s of hell and eternal damnation are
chiefly kept alive and blown up by ultras among the sectaries who are
invariably the promoters of religious fanaticism. Beauty, wit, address,
with the less shackled in mind, have superseded all that was frightful,
and terrible, odious, ugly, and deformed. This subject is poetically and
more beautifully illustrated in the following demonological stanzas,
which are so appropriate to the occasion, that we cannot resist quoting
them as a further prelude to our subjects:

When the devil for weighty despatches
Wanted messengers cunning and bold,
He pass'd by the beautiful faces
And picked out the ugly and old.

Of these he made warlocks and witches
To run of his errands by night,
Till the over-wrought hag-ridden wretches
Were as fit as the devil to fright.

But whoever has been his adviser,
As his kingdom increases in growth,
He now takes his measures much wiser,
And trafics with beauty and youth.

Disguis'd in the wanton and witty,
He haunts both the church and the court;
And sometimes he visits the city,
Where all the best christians resort.

Thus dress'd up in full masquerade,
He the bolder can range up and down
For he better can drive on his trade,
In any one's name than his own.

To be brief, the devil, it appears, is by far too cunning still for
mankind, and continues to manage things in his own way, in spite of
bishops, priests, laymen, and new churches. He governs the vices and
propensities of men by methods peculiarly his own; though every crime or
extortion, subterfuge or design, whether it be upon the purse or the
person, will not make a man a devil; it must nevertheless be confessed,
that every crime, be its magnitude or complexion what it may, puts the
criminal, in some measure, into the devil's power, and gives him an
ascendancy and even a title to the delinquent, whom he ever afterwards
treats in a very magisterial manner.

We are told that every man has his attendant evil genius, or tutelary
spirit, to execute the orders of the master demon--that the attending
evil angel sees every move we make upon the board; witnesses all our
actions, and permits us to do mischief, and every thing that is
pernicious to ourselves;--that, on the contrary, our good spirit,
actuated by more benevolent motives, is always accessary to our good
actions, and reluctant to those that are bad. If this be the case, it
may be fa