and in this vast size. The monk invoked the Devil's assistance, and the ponderous volume was written in a single night. This Devil must have been one who prided himself more on his literary powers than his personal appearance; for the face and form said to be his portrait, frontispiece of the volume, represent a most hideous ape, green and hairy, with horrible curled tusks. It is, no doubt, the ape Anerhahn of the Wagner legends; Burns's 'towzie tyke, black, grim, and large.'1

I noticed particularly in this old work the recurrence of deep red letters and sentences similar to the ink which Fust used at the close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place and date of printing. Now Red is sacred in one direction as symbolising the blood of Christ, but it is also the colour of Judas, who betrayed that blood. Hence, while red letters might denote sacred days and sentences in priestly calendars, they might be supposed mimicry of such sanctities by 'God's Ape' if occurring in secular works or books of magic. It is said that these red letters were especially noted in Paris as indications of the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by Fust; and, though it is uncertain. whether he suffered imprisonment, the red lines with his name appear to have been regarded as his signature in blood.

For a long time every successive discovery of science, every invention of material benefit to man, was believed by priest-ridden peoples to have been secured by compact with the devil. The fate of the artist Prometheus, fettered

1 Tertullian's phrase, 'The Devil is God's Ape,' became popular at one time, and the Ape-devil had frequent representation in art-as, for instance, in Holbein's 'Crucifixion' (1477), now at Augsburg, where a Devi! with head of an ape, bat-wings, and flaming red legs is carrying off the soul of the impenitent thief. The same subject is found in the same gallery in an Altdorfer, where the Devil's face is that of a gorilla.

by jealous Jove, was repeated in each who aspired to bring light to man, and some men of genius-such as Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus-appear to have been frightened away from legitimate scientific research by the first connection of their names with sorcery. They had before them the example of the greatest scientific man of the Middle Ages, Roger Bacon, and knew how easily, in the priestly whisper, the chemist's crucible grew to a wizard's cauldron. The time may come when Oxford University will have learned enough to build a true memorial of the grandest man who ever wrote and taught within its walls. It would show Roger Bacon-rectifier of the Julian Calendar, analyst of lenses, inventor of spectacles and achromatic lenses, probable constructor of the first telescope, demonstrator of the chemical action of air in combustion, inventor of the mode of purifying saltpetre and crystallising it into gunpowder, anticipator of the philosophical method with which his namesake is credited-looking on a pile of his books for whose researches he had paid two thousand French livres, to say nothing of a life's labour, only to see them condemned by his University, their circulation prohibited; and his sad gaze might be from the prison to which the Council of Franciscans at Paris sentenced him whom Oxford gladly delivered into their hands. He was condemned, says their historian Wadding, 'propter novitates quasdam suspectas. The suspected novelties were crucibles, retorts, and lenses that made the stars look larger. So was it with the Oxford six hundred years ago. Undeniably some progress had been made even in the last generation, for Shelley was only forbidden to study chemistry, and expelled for his metaphysics. But now that it is claimed that Oxford is no longer partaker with them that stoned investigators and thinkers from Bacon to Shelley, it would be in order to build for its own great martyr of

science a memorial, that superstition may look on one whom it has pierced.

Referring to Luther's inkstand thrown at the Devil, Dr. Zerffii, in his lecture on the Devil, says, 'He (the devil) hates nothing so much as writing or printer's ink.' But the truth of this remark depends upon which of two devils be considered. It would hardly apply to the Serpent who recommended the fruit of knowledge, or to the University man in Lucas van Leyden's picture (Fig. 6). But if we suppose the Devil of Luther's Bible (Fig. 17) to be the one at which the inkstand was thrown, the criticism is correct. The two pictures mentioned may be instructively compared. Luther's Devil is the reply of the University to the Church. These are the two devils-the priest and the scholar-who glared at each other in the early sixteenth century. 'The Devil smelled the roast,' says Luther, 'that if the languages revived, his kingdom would get a hole which he could not easily stop again.' And it must be admitted that some of the monkish execrations of the time, indeed of many times since, have an undertone of Jahvistic jealousy. 'These Knowers will become as one of us.' It must also be admitted that the clerical instinct told true: the University man held in him that sceptical devil who is always the destroyer of the priest's paradise. These two devils which struggled with each other through the sixteenth century still wage their war in the arena of Protestantism. Many a Lutheran now living may remember to have smiled when Hofmann's experiments in discovering carbonic acid gas gained him repute for raising again Mephosto; but perhaps they did not re

