From The Spectator.
THE SORCERESS.

the age of despair, especially in France and Spain. There shone no ray of light in that gloomy night; there arose no hope of deliverance for the poor oppressed. The people were famishing, perishing in crowds from leprosy and pestilence, which carried off onethird of the population. As for the morals of that much-vaunted chivalrous society, M. Michelet forcibly depicts its utter depravity: "First, adultery has become a real institution, regular, recognized, valued, sung, celebrated in all the monuments of noble and middle-class literature, in all the poems

M. MICHELET's book La Sorcière, after selling for a week at a rate which puzzled the printers, has been prohibited throughout France. We can only wonder that it was allowed to appear at all, for a more violent blow was never struck at the Catholic faith, even by M. Michelet. Driven wild, apparently, by the recent development of ultramontane ideas, M. Michelet has propounded a new theory of the origin of the belief in what he calls sorcery, and Englishmen usually style witchcraft. This practice, and fabliaux; second, incest is the general which forms so large an element in the his- condition of the serfs, a condition manifest tory of the Middle Ages, was, he contends, in the Sabbat,' which is their only freedom, produced by the combined oppression of the their true life, where they show themselves lords and priests,-lords who took from the as they are." The peasant women are "serfs people even the possibility of virtue, and in body," the playthings of the lord and his priests who sentenced them to hell for not varlets, deprived even of the right to rehaving what it was impossible they should main chaste and pure. "Future times will possess. He believes that the "Sabbat" not easily believe," says M. Michelet, with was real, that the serfs, in their despair alike of earth and heaven, fell back for relief upon Devil-worship and outbursts of frantic licentiousness, that the confessions were not wild dreams, but facts, and that, in short, sorcery was in its origin a rebellion of despair against a persecuting Church, and a horrible system of society. His view deserves an analysis.

On the solitary heath, far away from the dwellings of men, the poor serfs and villeins celebrate the hideous saturnalia of the "Witch Sabbat." The congregation is immense. Lancre speaks of an assembly of 12,000; Spina mentions one of 6,000 in a small borough. They exaggerate, in their coarse orgies, the odious rights which feudal law, give to their lords over their wives and daughters. They mock the Latin Mass, which, to them, is incomprehensible, by the Black Mass, which is recited backwards. They imitate and ridicule, in their own crude, obscene way, the traditional accolade of knighthood. By a figurative union with the Evil One, the sorceress, high-priestess of the indecent ceremony, gives a mock consecration to the vile orgies; and all deliver themselves up to the Devil out of hatred of a system and a religion which crush them mercilessly in this world, and devote them to everlasting torture in the world to come.

The Middle Age was, truly and literally,

genuine feeling, "that, in the midst of Christian nations, law has done what it never did among ancient slavery, that it wrote formally down, as a right, the keenest insult which can wound the heart of man." Mediæval apologists in vain affirm that le droit du Seigneur was a mere pretence for levying black mail. Such a redeeming tax would be infamous enough; but unhappily there was but too often a prestation en nature enacted and the Fors du Béarn even assert positively that "the first-born of the peasant is always to be reputed the son of the lord, as he may proceed from him."

Is it then to be wondered at that the down-trodden villein sought a momentary physical and moral intoxication amidst the wild dances, the savage proceedings and coarse raillery of witch-meetings? Could there arise a refined feeling in the breast of beings whom the priests and the lords degraded to the state of mere beasts of burden? Of religion they were simply taught that portion which modern Christians have long ago renounced as idle, senseless superstition. During the Middle Age, Christianity exercised little humanizing influence over the lower classes, who did not understand its sublime tenets. The old philosophers and the old philosophy had been obliterated from the face of the earth, together with the temples and the schools. Vandalism reigned supreme. "There never was a

tremor through timorous souls, and put into the hands of the weak and the despised the formidable weapon of awe. Still the inborn longing for the marvellous, and the instinctive terror inspired by every unexplained phenomenon, are inadequate to account for the triumphs of witchcraft, which took, as

more violent revolution," says M. Michelet. tion could not but endure which the priests "Awe and the crushing of every natural as- of the Catholic religion know so well how piration were alone preached to the people; to foster; which turned out, as M. Michelet where can we find a single thought capable has it, a true gold-mine for exorcising monks of captivating the masses?" "Ancient and arbitrary judges, which sent a chilling gods, enter your sepulchre! Gods of love, of life, of light, vanish! take the cowl of the monk. Virgins, become nuns. Wives, abandon your husbands; or if you look after the house, remain cold sisters to them. A huge blank had been produced in the world. Who filled it? The Christians tell it- the demon, the demon everywhere; it were, root in the very soil of Europe. It ubique dæmon!" Death, the grim fiend whose terrors had at least been softened down by the poetical legends of pagan mythology, was not comforted by the great idea of immortality; the life hereafter and the tortures of hell had become synonymous terms to the lost of this world. "It seems almost that they endeavored to flatten the soul, to make it narrow and tight, after the measure of a coffin. The sepulture of serfs between four boards of fir-tree is likely to conduce to that. It troubles us with an idea of stifling. If he whom they have put in it comes back in dreams, it is no longer as a light and bright shadow in the Elysian halo; he is a tortured slave, the wretched game of a claw-footed, hellish cat."

