mony, and the stones will easily arrange themselves at Amphion's song. A violin only will be wanted to build a city, and a ram's horn to destroy it. The charming of serpents may be attributed to a still more plausible cause. The serpent is neither a voracious nor a ferocious animal. Every reptile is timid. The first thing a reptile does, at least in Europe, on seeing a man, is to hide itself in a hole, like a rabbit or a lizard. The instinct of man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him, except when he is armed, when he feels his strength, and above all when he is in the presence of many observers. The serpent, far from being greedy of blood and flesh, feeds only upon herbs, and passes a considerable time without eating at all: if he swallows a few insects, as lizards and camelions do, he does us a service. All travellers relate that there are some very long and large ones; although we know of none such in Europe. No man or child was ever attacked there by a large serpent or a small one. Animals attack only what they want to eat; and dogs never bite passengers but in defence of their masters. What could a serpent do with a little infant? What pleasure could it derive from biting it; it could not swallow even the fingers. Serpents do certainly bite, and squirrels also, but only when they are injured, or are fearful of being so. I I am not unwilling to believe that there have been monsters among serpents as well as among men. will admit that the army of Regulus was put under arms, in Africa, against a dragon; and that there has since been a Norman there who fought against the water-spout. But it will be granted, on the other hand, that such cases are exceedingly rare. The two serpents that came from Tenedos for the express purpose of devouring Laocoon, and two great lads twenty years of age, in the presence of the whole Trojan army, form a very fine prodigy, and one worthy of being transmitted to posterity by hexameter verses, and by statues which represent Laocoon like a giant, -and his stout boys as pigmies. I conceive this event to have happened in those times when a prodigious wooden horse* took cities which had been built by the gods, when rivers flowed backward to their fountains, when waters were changed to blood, and both sun and moon stood still on the slightest possible occasion. Everything that has been related about serpents was considered probable in countries in which Apollo came down from heaven to slay the serpent Python. Serpents were also supposed to be exceedingly sensible animals. Their sense consists in not running so fast as we do, and in suffering themselves to be cut in pieces. The bite of serpents, and particularly of vipers, is not dangerous except when irritation has produced the fermentation of a small reservoir of very acrid humour which they have under their gums.+ With this exception, a serpent is no more dangerous than an eel. Many ladies have tamed and fed serpents, placed them on their toilets, and wreathed them about their arms. The negroes of Guinea worship a serpent, which never injures any one. There are many species of those reptiles, and some are more dangerous than others, in hot countries; but, in general, serpents are timid and mild animals: it is not uncommon to see them sucking the udder of a cow. Those who first saw men more daring than themselves domesticate and feed serpents, inducing them to The wooden horse was a machine like that which was afterwards called a battering ram. It was a long beam with a horse's head at the end of it. It was preserved in Greece, and Pausanias says that he had seen it. See the work already quoted of M. Fontana. He there describes the vesicles which contain the yellow liquor of the viper, the manner in which the teeth which inclose this vesicle are reproduced, and the singular mechanism by which this juice penetrates into wounds. It is constantly venomous, even when the viper is not in a state of irritation.-Voltaire's Natural History is here defective. come to them by a hissing sound in a similar way to that by which we induce the approach of bees, considered them as possessing the power of enchantment. The Psilli and Marsæ, who familiarly handled and fondled serpents, had a similar reputation. The apothecaries of Poitou, who take up vipers by the tail, might also if they chose be respected as magicians of the first order. The charming of serpents was considered as a thing regular and constant. The sacred scripture itself, which always enters into our weaknesses, deigned to conform itself to this vulgar idea. "The deaf adder, which shuts its ears that it may not hear the voice of the charmer."* "I will send among you serpents which will resist enchantments."