And this brave world
(The mystery of God) unbeautified,
Disordered, marred, where such strange things are acted."


The only inference which can be drawn from the confession of some of
the poor wretches who have suffered upon such charges is, that they
had attempted to commit the crime, and thereby incurred the guilt
and deserved the punishment. Of this indeed there have been recent
instances; and in one atrocious case the criminal escaped because
the statute against the imaginary offence is obsolete, and there
exists no law which could reach the real one.

Stranger.--He who may wish to show with what absurd perversion the
forms and technicalities of law are applied to obstruct the purposes
of justice, which they were designed to further, may find excellent
examples in England. But leaving this allow me to ask whether you
think all the stories which are related of an intercourse between
men and beings of a superior order, good or evil, are to be
disbelieved like the vulgar tales of witchcraft

Montesinos.--If you happen, sir, to have read some of those ballads
which I threw off in the high spirits of youth you may judge what my
opinion then was of the grotesque demonology of the monks and middle
ages by the use there made of it. But in the scale of existences
there may be as many orders above us as below. We know there are
creatures so minute that without the aid of our glasses they could
never have been discovered; and this fact, if it were not notorious
as well as certain, would appear not less incredible to sceptical
minds than that there should be beings which are invisible to us