with rage, rose and fell like the bellows of a forge; his dilated skin assumed a dull and scaly appearance; and his tail, which sounded the denunciation of death, vibrated with so great rapidity as to resemble a light vapor. The Canadian now began to play upon his flute; the serpent started with surprise, and drew back his head. In proportion as he was struck with the magic effect, his eyes lost their fierceness, the oscillations of his tail became slower, and the sound which it emitted became weaker, and gradually died away. Less perpendicular upon their spiral line, the rings of the fascinated serpent were by degrees expanded, and sunk one after another upon the ground, in concentric circles. The shades of azure green, white, and gold, recovered their brillianey on his quivering skin, and slightly turning his head, he remained motionless, in the attitude of attention and pleasure. At this moment, the Canadian advanced a few steps, producing with his flute sweet and simple notes. The reptile, inclining his variegated neck, opened a passage with his head through the high grass, and began to creep after the musician, stopping when he stopped, and beginning to follow him again, as soon as he moved forward.' In this manner he was led out of the camp, attended by a great number of spectators, both savages and Europeans, who could scarcely believe their eyes, when they beheld this wonderful effect of harmony. The assembly unanimously decreed, that the serpent which had so highly entertained them, should be permitted to escape.

6

But on some serpents, these charms seem to have no power; and it appears from scripture, that the adder sometimes takes precautions to prevent the fascination which he sees preparing for him; for the deaf adder shutteth her ear, and will not hear the voice of the most skilful charmer, Psalm lviij. 5, 6. The same allusion is involved in the words of Solomon: Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment, and a babbler is no better,' Eccl. x. 11. The threatening of the prophet Jeremiah proceeds upon the same fact; 'I will send serpents (cockatrices) among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you,' Jer. viii. 17. In all these quotations, the sacred writers, while they take it for granted that many serpents are disarmed by charming, plainly admit that the powers of the charmer are in vain exerted upon others. To account for this exception it has been alleged, that in some serpents the sense of hearing is very imperfect, while the power of vision is exceedingly acute; but the most intelligent natural historians maintain, that the reverse is true. The sense of hearing is much more acute than the sense of vision. Unable to resist the force of truth, others maintain, that the adder is deaf not by nature, but by design; for the Psalmist says, she shutteth her ear, and will not hear the voice of the charmer. But the phrase, perhaps, means no more than this that some adders are of a temper so stubborn, that the various arts of the charmer make no impression; they are like creatures destitute of hearing, or whose ears are so completely obstructed, that no sounds can enter. The same phrase is used in other parts of Scrip

ture, to signify a hard and obdurate heart: 'Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard,' Prov. xxi. 13. It is used in the same sense of the righteous, by the prophet: "That stoppeth his ears from the hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil,' Isaiah xxxiii. 15. He remains as unmoved by the cruel and sanguinary counsels of the wicked, as if he had stopped his ears.

THE translators of the English Bible have variously rendered the Hebrew words tzepho and tzephoni, by adder and cockatrice; and we are by no means certain of the particular kind of serpent to which the original term is applied. In Isaiah xi. 8, 'the tzephoni,' says Dr. Harris, 'is evidently an advance in malignity beyond the peten which precedes it; and in ch. xiv. 29, it must mean a worse kind of serpent than the nachash; but this still leaves us ignorant of its specific character. Mr. Taylor, who has taken extraordinary pains to identify it, is of opinion that it is the naja or Cobra di capello of the Portuguese, which we find thus described by Goldsmith:

"Of all others, the Cobra di capello, or hooded serpent, inflicts the most deadly and incurable wounds. Of this formidable creature there are five or six different kinds; but they are all equally dangerous, and their bite followed by speedy and certain death. It is from three to eight feet long, with two long fangs hanging out of the upper jaw. It has a broad neck, and a mark of dark brown on the forehead, which, when viewed frontwise, looks like a pair of

spectacles, but behind, like the head of a cat. The eyes are fierce and full of fire; the head is small, and the nose flat, though covered with very large scales, of a yellowish ash color; the skin is white, and the large tumor on the neck is flat, and covered with oblong smooth scales. The bite of this animal is said to be incurable, the patient dying in about an hour after the wound; the whole frame being dissolved into one putrid mass of corruption. The effects here attributed to the bite of this creature answer very well to what is intimated of the tzephoni in scripture. Thus, in Isaiah xi. 9: They [the tzephoni immediately preceding] shall not hurt nor destroy [corrupt] in all my holy mountain. And Proverbs xxiii. 32: At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth [spreads, diffuses its poison; So the LXX. and Vulgate,] like a cockatrice.'

We must not omit to notice the very powerful argument adduced in the last cited passage against the sin of immoderate drinking. Like the poison of the deadly cockatrice, it paralyses the energies both of mind and body, and speedily diffuses corruption throughout the entire frame. Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babblings? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine: they that go to seck mixed wine.' Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise,' ch. xxiii. 29, 30; xx. 1.

