some
other mode of being, there were a few characters that had escaped the
diligence of the hand by which the rest had been obliterated.

It is this that, in less enlightened ages of the world, led men to
engage so much of their thoughts upon supposed existences, which,
though they might never become subject to our organs of vision, were yet
conceived to be perpetually near us, fairies, ghosts, witches, demons
and angels. Our ancestors often derived suggestions from these, were
informed of things beyond the ken of ordinary faculties, were tempted to
the commission of forbidden acts, or encouraged to proceed in the paths
of virtue.

The most remarkable of these phenomena was that of necromancy, sorcery
and magic. There were men who devoted themselves to "curious arts," and
had books fraught with hidden knowledge. They could "bedim"

The noon-tide sun, call forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread, rattling thunder
They could give fire, and rift even Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt--graves at their command
Have waked their sleepers, oped and let them forth.

And of these things the actors in them were so certain, that many
witches were led to the stake, their guilt being principally established
on their own confessions. But the most memorable matters in the history
of the black art, were the contracts which those who practised it not
unfrequently entered into with the devil, that he should assist them by
his supernatural power for ten or twenty years, and, in consideration of
this aid, they consented to resign their souls into his possession, when
the period of the contract was expired.

In the animal creation there are some species that may be tamed, and
others whose wildness is irreclaimable. Horace says, that all men are
mad: and no doubt mankind in general has one of the features of madness.
In the ordinary current of our existence we are to a considerable degree
rational and tractable. But we are not altogether safe. I may converse
with a maniac for hours; he shall talk as soberly, and conduct himself
with as much propriety, as any other of the species who has never been
afflicted with his disease; but touch upon a particular string, and,
before you are aware of it, he shall fly out into the wildest and most
terrifying extravagances. Such, though in a greatly inferior degree, are
the majority of human beings.