Such an oppressive despair could not but produce, at first, a deadly dulness, and afterwards a riotous rebellion against God and man. The sorceress had unspeakable attractions for the serf; she was his mistress in every sense, his prophetess, his comforter, his confidant, his physician. Women were drawn to the "Sabbat " by the hope of the meal which was provided for them; a rare occurrence in the sad life of the poor creatures. They paid for their fare by sterile embraces, for to give birth to children was considered a dire misfortune. Such was the state of society produced by the absolute, unopposed sway of Catholicism; the greatest blessing of mankind, maternity, had become a bitter curse, but a stop to the increase of the population is always a sure forerunner of national decline, and the Renaissance and the Reformation are happily at hand, ready to give birth to a new world.

The belief in sorcery lasted long after Devil-worship had ceased, for it was too profitable to be relinquished. A supersti

has long been looked upon as a remnant, a legacy of paganism; and undoubtedly, he thinks, we may trace to that source the Catholic saints, the goblins, elves, and sprites of popular legends. But sorcery itself was the solemn protestation of the serfs against feudal oppression.

The unfairness of this terrible description will be recognized by all who have studied the history of that bad period. The Catholic priesthood was doubtless corrupted, and used without remorse their most powerful weapon-terror; but to say that Christianity had lost its power is to deny the primary facts of history. Whatever of good, or noble, or gentle there was in that evil age, arose from the slight remaining influence of that creed which ultimately, by commencing the Crusades, broke up a state of society which for a time-M. Michelet's "Middle Age" is far too vague-threatened the very existence of European mankind. The priesthood might be evil, but the belief in Christ could, so far as it was entertained, only inof which men, degraded to savagery, were troduce that very element of hope for want flying for comfort to an accursed superstition.

It is not, however, to criticise M. Michelet that we have analyzed his book, but to point out a political fact. The alliance of the Church with the Empire is creating again the terrible phenomenon of the eighteenth century, a fanaticism directed against religion. Every form of scepticism is deepening in color and increasing in bitterness, and while good men weep over blasphemies like that involved in the Bishop of Poictiers' sermon on the "Relic of Charroux," the indifferent are becoming enemies to the Church, and men like M. Michelet are prepared for the second time to shriek out

Ecrasez l'infame!" The hatred of the soutane is growing, till there is danger of hate to the Christian robe.

From The Saturday Review.
UNRESTRAINT.

things in a way he finds impossible in practice, talking, moving, handling, acting in exact response and accordance with the impression of the moment - where nothing comes between the occasion and the exact and full treatment and recognition of it. The drama always appeals for its truth, not to our manners, but to this region of fancied action and expression; and as its scenes engage our interest, we think it natural to do things which we never saw done in our lives, and are perfectly sure we never shall see, because we have a hidden world where men, and we among them, do such things, and indulge (and we know it is an indulgence, though we never try it) in our swing of emotions, and show, at least to ourselves, what we are.

WE wear chains to which we are so used that most men never know that they wear them, but which are unmistakable fetters notwithstanding. They are chains partly put upon us, partly which we hang about ourselves, and which have an infinite deal to do with the appearance we make to others, causing in a great measure that discrepancy which almost universally exists between a man's idea of himself and the world's idea of him. We speak of the restraints of education and habit, not moral restrictions which apply to all alike, but social and class restraints-those laws of society which interfere with mere individual development. There are people who are under perpetual restraint-such universal restraint that we Those who run counter to the general law cannot be quite sure they are restrained at all. of restraint, if they are amiable, have comIt is, however, an assumption, probably false, monly more feeling, such as it is, than wit or that every one is unrestrained with his wife; judgment. They have expansiveness withand hence one main bliss of the conjugal out perception, and are exuberant and unrelation. Most men are unrestrained with restrained because of some conspicuous want their intimate friends, and restrained with which cuts them off from our sympathy. We the world. The ideal gentleman is made up do not know what to make of so much demof nice gradations of these restraints and re-onstration they embarrass us with dislaxations. The clown and the uncivilized are plays and effusions which painfully remind without either voluntary or imposed re-us of the excesses of the inferior animals. straints, but are victims of the ignominious restraints of sheepishness. And there are people answering to none of these, who have no restraints, either natural or imposed, or from diffidence, clownish or otherwise-who are never hindered from doing what the heart or inclination suggests as agreeable to do by any habit or social influence whatever -but whose actions respond to some inner impulse uniformly obeyed, and who know not the yoke of convention. This is a state not easy to realize, yet probably all of usual unrestraint takes some gross form, and have experienced it, and acted under it, at some period or another, when startled out of the proprieties of custom by some sudden wrench to our ordinary habits. All can recall some time when we have known a momentary enlargement from the self-control of common life-a wild, irresponsible enjoyment of liberty. But, beyond actual experience, any one consulting his hours of day-guished by popular intellectual powers, we dream and reverie must be conscious of an inner world of unrestraint wherein he gives way to the warmth of impulse, the romance of feeling, where whim, humor, and liking have their free course-where he conducts

