[Book review].

Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Book review]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1868. Art. I.—Salem Witchcraft; with an Account of Salem Village, and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and kindred sub¬ jects. By Charles W. Upham. 2 vols. Boston (U.S.) : 1867. npHE name of the 'village of Salem is as familiar to Americans as that of any provincial town in England or France is to Englishmen and Frenchmen ; yet, when uttered in the hearing of Europeans, it carries us back two or three centuries, and suggests an image, however faint and transient, of the life of the Pilgrim Fathers, who gave that sacred name to the place of their chosen habitation. If we were on the spot to-day, we should see a modern American seaport, with an interest of its own, but by no means a romantic one. At present Salem is suffering its share of the adversity which has fallen upon the shipping trade, while it is still mourning the loss of some of its noblest citizens in the late civil war. No com¬ munity in the Republic paid its tribute of patriotic sacrifice more generously; and there were doubtless occasions when its citizens remembered the early days of glory, when their fathers helped to chase the retreating British, on the first shedding of blood in the War of Independence. But now they have enough to think of under the pressure of the hour. Their trade is paralysed under the operation of the tariff; their shipping is rotting in port, except so much of it as is sold to foreigners; there is much poverty in low places, and dread of further com¬ mercial adversity among the chief citizens; but there is the same vigorous pursuit of intellectual interests and pleasures, throughout the society of the place, that there always is wherever any number of New Englanders have made their VOL. CXXVIII. XO. CCLXI. B