Even in scripture we find the practice of serpent-charming noticed, and by no means as a novelty; in the 58th Psalm we are told that the wicked are like the “deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, which hearkeneth not unto the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely!” And in the book of Jeremiah, chap. viii, the disobedient people are thus threatened--“Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be _charmed_.” These are two very remarkable passages, and I think we may, without going too far, set down as snake-charmers the Egyptian magi who contended against Moses and Aaron before the court of the proud and vacillating Pharaoh, striving to imitate by their juggling tricks the wondrous miracles which Moses wrought by the immediate aid of God himself. The feat of changing their sticks into serpents, for instance, is one of every-day performance in India, which a friend of mine has assured me he many times saw himself, and which has not been satisfactorily explained by any one. The serpent has long been an object of extreme veneration to the natives of Hindostan, and has indeed, from the very earliest ages, been selected by many nations as an object of worship; why, I cannot explain, unless it originated in a superstitious perversion of the elevation of the brazen serpent in the wilderness by Moses. In India the serpent is not, however, altogether regarded as a deity--merely as a _demon_ or genius: and the office usually supposed to be peculiar to these creatures is that of _guardians_. This is perhaps one of the most widely spread notions respecting the serpent that we are acquainted with. Herodotus mentions the sacred serpents which guarded the citadel of Athens, and which he states to have been fed monthly with cakes of honey; and adds, that these serpents being sacred, were harmless, and would not hurt men. A dragon was said to have guarded the golden fleece (or, as some think, a _scaly serpent_), and protected the gardens of the Hesperides--a singular coincidence, as it is of _gardens_ principally that the Indians conceive the serpent to be the guardian. Medea _charmed_ the dragon by the melody of her voice. Herodotus mentions snakes being soothed by harmony; and Virgil, in the Æneid, says (translated by Dryden), “His wand and holy words the viper’s rage And venom’d wound of serpents could assuage.”