ut the Psylli, or ancient serpent tamers, I suppose.
Savary gives an account of the modern serpent-tamers in his "Letters on
Egypt." These modern jugglers are in the habit of making the venomous
Naja counterfeit death, lying out straight and stiff, changing it into
a rod, as the ancient magicians did with their serpents, (probably the
same animal,) in the time of Moses.

I am afraid I cannot throw much light on "Christabel" or "Lamia" by any
criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply a
malignant witch-woman with the evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian
relationship. Lamia is a serpent transformed by magic into a woman. The
idea of both is mythological, and not in any sense physiological. Some
women unquestionably suggest the image of serpents; men rarely or never.
I have been struck, like many others, with the ophidian head and eye of
the famous Rachel.

Your question about inherited predispositions, as limiting the sphere of
the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide
range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own
opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being
the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded
against all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal
Forests. It is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow! It is so much
simpler to consign a soul to perdition, or say masses, for money, to
save it, than to take the blame on ourselves for letting it grow up in
neglect and run to ruin for want of humanizing influences! They hung
poor, crazy Bellingham for shooting Mr. Perceval. The ordinary of
Newgate preached to women who were to swing at Tyburn for a petty theft
as if they were worse than other people,--just as though he would not
have been a pickpocket or shoplifter, himself, if he had been born in
a den of thieves and bred up to steal or starve! The English law never
began to get hold of the idea that a crime was not necessarily a sin,
till Hadfield, who thought he was the Saviour of mankind, was tried for
shooting at George the Third;--lucky for him that he did not hit his
Majesty!

It is very singular that we recognize all the bodily defects that unfit
a man for military service, and all the intellectual ones that limit his
range of thought, but always talk at him as if all his moral powers were
perfect. I suppose we must punish evil-doers as we extirpate vermin; but
I don't kno