In this chapter, designed to be purely philosophical, he says of satan--"He deludeth us also by philters, ligatures, charms, ungrounded amulets, characters, and many superstitious ways, in the cure of common diseases, seconding herein the expectation of men with events of his own contriving, which, while some, unwilling to fall directly upon magic, impute unto the power of imagination, or the efficacy of hidden causes, he obtains a bloody advantage." This description of the devil and of his manoeuvres so precisely fits the empiric, and all his proceedings, that I should suspect Sir Thomas of the unusual sin of perpetrating a pleasantry; and, under the devil's _effigies_, presenting the image of a charlatan; were it not, for the knowledge we have of this great and good man's credulity, and his firm belief in satanic realities; and, that, in part upon his own testimony, two miserable women were condemned and executed, for witchcraft. No. CVIII. John Jahn says, in his Biblical Archæology, Upham's translation, page 105, that, in Babylon, when first attacked with disease, the patients were placed in the streets, for the purpose of ascertaining, from casual passengers, what practices or medicines _they_ had found useful, in similar cases. Imagine a poor fellow, suddenly attacked with a windy colic, and deposited for this purpose, in State Street, in the very place, formerly occupied, by the razor-strop man, or the magnolia merchant! If it be true--I very much doubt it--that, in a multitude of counsellors, there is safety, this must be an excellent arrangement for the patient. I have often thought, that benevolence was getting to be an epidemic; particularly when I have noticed the attentions of one or two hundred charitably disposed persons, gathered about a conservative horse, that would not budge an inch. They have not the slightest interest in the horse, nor in the driver--it's nothing under heaven, but pure brotherly love. The driver is distracted, by the advice of some twenty persons, pointing with sticks and umbrellas, in every direction, and all vociferating together. In the meanwhile, three or four volunteers are belaboring the shins of the refractory beast, while as many are rapping his nose with their sticks. Four stout fellows, at least, are trying to shove the buggy forward, and as many exerting their energies, to shove the horse backward. Half a dozen sailors, attracted by the noise, tumble up to the rescue; three seize the horse's head, and pull _a starboard_, and three take him, by the tail, and pull _to larboard_, and all yell together, to the driver, to put his helm hard down. At last, urged, by rage, terror, and despair, the poor brute shakes off his persecutors, with a rear, and a plunge, and a leap, and dashes through the bow window of a confectioner's shop, or of some dealer in naked women, done in Parian.