fell unexpectedly, and the tragedy ended.  It is not known precisely what caused this sudden change.  It is probable, that a revolution had been going on some time in the public mind, which was kept for a while from notice, but at last became too apparent and too serious to be disregarded.  It has generally been attributed to the fact, that the girls became over-confident, and struck too high.  They had ventured, as we have seen, to cry out against the Rev. Samuel Willard, but were rebuked and silenced by the Court.  Whoever began to waver in his confidence of the correctness of the proceedings was in danger of being attacked by them; and, as a general thing, when a person was “cried out upon,” it may be taken as proof that he had spoken against them.  Increase Mather, the president of Harvard College, called by Eliot “the father of the New-England clergy,” was understood not to go so far as his son Cotton in sustaining the proceedings; and a member of his family was accused.  The wife of Sir William Phips sympathized with those who suffered prosecution, and is said to have written an order for the release of a prisoner from jail.  She was cried out upon.  It may have been noticed, that, though Jonathan Corwin sat with Hathorne as an examining magistrate and assistant, and signed the commitments of the prisoners, he never took an active part, but was a silent and passive agent in the scene.  He was subsequently raised to the bench; but there is reason to believe that his mind was not clear as to the correctness of the proceedings.  This probably became known to the accusing girls; for they cried out repeatedly against his wife’s mother, a respectable and venerable lady in Boston.  The accusers, in aiming at such characters, overestimated their power; and the tide began to turn against them.  But what finally broke the spell by which they had held the minds of the whole colony in bondage was their accusation, in October, of Mrs. Hale, the wife of the minister of the First Church in Beverly.  Her genuine and distinguished virtues had won for her a reputation, and secured in the hearts of the people a confidence, which superstition itself could not sully nor shake.  Mr. Hale had been active in all the previous proceedings; but he knew the innocence and piety of his wife, and he stood forth between her and the storm he had helped to raise:  although he had driven it on while others were its victims, he turned and resisted it when it burst in upon his own dwelling.  The whole community became convinced that the accusers in crying out upon Mrs. Hale, had perjured themselves, and from that moment their power was destroyed; the awful delusion was dispelled, and a close put to one of the most tremendous tragedies in the history of real life.  The wildest storm, perhaps, that ever raged in the moral world, became a calm; the tide that had threatened to overwhelm every thing in its fury, sunk back to its peaceful bed.  There are few, if any, other instances in