"'Lo! the fell monster with the deadly sting! Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls And firm embattled spears, and with his filth Taints all the world! Thus me my guide addressed, And beckon'd him, that he should come to shore, Near to the stony causeway's utmost edge. "Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear'd, His head and upper part expos'd on land, But laid not on the shore his bestial train. His face the semblance of a just man's wore. So kind and gracious was its outward cheer; The rest was serpent all; two shaggy claws Reach'd to the armpits, and the back and breast, And either side, were painted o'er with nodes And orbits. Colors variegated more Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state With interchangeable embroidery wove, Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore, Stands part in water, part upon the land; Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, The beaver settles watching for his prey; So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock, Sat perched the fiend of evil. In the void Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork, With sting like scorpion's armed." The world has not seen in all its long procession of follies, vagaries, and strange mania, one so utterly devoid of a reasonable foundation as this. Yet none has been more eagerly believed; and this very tendency has evolved into so strong a desire to believe that thousands of those who have professed to investigate it have done so only ostensibly, their eyes, figuratively speaking, tightly bandaged, to shut out everything but the artificial vision that they were most eager to see. It is to be hoped that the world will now form its ultimate conclusion upon this flagrant and audacious system of humbuggery:--that, regarded as a superstition, it ranks even below voudooism and fetich-worship, and, as an illusion, below the effects produced by the most ordinary magician at a country fair.