volved in the guilt Isobel Crawford. This poor woman was also apprehended, and, in great terror, confessed the imputed crime, retorting the principal blame on Margaret Barclay herself. The trial was then appointed to proceed, when Alexander Dean, the husband of Margaret Barclay, appeared in court with a lawyer to act in his wife's behalf. Apparently, the sight of her husband awakened some hope and desire of life, for when the prisoner was asked by the lawyer whether she wished to be defended, she answered, "As you please. But all I have confessed was in agony of torture; and, before God, all I have spoken is false and untrue." To which she pathetically added, "Ye have been too long in coming." The jury, unmoved by these affecting circumstances, proceeded upon the principle that the confession of the accused could not be considered as made under the influence of torture, since the bars were not actually upon her limbs at the time it was delivered, although they were placed at her elbow, ready to be again laid on her bare shins, if she was less explicit in her declaration than her auditors wished. On this nice distinction, they in one voice found Margaret Barclay guilty. It is singular that she should have again returned to her confession after sentence, and died affirming it; the explanation of which, however, might be, either that she had really in her ignorance and folly tampered with some idle spells, or that an apparent penitence for her offence, however imaginary, was the only mode in which she could obtain any share of public sympathy at her death, or a portion of the prayers of the clergy and congregation, which, in her circumstances, she might be willing to purchase, even by confession of what all believed respecting her. It is remarkable, that she earnestly entreated the magistrates that no harm should be done to Isobel Crawford, the woman whom she had herself accused. This unfortunate young creature was strangled at the stake, and her body burned to ashes, having died with many expressions of religion and penitence. It was one fatal consequence of these cruel persecutions, that one pile was usually lighted at the embers of another. Accordingly, in the present case, three victims having already perished by this accusation, the magistrates, incensed at the nature of the crime, so perilous as it seemed to men of a maritime life, and at a loss of several friends of their own, one of whom had been their principal magistrate, did not forbear to insist against Isobel Crawford, inculpated by Margaret Barclay's confession. A new commission was granted for her trial, and after the assistant minister of Irvine, Mr. David Dickson, had made earnest prayers to God for opening her obdurate and closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of iron bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks, as in the case of Margaret Barclay. She endured this torture with incredible firmness, since she did "admirably, without any kind of din or exclamation, suffer above thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking thereat in any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady." But in shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing them to another part of her shins, her constancy gave way; she broke out into horrible cries (though not more than three bars were then actually on her person) of "Tak aff! tak aff!" On being relieved from the tor ture, she made the usual confession of all that she was charged with, and of a connection with the Devil which had subsisted for several years. Sentence was given against her accordingly. After this had been denounced, she openly denied all her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance, offering repeated interruptions to the minister in his prayer, and absolutely refusing to pardon the executioner. This tragedy happened in the year 1613, and recorded as it is very particularly, and at considerable length, forms the most detailed specimen I have met with, of a Scottish trial for witchcraft,-illustrating, in particular, how poor wretches abandoned, as they conceived, by God and the world, deprived of all human sympathy, and exposed to personal tortures of an acute description, became disposed to throw away the lives that were rendered bitter to them, by a voluntary confession of guilt, rather than struggle hopelessly against so many evils. Four persons here lost their lives, merely because the throwing some clay models into the sea, a fact told differently by the witnesses who spoke of it, corresponded with the season, for no day was fixed, in which a particular vessel was lost. It is scarce possible that, after reading such a story, a man of sense can listen for an instant to the evidence founded on confessions thus obtained, which has been almost the sole reason by which a few individuals, even in modern times, have endeavored to justify a belief in the existence of witchcraft. The result of the judicial examination of a criminal, when extorted by such means, is the most suspicious of all evidence, and even when voluntarily given, is scarce admissible, without the corroboration of other testimony. ONE WORD MORE. TO E. B. B. BY ROBERT BROWNING. I. HERE they are, my fifty men and women Taming my are my nom mished Take them, Love, the book * and me together. II. Rafael made a century of sonnets, Made and wrote them in a certain volume Else he only used to draw Madonnas: These, the world might view, but One, the volume. Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. Did she live and love it all her lifetime? Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, Die, and let it drop beside her pillow Referring to his volume of Poems entitled "Men and Women." III. You and I would rather read that volume, IV. You and I will never read that volume. Cried, and the world with it, "Ours the treasure!" Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. V. Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, |