persons early in the proceedings became themselves victims of the delusion into which they plunged every one else.  But we are forbidden to form this charitable judgment by the manifestations of art and contrivance, of deliberate cunning and cool malice, they exhibited to the end.  Once or twice they were caught in their own snare; and nothing but the blindness of the bewildered community saved them from disgraceful exposure and well-deserved punishment.  They appeared as the prosecutors of every poor creature that was tried, and seemed ready to bear testimony against any one upon whom suspicion might happen to fall.  It is dreadful to reflect upon the enormity of their wickedness, if they were conscious of imposture throughout.  It seems to transcend the capabilities of human crime.  There is, perhaps, a slumbering element in the heart of man, that sleeps for ever in the bosom of the innocent and good, and requires the perpetration of a great sin to wake it into action, but which, when once aroused, impels the transgressor onward with increasing momentum, as the descending ball is accelerated in its course.  It may be that crime begets an appetite for crime, which, like all other appetites, is not quieted but inflamed by gratification.

Their precise moral condition, the degree of guilt to be ascribed, and the sentence to be passed upon them, can only be determined by a considerate review of all the circumstances and influences around them.

For a period embracing about two months, they had been in the habit of meeting together, and spending the long winter evenings, at Mr. Parris’s house, practising the arts of fortune-telling, jugglery, and magic.  What they had heard in the traditions and fables of a credulous and superstitious age,—­stories handed down in the interior settlements, circulated in companies gathered around the hearths of farmhouses, indulging the excitements of terrified imaginations; filling each other’s minds with wondrous tales of second-sight, ghosts and spirits from the unseen world, together with what the West-Indian or South-American slaves could add,—­was for a long time the food of their fancies.  They experimented continually upon what was the spiritualism of their day, and grew familiar with the imagery and the exhibitions of the marvellous.  The prevalent notions concerning witchcraft operations and spectral manifestations came into full effect among them.  Living in the constant contemplation of such things, their minds became inflamed and bewildered; and, at the same time, they grew expert in practising and exhibiting the forms of pretended supernaturalism, the conditions of diabolical distraction, and the terrors of demonology.  Apparitions rose before them, revealing the secrets of the past and of the future.  They beheld the present spectres of persons then bodily far distant.  They declared in language, fits, dreams, or trance, the immediate operations upon themselves of the Devil, by the agency of his confederates.  Their sufferings, while thus under “an evil hand,” were dreadful to behold, and soon drew wondering and horror-struck crowds around them.