We like our dog for overdoing his transports whenever he is fond or pleased; we admire and even reverence the hen in all the selfforgetting fuss of maternal solicitude; but we do not like the men and women whom we know to be natural in this way, because it sinks them in the scale of intellectual beings. If unrestraint shows itself in a character of mere average qualities, it sinks the man lower in the social scale. That selfishness which in its degree belongs to all habit

he is shunned, as falling below the standard. As unrestraint is not natural to a man bred in society where others control themselves, there is always an hypothesis to account for it, implying something lower than humanity, as in these cases, or higher, or in some wav distinct from it. Whenever unrestraint marks some not unamiable character distin

may be certain it will assist to gain him social acceptance, and even affection, and will greatly add to his prestige with common minds; for it is then taken as a sign of superiority, and assumed to be the necessary

eccentricity of genius. Wit and humor are son comes up to it beyond any man we know.

often accompanied by an extreme unrestraint Even his intellect is of this stamp, marked of habit and manner; and instances of it by power whose chief end was to show itself are invariably quoted as evidences of a spark-a hazy volume of memory, huge rhapsoling, genial, overflowing nature. Careless dies of poetry, torrents of vituperation, exvehemence, impulses of kindness, scorn, pas-cessive praise and blame, vehement partision, disregard of consequences, contempt of conventionalities, odd ways—all unreservedly expressed and indulged — are so many appeals to the tenderness of admirers, and vouchers for the genuineness of the one gift. The local celebrity may indulge in any amount of fairly harmless license, till indeed he becomes unfit for any other scene. He must live where his ways are understood and accepted, and cannot exist out of the sympathizing element.

sanship, satire hitting right and left, effective but with no nicety of application. And, running through all, there was a vein of grotesque childishness. In his most cruel blows he was careless of consequences rather than malignant-" a Titan breaking the bones of small men," as his biographer writes it. If giants had lived in our day, when everybody writes, they would naturally have fallen into the tone of the Noctes-recorded their prodigious revels, piled Pelion upon Ossa in To any one who has read the life of Pro- hyperbole, chaffed one another, puffed their fessor Wilson, he must present himself as friends, abused their enemies with the same the crowning example, the very hero of un- hilarious, profuse, and clumsy humor. But restraint. That a Professor of Moral Phi- writing-though, when driven to it, his calosophy of the University of Edinburgh pacity for work was truly gigantic-was only should fight with a pugilist in a fair at mid- one out of many modes by which Wilson exday, and in so doing act simply in accord-pressed bulk and prowess. His was a life ance with his received character, and in no of outpouring; and we may observe that he way damage a very high reputation, argues almost divine abandonment to impulse; and, in fact, the spur of the moment was with him a perpetual inspiration. He recognized no social impossibilities, but always did what he liked; and his nature led him to like very strange things. His pre-eminence was that, whereas most people who will not submit to the restraints of their position fall out of it, he carried things with so high a hand-mind and body worked their will on such a large, irresponsible scale that he held his place and indulged his humor at the same time; though whether there might not be, after all, hidden far out of sight some modicum of Scotch caution we will not say.

had previously acted out every scene that he describes well. Indeed he is weak, and sometimes inanely sentimental, where he is not his own hero and inspiration. He had especially that spirit of rivalry which belonged to giants as such, and which so often betrayed them to their ruin. He could not live without matching himself with weaker men, and getting the better. His rivalry was exorbitant and indiscriminate. His sense of life made him insatiable of expression and success. Every walk was a race against something-time, his friend, or the mail-coach. And it was always Wilson against the world. He knew no distinctions of rank, no proprieties of place, in his enorThose who admire Professor Wilson have mous emulation. He fought with tinkers, to admire this power as his leading charac- he leaped with gypsies, he contended in strong teristic. His daughter shows this by her drink with drovers, he swayed his club trifrequent half-proud, half-apologetic use of umphant in Irish rows. His sports, in like the word Titanic, which, in fact, explains manner, were excessive, and made men stare. matters on our assumption that unrestraint He killed more fish than man had done implies a divergence from ordinary human- before. He was enthusiastic in cock-fightity. Professor Wilson was one of the Titans ing, and (as we are told) hunted his neigh-friend and foe had often called him so bor's bull by moonlight with the frenzy of a and who expects habitual reticence and de- wild huntsman. In his youthful love he was corum from a giant? Of the domestic life a very Polyphemus, making the rocks and of the Titans we don't know a great deal, hills resound with his plaints, held back by but the literature of our youth gives us a no ordinary human reserves, and perplexing pretty distinct notion of a giant, and Wil- his companions with "his long bursts of