The Arkansas advocate., 1830-11-10


 ways had fancy for appearing in mas- Iquerade, and once delivered q course of lectures on magic at Salamanca, in in the disguise of professor. So late as 1926, he lived ineeg; be.t in q very splendid style, for whole winter, in Milan, under the title of the Duke of hEammon. It is in vain, however. for his partial biographers to disguise the fact, that in his nocturnal excursions, Of which, like Hafoun Airasei.id, he was at one time rather fond, and where, we learn from the Swedish witches, he gen. erally figures in a gray coat and red small-eIothes, ornamented with ribbands ! and blue stockings, lie has more than once received a sound drubbing from honest people, whom he has attempted to trip up by laying his tail in the way. And, in fact, siaee his affair with St. Dunstan, he has keptpretty much with ia doors after night-fall. Luther. as we know, kept on terms with him when he began 10 crack hazel-nuts in his bed- room at the Wartburg, but beat him all to nothing in a fair contest of ribaldry and abuse. St. Lupus, shut him up for whole night in q pitcher of cold water, into which he had Gas he thought, cunningly) conveyed himself with the hope that the saint would swallow him unawafes. St. Anthony, in return for q .ery polite offer of his services, spit in ais face, which hurt his feelings so much, that 1t was long before he ventured to appearin society again. And although I'ia his many transactions with mankind he is constantly trying to secure some unfair advantage, person of any ta- lent, particularly If he has been bred lawyer. is match for him; and there are numerous cases in the books in which his majesty attempting to appre- bend the person of a debtor. has been unexpectedly defeated by an ingenious saving clause in the bond, which, like Shylock, he had overlooked, and nom suited in the ecclesiastical eoerts, where he commonly sues with costs. Finally, we infer from the Mora Trials. that his general health must have suf tfered from the climate, for iii it6669 it666G9 he was extremelyill nSweaen, and thought he gotoverthe attack for time by bleed ing and an antiphlogistic regimen. the persons who were about him thought his constitution was breaking up, and that he was still in dying way.
 Such is the grotesque aspect of the le- gendary of Lucifer and his court, which a course of damonology presents to us !. s5ut though we have thus spoken with Ieyity of these gross and palpabse con ceptions of the evil principle, and though undoubtedly the first impression produc- ed by such a farago must be lldicroas one, tne subject, We fear, has also its se- rieas side. An Indian deity, with it's wild distorted shape and grotesque atti- tude, appears merely ridiculous when separated from its accessories and view ed by day light in museum. But res tore it to the darkness of its own hide oas temple, bring back to our recollcc- ton the victims that have bled upon its altar, or been crushed beneath its car. and our sense of the ridiculous subsidies into aversion and horror. So. while the superstitious dreams of former times are regarded as mere speculative insanities, l VIC may for a moment be amused with 1 the wild incoherences of the patients but when we reflect that out of hideous misconceptions of the principle of evil arose the belief in witchcraft; that this was no dead faith, but one operating on the whole being of society; urging on the mildest and the wisest to deeds of murder, or cruelties scarcely less than murder; that the learned and the beau tifiii, young and old, maie and female. wore devoted by its infiuenceto thestake and the scaifold, every feeling disap- pears except that of astonshment that such things could be, and humiliation \ at the thought that the deluson was as lasting as it was universal.
 After most painful history of the crue'tics to which this superstition ha, 1 iea the Wise as well as the vulgar, the article is thus concluded:
 "And though in remote districts the beilet may yet finger in the minds o the ignorant, 1t has now, like the belief O the ghosts, alchymy, orsecoud sight, onl, that sort of vague hold on the fanc. which enables the poet and romance writer to adapt 1t to the purposes of ic. tion, and herewith to point moral ol < !