human
and dark _séance_ performers, who supply writing done by invisible hands, and cause heads to be thumped by malignant imps in the shape of discordant fiddles, trumpets, and tambourines. This modern necromancery, it must not be forgotten, is performed under aristocratic patronage, and _for a monetary consideration_ which would have rejoiced greatly the hearts that beat wildly beneath the weather-worn skins of poor old Dame Demdike and her compeers. Truly, popular superstition, as well as tradition, is
gpt
Forms, manners, and customs may change externally, but it requires the lapse of long, long periods of time to totally eradicate from the imagination of an entire people _all faith_ in any mystery, however absurd to modern scientific minds, to which their ancestors once clung with simple earnest truthfulness. The witchcraft of the old Demdike and Chattox school, in all its essential features, is derived from the early superstitions of our Eastern Aryan progenitors. Nay, the mystical character of many of its more vulgar
human
such as cauldrons, besoms, sieves, hares, cats, &c., was recorded with all due solemnity in the Rig Vedas of the Southern Aryans, some three thousand two hundred years ago. Pliny says that, in his day, the Britons celebrated magic rites with so many similar ceremonies that one might suppose them to have been instructed therein by the Persians. In the Britain of our day, after passing through both Keltic, Teutonic, Greek, and Roman channels, these superstitions yet exist either in the traditionary lore of the rustic population, or the more elevated art forms with which poetry, sculpture, and painting have clothed them. The diamond crystal and the charred willow branch are near relatives of the carbon family; and it may truly be said that a similar relationship exists between the weird
gpt
of the wild moorlands or the lonely mountain glens and the noble artistic creations of a Shakspere, a Walter Scott, an Ovid, a Homer, an Apelles, or a Phidias. Truly,
human
of Northern nations as