The first volume of this work contains what seems to me necessary to prepare the reader for the second, in which the incidents and circumstances connected with the witchcraft prosecutions in 1692, at the village and in the town of Salem, are reduced to chronological order, and exhibited in detail. As showing how far the beliefs of the understanding, the perceptions of the senses, and the delusions of the imagination, may be confounded, the subject belongs not only to theology and moral and political science, but to physiology, in its original and proper use, as embracing our whole nature; and the facts presented may help to conclusions relating to what is justly regarded as the great mystery of our being, --the connection between the body and the mind. It is unnecessary to mention the various well-known works of authority and illustration, as they are referred to in the text. But I cannot refrain from bearing my grateful testimony to the value of the "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society" and the "New-England Historical and Genealogical Register. " The "Historical Collections" and the "Proceedings" of the Essex Institute have afforded me inestimable assistance. Such works as these are providing the materials that will secure to our country a history such as no other nation can have. Our first age will not be shrouded in darkness and consigned to fable, but, in all its details, brought within the realm of knowledge. Every person who desires to preserve the memory of his ancestors, and appreciate the elements of our institutions and civilization, ought to place these works, and others like them, on the shelves of his library, in an unbroken and continuing series.