+ "The slanderer is like the serpent, which yields not to the enchanter."t The enchantment was sometimes so powerful as to make serpents burst asunder. The natural philosophy of antiquity made this animal immortal. If any rustic found a dead serpent in his road, some enchanter must inevitably have deprived it of its right to immortality : Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur anguis. VIRGIL, eclogue viii. 71. DRYDEN. Enchantment of the Dead, or Evocation. To enchant a dead person, to resuscitate him, or barely to evoke his shade to speak to him, was the most simple thing in the world. It is very common to see the dead in dreams, in which they are spoken with and return answers. If any one has seen them during sleep, why may he not see them when he is awake? It is only necessary to have a spirit like the Pythoness; and, to bring this spirit of Pythonism into successful opeEcclesiastes, x. 11. * Psalms, vii. 5, 6. ration, it is only necessary that one party should be a knave, and the other a fool: and no one can deny that such rencontres very frequently occur. The evocation of the dead was one of the sublimest mysteries of magic. Sometimes there was made to pass before the eyes of the inquiring devotee a large black figure, moved by secret springs in dimness and obscurity. Sometimes the performers, whether sorcerers or witches, limited themselves to declaring that they saw the shade which was desired to be evoked, and their word was sufficient: this was called necromancy. The famous witch of Endor has always been a subject of great dispute among the fathers of the church. The sage Theodoret, in his sixty-second question on the book of Kings, asserts that it is universally the practice for the dead to appear with the head downwards, and that what terrified the witch was Samuel's being upon his legs. St. Augustin, when interrogated by Simplicion, replies, in the second book of his Questions, that there is nothing more extraordinary in a witch's evoking a shade, than in the devil's transporting Jesus Christ through the air to the pinnacle of the temple on the top of a mountain. Some learned men, observing that there were oracular spirits among the Jews, have ventured to conclude that the Jews began to write only at a late period, and that they built almost everything upon Greek fable; but this opinion cannot be maintained. Of other Sorceries. When a man is sufficiently expert to evoke the dead by words, he may yet more easily destroy the living, or at least threaten them with doing so, as the physician, malgré lui, told Lucas that he would give him a fever.. At all events, it was not in the slightest degree doubtful that sorcerers had the power of killing beasts; and to ensure the stock of cattle, it was necessary to oppose sorcery to sorcery. But the ancients can with little propriety be laughed at by us, who are ourselves scarcely even yet extricated from the same barbarism. A hundred years have not yet expired since sorcerers were burnt all over Europe; and even so recently as 1750, a sorceress, or witch, was burnt at Wurtzburg. It is unquestionable, that certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of sheep, if administered with a sufficient portion of arsenic. The Critical History of Superstitious Ceremonies, by Le Brun of the Oratory, is a singular work. His object is to oppose the ridiculous doctrine of witchcraft, and yet he is himself so ridiculous as to believe in its reality. He pretends that Mary Bucaille the witch, while in prison at Valogna, appeared at some leagues distance, according to the evidence given on oath to to the judge of Valogna. He relates the famous prosecution of the shepherds of Brie, condemned in 1691, by the parliament of Paris, to be hanged and burnt. These shepherds had been fools enough to think themselves sorcerers, and villains enough to mix real poisons with their imaginary sorceries. Father Le Brun solemnly asserts,* that there was much of what was "supernatural" in what they did, and that they were hanged in consequence. The sentence of the parliament is in direct opposition to this author's statement. "The court declares the accused duly attainted and convicted of superstitions, impieties, sacrileges, profanations, and poisonings." The sentence does not state that the death of the cattle was caused by profanations, but by poison. A man may commit sacrilege without as well as with poison, without being a sorcerer. Other judges, I acknowledge, sentenced the priest Ganfredi to be burnt, in the firm belief that, by the influence of the devil, he had had illicit commerce with all his female penitents. Ganfredi himself imagined that he was under that influence; but that was in 1611, a period when the majority of our provincial population was very little raised abovethe Caribs and negroes. Some of this description have existed even in our own times; as, for example, the jesuit Girard, the ex-jesuit * See the Trial of the Shepherds of Brie, from page 516. |