Fig. 17.-LUTHer's Devil.

LUTHERANS AND SCIENCE.

287

cognise Luther's devil when, at the annual assembly of Lutheran Pastors in Berlin (Sept. 1877), he reappeared as the Rev. Professor Grau, and said, 'Not a few listen to those striving to combine Christ with Belial, to reconcile redeeming truth with modern science and culture.' But though they who take the name of Luther in vain. may thus join hands with the Devil, at whom the Reformer threw his inkstand, the combat will still go on, and the University Belial do the brave work of Bel till beneath his feet lies the dragon of Darkness whether disguised as Pope or Protestant.

If the Church wishes to know precisely how far the roughness pardonable in the past survives unpardonably in itself, let its clergy peruse carefully the following translation by Mr. Leland of a poem by Heine; and realise that the Devil portrayed in it is, by grace of its own prelates, at present the most admired personage in every Court and fashionable drawing-room in Christendom.

I called the Devil, and he came :
In blank amaze his form I scan.
He is not ugly, is not lame,

But a refined, accomplished man,—
One in the very prime of life,

At home in every cabinet strife,

Who, as diplomatist, can tell

Church and State news extremely well.

He is somewhat pale—and no wonder either,
Since he studies Sanskrit and Hegel together.

His favourite poet is still Fonqué.

Of criticism he makes no mention,

Since all such matters unworthy attention
He leaves to his grandmother, Hecaté.
He praised my legal efforts, and said

That he also when younger some law had read,
Remarking that friendship like mine would be

An acquisition, and bowed to me,—
Then asked if we had not met before,

At the Spanish Minister's soiree?
And, as I scanned his face once more,
I found I had known him for many a day.

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CHAPTER XXIV.

WITCHCRAFT.

Minor gods-Saint and Satyr-Tutelaries-Spells-Early Christianity and the poor-Its doctrine as to pagan deities-Medieval Devils - Devils on the stage - An Abbot's revelations - The fairer deities-Oriental dreams and spirits-Calls for Nemesis-Lilith and her children-Neoplatonicism-Astrology and AlchemyDevil's College-Shem-hammphorásch-Apollonius of TyanaFaustus- Black Art Schools-Compacts with the Devil-Bloodcovenant-Spirit-seances in old times-The Fairfax delusionOrigin of its devil-Witch, goat, and cat-Confessions of Witches -Witchcraft in New England-Witch trials-Salem demonology -Testing witches-Witch trials in Sweden-Witch SabbathMythological elements-Carriers-Scotch Witches-The cauldron -Vervain-Rue-Invocation of Hecaté-Factors of Witch persecution-Three centuries of massacre-Würzburg horrors-Last victims-Modern Spiritualism.

ST. CYPRIAN saw the devil in a flower. That little vision may report more than many more famous ones the consistency with which the first christians had developed the doctrine that nature is the incarnation of the Evil Spirit. It reports to us the sense of many sounds and sights which were heard and seen by ears and eyes trained for such and no other, all showing that the genii of nature and beauty were vanishing from the earth. Over the Ægean sea were heard lamentations and the voice, 'Great Pan is dead!'

1 S. Cyp. ap. Muratori, Script. it. i. 295, 545. The Magicians used to call their mirrors after the name of this flower-devil-Fiorone. M. Maury, 'La Magie,' 435 n.