hags are there assembled round a cauldron, preparing their infernal beverage. They wind up their enchantments by a song, of which the words,

"Black spirits and white; red spirits and gray;

Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may,"

are found both in Middleton and Shakspeare. In The Witch the song is continued, and the last lines are,

"Round, around, around, about, about;

All ill come running in, all good keep out!"

and the vessel is then filled with the filthy ingredients of which the charms of witches were composed. In Macbeth we have

"Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison'd entrails throw,-"

and the mixture of the hellish porridge proceeds.

In my endeavour to ascertain whence Shakspeare derived his extensive knowledge of the principles and practice of witchcraft, I have

themselves are elevated into dignity: they are the oracles of fate; they proclaim the destinies of kings and kingdoms; and, labouring in the cause of the demon whom they serve, their object is no less than the alienation from God of a soul, as yet, of pure and spotless innocence.

been utterly unable to trace his steps. It is not reasonable to doubt his knowledge of such books of his time as embodied the popular superstition, but I could never detect more than such casual coincidences as will necessarily occur between two authors who treat of the same subject. Of the ancients, he had undoubtedly read Ovid in Golding's translation; and as an illustrative instance, may be adduced the general, but not particular, resemblance between the enchantments of the witches round the cauldron, and the preparation of the charm that renewed the youth of Æson.

"The med'cine seething all the while a wallop in a pan Of brasse, to spirt and leape aloft and gather froth began. There boyled she the roots, seeds, flowres, leaves, stalks and juice togither,

Which from the fields of Thessalie she late had gathered thither :

She cast in also precious stones, fetcht from the furthest

East,

And which the ebbing ocean washt fine gravell from the

West;

She put thereto the deaw that fell upon a Monday night:
And flesh and fethers of a witch, a cursed odious wight,
Which in the likeness of an owle abroad a nights did flie,
And infants in their cradles change, or sucke them that they

dye.

The fingles also of a wolfe, which when he list could take
The shape of man, and when he list, the same again forsakę;
And from the river Cyniphis which is in Lybie land,
She had the fine sheere scaled filmes of water-snayles at hand.

And of an endlesse lived hert the liver had she got;
To which she added of a crow that then had lived not
So, little as nine hundred yeares, the head and bill also."

The rites of witchcraft combined a large portion of the horrors with which the superstitious depravity of man had encumbered the awful name of religion. Their celebration in gloomy caverns, in the darkness and silence of the night; the evocation of the dead from the peaceful grave; the awful fire; the iron and brazen vessels; the charms; the bloody sacrifices and beastly offerings; the horrid dance and solemn invocation, are all to be met with in the systems of oriental, classic, and gothic superstition: the witchcraft of modern times presented a faint and distorted image of the worship paid to the great and terrible triplicated goddess of paganism, who, whether as Proserpine, Diana, or Luna, or as Ceridwen or Crierwy, was invariably deemed the presiding deity over magic, and perpetually evoked in its practice. Incantations charmed her from her sphere; her eclipses were ascribed to the power of enchantment, and the moon was the mirror in which her votaries read all things that were to happen for a thousand years. Hence the belief that demons invoked in low and murmuring voices would disclose the events of futurity by the reflection of images,

which the skilful interpreted, on glass and other speculums, or on the surfaces of springs, and vessels of pure water, opposed to a glare of light. Among other pretensions of modern magicians was their ability to read the events of futurity in a magic mirror: the celebrated friar Bacon was said to be possessed of one of these invaluable articles which displayed to him all that was pas sing within a circuit of fifty miles. Jewels, crystals, beryls, and steel plates highly polished, were in use as well as glasses, and the method in which they were used was this: the conjurer repeated the necessary charms and adjurations, with the Litany, or an invocation peculiar to the Spirit he wished to call; and the answer forthwith appeared on the speculum in types or figures: sometimes, though rarely, the spirits themselves spoke articulately.

Macbeth might well have apprehended that the train of shadows which passed in review before him would stretch "out to the crack of doom" had the "line" been carried only down a quarter of the distance that separated Banquo and King James; but the magic speculum enabled Shakspeare to cut the exhibition short, and yet communicate the information he desired:

"The eighth appears, who bears a glass,
Which shows me many more; and some I see,
That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry;
Horrible sight! - Now, I see, 'tis true;

For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me,
And points at them for his."

So much has been said, in Hamlet, respecting darkness, and its connection with superstition, and deeds of wickedness and horror, that allusion to it here, is only necessary for the purpose of remarking how completely as a master, Shakspeare wrote upon this subject, interweaving in the form of allusion, those parts of it which demanded not a prominence more remarkable :

"How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags ?” is the prefatory address of Macbeth to his conjuration of the witches by "that which they profess." He advances to the chamber of his kinsman in the character of a murderer, and his horror-struck heart recoils at the reflection that

"Now o'er the one half world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost."