcraft; and though of these horrors had diminished, there date, it is to be hoped that the number can be little doubt that several thousands fall to be added to the amount already stated. If Bamberg, Paderborn, Treves, and the other Catholic bishoprics, whose zeal was not less ardent, furnished an equal contingent; and if the Protestants, as we know, actually vied with them in the extent to which these cruelties were carried, the number of victims from the date of Innocent's bull to the final extinction of these prosecutions, must considerably exceed 100,000 in Germany." English Worthies. If we turn to 1651, we find our English Jacob Böhme, Pordage, giving an account of visions which must have been exactly of the same kind, arising from an excited state of the brain, with the most thorough conviction of their reality. His Philadelphian disciples, Jane Leade, Thomas Bromley, Hooker, Sabberton, and others, were indulged, on the first meeting of their society, with a vision of unparalleled splendour. The princes and powers of the infernal world passed in review before them, sitting in coaches, surrounded with dark clouds, and drawn by a cortege of lions, dragons, tigers, and bears: then fol Christoph von Ranzow, a nobleman of Hol, stein, burnt eighteen at once on one on his estates. Westph. Monum, Inedita, Tom. iii. |