His aspect is cruel and terrible. He loves the _dark_, but never sleeps. Wherever he makes his lair, nature sickens, and man is brutified. His presence is 'plague, pestilence, and famine, battle, and murder, and sudden death.' His bite rapidly _undermines the strongest_ Constitution, and dissolves the whole into an entire mass of Corruption. He has no _brain_, but the _walls_ of the skull emit a _tinkling_ sound, that attracts his victims, and lulls them into _passive obedience_. In this state he clutches them in his coils, and _screws and squeezes_ them to destruction--_slavering_ them over, and sucking in their _substance_ at leisure. It is difficult to witness the half-stifled cries of his harmless prey, or to behold its anxiety and trepidation, while the monster writhes hideously around it, without imagining _what our own case would be in the same dreadful situation._ ***** * Shaw's Zoology. Art. Boa, iii. 344. ** Ibid. 366. *** Linnæus's Nat. Hist, by Gmelio, 8vo. (Jooes) 1816. Art. Boa Constrictor, xii. 437. **** Shaw's Zoology, iii. 339. ***** Macleod's Wreck of the Alceste, 291, 295. His rapacity is increased by _indulgence_. He grinds, cranches, and devours whole multitudes, without being satisfied. His blood is cold. His ravening maw does not digest: it is an ever-yawning grave that _engulphs_--a 'bottomless pit' continually crying '_give, give!_' Sometimes he rests {112}from his labors,' to admire his loathsome _limbs_, and _slime_ them over. He has no affections: yet he appears charmed by the _hum_ of the insects that follow him, and pleased by the _tickling crawl_ of the meanest reptiles-permitting them to hang upon his lips, and partake of his leavings. But his real pleasure is in listening to the cries of his captives, the wail of the broken hearted, and the groans of the dying. He lives in defiance and scorn of Providence, and in hatred to the happiness of man. When distended with human carnage, and wet with the gore of the innocent and the helpless, he lifts an impious _form_ to heaven in solemn mockery. He was predicted of by the Seer of old, as the Beast with many heads and crowns, bearing the name of Blasphemy. The garish _colours_ that denote his malignity, excite only horror and detestation in the lover of nature, and of his species. They are most _lively_ when he is engaged in the work of death, and cause him to be admired by the vulgar multitude, learned and unlearned, who hold him _sacred_, pay him _divine honors_, call him _holy_, and fall down before him as an object-of worship, while priests glorify him, and minister to him, and pray for his murderous successes in the temples. Hence-the good and the wise, in all ages, have devised and practised various methods for the destruction of a Fiend that creates nothing but _terror and imposture_, and between whom and rational man there is a natural antipathy.