This work was originally constructed, and in previous editions appeared, in the form of Lectures. The only vestiges of that form, in its present shape, are certain modes of expression. The language retains the character of an address by a speaker to his hearers; being more familiar, direct, and personal than is ordinarily employed in the relations of an author to a reader. The "Lectures on Witchcraft," published in 1831, have long been out of print.
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.
A source of investigation, especially indispensable in the preparation of the present work, deserves to be particularly noticed. In 1647, the General Court of Massachusetts provided by law for the taking of testimony, in all cases, under certain regulations, in the form of depositions, to be preserved _in perpetuam rei memoriam_. The evidence of witnesses was prepared in writing, beforehand, to be used at the trials; they to be present at the time, to meet further inquiry, if living within ten miles, and not unavoidably prevented.