But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils have aërial bodies, that they live and die, and yet, if cut asunder, soon reunite; and when Bodine asserts, in his "Solution of Natural Theology," that spirits and angels are globular, as being of the most perfect shape, I confess I feel more disposed to smile at their imposture than to frown, were it not for their utter worthlessness.

Yet all the allegories which adorn our legends are not so remote from truth or nature. The vampires are said to have gloated over the sacrifices of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hyenas in human shape, not only fed on dead carcasses, but, by a special transmigration, took possession of a corpse. On this fable is founded the monstrous legend of "Assuet and Ajut." I confess it monstrous; but indeed there is little exaggeration even in these tales of horror, if we may believe for once Master Edmund Spenser, in that part of his record of the rebellion of Desmond, in Ireland, which treats of the Munster massacre: "Out of every corner of the woodes and glennes they came creeping forth upon their handes, for their legges could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghostes crying out of their graves; they eat the dead carrions-happy were they could they find them—yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves." That episode, also, in the "Inferno" of Dante, in which Count Ugolino wears out days and nights in gnawing the scull of an enemy, may well seem a fiction; but even this hellish repast is but a prototype of the savage rage for scalping and cannibalism among the Indian hordes of America.

DEMONOLOGY.

"Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com'st in such a questionable shape-"—Hamlet. ASTR. Now from the holy records, from the creed of the Magus Zoroaster, from the Greek, and Roman, and other legends, how clear is the influence of ethereal beings, of angels and demons, on man's life, and of the imparted power of exorcism! In allusion to this divine gift to Solomon, Josephus has the following story: "God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. And this method is of great force unto this day, for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazer, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this: he put a ring, that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he adjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazer would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man.'

The gods of the Greeks and the Latins, the lares and lemures, or hearth-spirits, the pagan and the Christian elves, were ever held as delegated agents of the Deity, who worked, not by a fiat, but by an instrument. Such were the Cemies of the American islanders, and the Kitchi and Matchi Manitou

of the Indians; and, if we consult Father Borri, we shall learn that in Cochin China Lucifer himself promenaded the streets in human shape.

Piellus records six kinds of devils; and the arrangements of Agrippa and other theologians enumerate nine sorts of evil spirits, as you may read in one of old Burton's eccentric chapters.

The mythology of the Baghvat Geeta, the sacred record of the Hindoo theists, is based on the notion of good and evil spirits, the emblems of virtue and of vice under the will and power of Brahma. Indeed, the Hindoo mythology is but that of the classic in other words. Agnee, the god of fire; Varoon, the god of the ocean; Vayoo, the god of the wind; and Cama, the god of love, are but other names for Jupiter, and Neptune, and Æolus, and Cupid.

The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual conflict between the good and evil deity, the types of religious knowledge and ignorance. The southern Asiatics are people of good principle, and the Northern nations people of evil principle. And why may not the Persian thus coincide with Bacon himself, who, in his book "De Dignitate," confesses his belief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and prophecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it inconsistent that the Hindoos should incarnate the malignant disease, smallpox, in the person of the deity Mah-ry-umma, of whose lethal influence they lived in abject fear.

IDA. In the holy records, it is true, we read that demons were even permitted to enter the bodies of other beings, and that when they had so established a possession, by divine command they went out of those possessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd of the Gadarenes; that they were also commissioned, for the fulfilment of the inscrutable will of the

Р

Creator, to try the endurance of Job, and even to tempt the divinity of the Saviour, and that they were the immediate cause of madness and other sad afflictions.

I do fear, Astrophel, that there is much danger, now, in this imbodying of a demon, and that we too often model our modern principles on the proud presumption of still possessing that miraculous power of exorcism. With sorrow may I confess, that the holy truths of Scripture, so clearly evincing a special purpose, should have been ever warped, by worse than inquisitorial bigotry, into the motive for cruelties unparalleled. From the Scripture histories of demoniac possession have arisen the coercion and cruelties which once marked with an indelible stain the records of our own madhouses; where chains and lashes, inflicted by the demons of science, have driven the moody wretch into a raving maniac, when a light hand and a smile would have brought back the angel reason to the mind.

Impersonation is the grand source of many similar errors. The demon which, since the light of the Christian dispensation, has brooded in man's heart and mind, is his own base passion, which incites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and follow deeds of evil, to be a slavish worshipper in the hall of Arimanes. With this profane homage, we court our evil passions to betray and destroy the soul. And this is the interpretation of an allegory in the profane legends of the Talmud, that Lilis, the wife of Adam, ere the creation of Eve, brought forth none but demons; the origin, indeed, of moral evil.

There are many popular stories which bear a moral to this end, that the evil spirit is powerless over the heart if it be not encouraged and invited; and, alas! the alluring mask under which evil looks

on us is often but too certain to charm us to its influence, or we are too thoughtless to beware the danger. Thus the disguised enchanter enters into the palace of the Sultan Mesnar (in "The Tales of the Genii"), and thus the gentle Christabel of Coleridge leads the false Geraldine over that threshold which she could not cross without the help of confiding and unsuspecting innocence.

CAST. The Crones of retired villages have not yet yielded their belief in fairy influence.

Among the low Irish it is believed that (as the nympholepts of old who had looked upon Pan sealed an early doom) the paralytic is fairy-struck; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the influence of the evil eye or glamourie, especially in the vicinity of Blackwater.

I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen of the Dargle, the implicit faith of the Irish women in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like the fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestowed on some unhappy beings from their very nay, the spell infests the cabin in which they herd. To avert this fatal influence from the children, a charm is suspended around their necks, which, when blessed by the priest, is called a " gospel."

birth;

When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is the eye of a cherub or a demon, smiling or frowning on the destiny of the babe; and when happiness or misery predominates in a life, it is a minister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of this mythology-the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mother feels when her infant smiles in its sleep; for she knows it is a holy angel whispering in its ear.

In our own island they are often celebrated as the very pinks of hospitality.