for the perfect specimen of the genus
Vampyre, we must revert to the south-east of
Europe.

Sir Walter Scott says that the above "is
the only instance in which the ordinary
administration of justice has been supposed to
extend over the inhabitants of another world,
and in which the business of exorcising
spirits is transferred from the priest to the
judge."

Voltaire, however, in treating of
Vampyres, mentions a similar instance. "It is
in my mind," says the French wit and
philosopher, "a curious fact, that judicial
proceedings were taken, in due form of law,
concerning those dead who had left their
tombs to suck the blood of the little
boys and girls of the neighbourhood. Calmet
relates that in Hungary two officers
appointed by the Emperor Charles the Sixth,
assisted by the bailiff of the place, and the
executioner, went to bring to trial a Vampyre
who sucked all the neighbourhood, and
who had died six weeks before. He was
found in his tomb, fresh, gay, with his
eyes open, and asking for food. The bailiff
pronounced his sentence, and the executioner
tore out his heart and burnt it: after which
the Vampyre ate no more."

Voltaire's levity has here carried him
(inadvertently, of course) with a smiling face into
a very appalling region. It is an historical fact
that a sort of Vampyre fever or epidemic spread
through the whole south-east of Europe, from
about the year seventeen hundred and twenty-
seven to seventeen hundred and thirty-five.
This took place more especially in Servia and
Hungary; with respect to its manifestations
in which latter country, Calmet, the celebrated
author of the History of the Bible, has left an
account in his Dissertations on the Ghosts
and Vampyres of Hungary. A terrible
infection appeared to have seized upon the
people, who died by hundreds under the
belief that they were haunted by these
dreadful phantoms. Military commissions
were issued for inquiring into the matter;
and the graves of the alleged Vampyres being
opened in the presence of medical men, some
of the bodies were found undecomposed, with
fresh skin and nails growing in the place of
the old, with florid complexions, and with
blood in the chest and abdomen. Of the truth
of these allegations there can be no reasonable
doubt, as they rest upon the evidence both of
medical and military men; and the problem
seems to admit of only one solution. Dr. Herbert
Mayo, in his Letters on the Truths contained
in Popular Superstitions, suggests that the
superstitious belief in Vampyrism, acting
upon persons of nervous temperaments,
predisposed them to fall into the condition called
death-trance; that in that state they were
hastily buried; and that, upon the graves
being opened, they were found still alive,
though unable to speak. In confirmation of
this ghastly suggestion, Dr. Mayo quotes the
following most pathetic and frightful account
of a Vampyre execution from an old German
writer:—"When they opened his grave, after
he had been long buried, his face was found
with a colour, and his features made natural
sorts of movements, as if the dead man
smiled. He even opened his mouth as if he
would inhale the fresh air. They held the
crucifix before him, and called in a loud voice,
'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your
soul from hell, and died for you.' After the
sound had acted on his organs of hearing
and he had connected perhaps some ideas with
it, tears began to flow from the dead man's eyes.
Finally, when, after a short prayer for his
poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his
head, the corpse uttered a screech, and
turned and rolled just as if it had been alive
—and the grave was full of blood." The
wretched man most assuredly was alive; but
Superstition has neither brain nor heart; and
so it murdered him.

A story similar to the foregoing has been
preserved by Serjeant Mainard, a lawyer of
the reign of Charles the First; and may be
here repeated as a curious instance of the
hold which the most puerile superstitions
maintained in England at a comparatively
recent period, and the influence which they
were allowed to exercise even in so grave a
matter as a trial for murder. In the year
sixteen hundred and twenty-nine, somewhere
in Hertfordshire, a married woman, named
Joan Norcot, was found in bed with her
throat cut; and, although the inquest which
was held upon her body terminated in a
verdict of felo-de-se, a rumour got about that
the deceased had been murdered. The body
was accordingly taken out of the grave thirty
days after its death, in the presence of the
jury and many other persons; and the jury
then changed their verdict (which had not
been drawn into form by the coroner), and
accused certain parties of wilful murder.
These were tried at the Hertford Assizes,
and acquitted; "but," says the Serjeant, "so
much against the evidence, that the Judge
(Harvy) let fall his opinion that it were
better an appeal were brought than so foul a
murder should escape unpunished." In
consequence of this, "they were tried on the
appeal, which was brought by the young
child against his father, grandfather, and
aunt, and her husband, Okeman; and,
because the evidence was so strange, I took
exact and particular notice of it. It was as
followeth, viz.: After the matters above
mentioned and related, an ancient and grave
person, minister of the parish where the fact was
committed, being sworn to give evidence,
according to the custom, deposed, that the body
being taken out of the grave, thirty days
after the party's death, and lying on the
grass, and the four defendants present, they
were required, each of them, to touch the
dead body. Okeman's wife fell on her knees,
and prayed God to show token of their innocency,