The second class of circumstances includes famine, pestilence, and persecution; and, in particular, the effects of the last are strikingly singular. In the others, the mind, unsettled by suffering and terror, ceases to deduce the evils which are overwhelming it from the old fixed causes which govern the universe, and sends out imagination in quest of the new. Demons are abroad--death itself becomes a living spirit, voices of lamentation are heard in the air--spectres seen on the earth. In such circumstances, however, the very prostration of the mind sets limits to its delusions; the inventive powers are rather passive than active; but it is not so in seasons of persecution, when our fellow-creature--man--is the visible cause of the evils to which we are subjected, and the combative principle, maddened by oppression, is roused into an almost preternatural activity. Hence, and from the energy of excitement and the melancholy of suffering, the persecuted enthusiast becomes more enthusiastical, and the superstitions of the credulous assume a darker aspect. Even the true religion seems impressed with a new character. As Solomon has well expressed it--“wise men become mad;” and, seen through the medium of their disturbed imaginations, the common traits of character and of circumstance are exaggerated into the supernatural. The oppression which is grinding them to the earth, assumes for their destruction a visible form, and a miraculous control over the laws of nature. The evil spirit is no longer formidable merely from his power of biassing the will, and obliterating the better feelings of the heart; for, assuming a still more terrible character, and a real and tangible shape, he assails them in their hiding-places--the cavern and the desert. Even their human enemies, charmed against the stroke of sword and bullet, are rendered invulnerable by the same power. And there are miracles wrought also in their behalf. Their places of hiding are discovered by the persecutor; but a sudden blindness falls on him, and he cannot avail himself of the discovery. They are pursued on the hill-side by a troop of horse; but, when exhausted in the flight, a thick cloud is dropped over them, and they escape. The enemy is removed by judgments sudden and fearful. Their curse becomes terribly potent. There is a power given them of reading the inmost thoughts of the heart; they have visions of the distant--revelations of the future. These, however, are but the traits of a comparatively sober enthusiasm, which persecution cannot altogether goad into madness. In some of the wilder instances we see even the moral principle unsettled. The Huguenots of Languedoc, when driven to their mountains by the intolerance of Louis XIV., were headed by two leaders, a young man whom they named David, and a prophetess whom they termed the Great Mary. These leaders exercised over them a despotic authority; and, when any of them proved refractory, they were