The unyielding cruelty of the Chaldean armies, under Nebuchadnezzar, and the appointed ministers of Jehovah's vengeance on the Jewish nation, whose iniquities had made him their enemy, is expressively alluded to in the following passage: For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which shall not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord,' Jeremiah viii. 17.

In Egypt, and other Oriental countries, a serpent was the common symbol of a powerful monarch; it was embroidered on their robes, and blazoned on their diadem, to signify their absolute power and invincible might; and also, that, as the wound inflicted by the basilisk is incurable, so the fatal effects of their displeasure were neither to be avoided nor endured. These, says Paxton, are the allusions involved in the address of the prophet, to the irreconcileable enemies of his nation: Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of Him that smote thee is broken; for out of the serpent's roots shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent,' Isaiah xiv. 29. Uzziah, the king of Judah, had subdued the Philistines; but, taking advantage of the weak reign of Ahab, they again invaded the kingdom of Judea, and reduced some cities in the southern part of the country under their dominion. On the death of Ahab, Isaiah delivers this prophecy, threatening them with a more severe chastisement from the hand of Hezekiah, the grandson of Josiah, by whose victorious arms they had been reduced to sue for peace, which he accomplished, when he smote the Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof, 2 Kings xviii. 8. Uzziah, therefore, must be meant by the rod that smote

THE SERAPH, OR FIERY SERPENT.

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them, and by the serpent from whom should spring the fiery flying serpent, that is, Hezekiah, a much more terrible enemy than even Uzziah had been. But the symbol of regal power which the Oriental kings preferred to all others, was the basilisk.

All the other species of serpents are said to acknowledge the superiority of the basilisk, by flying from its presence, and hiding themselves in the dust. It is also supposed to live longer than any other serpent: the ancient heathens, therefore, pronounced it to he immortal, and placed it in the number of their deties; and because it had the dangerous power, in general belief, of killing with its pestiferous breath the strongest animals, it seemed to them invested with the power of life and death. It became, therefore, the favorite symbol of kings, and was employed by the prophet to symbolize the great and good Hezekiah, with strict propriety.

THE SERAPH, OR FIERY SERPENT.

THIS species of serpent receives its name, seraph, from a root which signifies to burn, either from its vivid fiery color, or from the heat and burning pain occasioned by its bite. In Numb. xxi. 6, &c. we read that these venomous creatures were employed by God to chastise the unbelieving and rebellious Israelites, in consequence of which many of them died, the rest being saved from the effects of the calamitous visitation, through the appointed medium of the brazen seraph, which Moses was enjoined to raise upon a pole in the midst of the camp, and which was a striking type of the promised Saviour, John iii. 14, 15.

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In Isa. xiv. 29, and ch. xxx. 6, the same word, with an additional epithet is used, and is translated in our Bible, fiery flying serpents; and if we may rely upon the testimony of the ancients, a cloud of witnesses may be produced, who speak of these flying or winged serpents; although, as Parkhurst remarks, we do not find that any of them affirm they actually saw such alive and flying. Michaëlis, however, was so far influenced by these testimonies, that in his 83d question he recommends it to the travellers to inquire after the existence and nature of flying serpents. In conformity with these instructions, Niebuhr communicated the following information: There is at Bâsna, a sort of serpents which they call Heie sursurie Heie thiâre. They commonly keep upon the datetrees; and, as it would be laborious for them to come down from a very high tree in order to ascend another, they twist themselves by the tail to a branch of the former, which making a spring by the motion they give it, throw themselves to the branches of the second. Hence it is that the modern Arabs call them flying serpents, Heie

thiâre. I know not whether the ancient Arabs, of whom Mr. Michaelis speaks in his 83d question, saw any other flying serpents.' Niebuhr refers also to Lord Anson's report of flying serpents in the island of Quibo. The passage is as follows: "The Spaniards, too, informed us, that there was often found in the woods, a most mischievous serpent, called the flying snake, which, they said, darted itself from the boughs of trees on either man or beast that came within its reach, and whose sting they believed to be inevitable death. But professor Paxton has proposed an interpretation of the original phrase, which the text will equally bear. The verb ouph, he remarks, sometimes means to sparkle, to emit coruscations of light. In this sense the noun thopah, frequently occurs in the sa cred volume. Thus, Zophar (Job xi. 17) says: "The coruscation (thopah) shall be as the morning.' The word in the texts under consideration, may therefore refer to the ruddy color of that serpent, and express the sparkling of the blazing sunbeam upon its scales, which are extremely brilliant. It seems therefore probable, that the seraph was not the hydrus or chersydrus, as Bochart supposes, but of the præster or dipsas kind.