"One of the principal incidents in the _Sarde Nennere_ consists in the consecration of the spiritual relation between the _compare_ and _comare_, by their thrice crossing hands over the fire in the ceremonies of St. John's Day. A still more extraordinary vestige of the idolatrous rite of passing through the fire, is said to be still subsisting among the customs of the people of Logudoro, in the neighbourhood of Ozieri, and in other parts of Sardinia. "Of the worship of Moloch--_par excellence_ the Syrian and Phœnician god of fire--by the ancient Sardes, there is undoubted proof. We find among the prodigious quantity of such relics, collected from all parts of the island, in the Royal Museum at Cagliari, a statuette of this idol, supposed to have been a household god. Its features are appalling: great goggle eyes leer fiercely from their hollow sockets; the broad nostrils seem ready to sniff the fumes of the horrid sacrifice; a wide gaping mouth grins with rabid fury at the supposed victim; dark plumes spring from the forehead, like horns, and expanded wings from each shoulder and knee. The image brandishes a sword with the left hand, holding in the right a small grate, formed of metal bars. It would appear that, this being heated, the wretched victim was placed on it, and then, scorched so that the fumes of the disgusting incense savoured in the nostrils of the rabid idol, it fell upon a brazier of burning coals beneath, where it was consumed. There is another idol in this collection with the same truculent cast of features, but horned, and clasping a bunch of snakes in the right hand, a trident in the left, with serpents twined round its legs. This image has a large orifice in the belly, and flames are issuing between the ribs, so that it would appear that when the brazen image of the idol was thoroughly heated, the unhappy children intended for sacrifice were thrust into the mouth in the navel, and there grilled--savoury morsels, on which the idol seems, from its features, rabidly gloating, while the priests, we are told, endeavoured to drown the cries of the sufferers by shouts and the noise of drums and timbrels-- '... horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears; Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol.'--_Par. Lost_, i. 392.