the last _Foreign Quarterly Review_:--


A poor protestant who had fallen from his horse and done himself some
serious injury which had obviously ended in derangement, came to a
Catholic priest, declaring that he was possessed, and telling a story of
almost dramatic interest. In his sickness he had consulted a quack
doctor, who told him that he could cure him by charms. He wrote strange
signs on little fragments of paper, some of which were to be worn, some
to be eaten in bread and drunk in wine. These the poor madman fancied
afterwards were charms by which he had unknowingly sold himself to the
devil. The doctor, he fancied, had done so before, and could only redeem
his own soul by putting another in the power of Satan. "I know that this
is my condition," said the poor madman, "by all I have seen and heard,
by all I have suffered, by the change which has taken place in me, which
has at length brought me to my present condition. All I cannot reveal;
the little I can and dare tell must convince you. Often has my tormentor
pent me up in the stove, and let me lie among the burning brands through
the live long night. Then I hear him in my torment talking loud, I know
not what, over my head. All prayer he forbids me, and he makes me tell
whether I would give all I have or my soul for my cure. Then he speaks
to me of the Bible; but he falsifies all he tells me of, or he tells me
of some new-born king or queen in the kingdom of God. I cannot go to
church; I cannot pray; I cannot think a good thought; I see sights of
horror ever before me, which fill me with unutterable fear, and I know
not what is rest; my one only thought is how soon the devil will come to
claim his wretched victim and carry me to the place of torment." The
poor creature had a belief that a Roman Catholic priest had the power of
exorcism. The priest was most kind to the poor maniac, and tried to
convince him of the power and goodness of God, and his love to his