"
[Illustration: EAGLE CRAG, VALE OF TODMORDEN.
_Drawn by G. Pickering. Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]
Little did our country deserve, in those days, the name of "Merry
England." Plague or the most noisome pestilence would have been a
visitation of mercy compared to the miseries caused by so dark a
superstition. "Even he who lived remote from the scene of this spiritual
warfare, though few such there could be, so rapidly was it transferred
from county to county to the remotest districts;--he, in whose vicinity
no one was suspected of dealing with the foul fiend, whose children,
cattle, or neighbours, showed no symptoms of being marks for those fiery
darts which often struck from a distance, yet would he not escape a sort
of epidemic gloom, a vague apprehension of the mischief which might be.
The atmosphere he breathed would come to him thick with foul fancies; he
would ever be hearing or telling some wild and melancholy tale of crime
and punishment. His best feelings and enjoyments would be dashed with
bitterness, suspicion, and terror, as he reflected that, though
uninvaded, yet these were at the mercy of malignant fellow-mortals,
leagued with more malignant spirits, the laws and limits of whose
operations were wholly undefinable.
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