e should not deem it
worth while to notice them, if they had not been retained in the latest
edition of his Miscellanies. But for this circumstance, we should pass
them by as the rhetorical flourish of a young man who, in his most
mature productions, is often more brillant than profound.

"Ariosto," says he, "tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some
mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons
in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during
the period of her disguise were forever excluded from participation in
the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her
loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward revealed
herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her,
accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses
with wealth, made them happy in love, and victorious in war. Such a
spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She
grovels, she hisses, she stings. But wo to those who in disgust shall
venture to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive
her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by
her in the time of her beauty and her glory."

For aught we know, all this may be very fine poetry, and may deserve the
place which it has found in some of our books on rhetoric. But yet this
beautiful passage will--like the fairy whose charms it celebrates--be so
surely transformed into a hateful snake or venomous toad, that it should
not be swallowed without an antidote. Robespierre, Danton, Marat,
Barriere, and the black Dessalines, took this hateful, hissing,
stinging, maddening reptile to their bosoms, and they are welcome to its
rewards. But they mistook the thing: it was not liberty transformed; it
was tyranny unbound, the very scourge of hell, and Satan's chief
instrument of torture to a guilty world. It was neither more nor less
than Sin, despising GOD, and warring against his image on the earth.

We do not doubt--nay, we firmly believe--that in the veritable history
of the universe, _analogous_ changes have taken place. But then these
awful changes were not mere fairy tales. They are recorded in the word
of God. When Lucifer, the great bearer of light, himself was _free_, he
sought equality with God, and thence became a hateful, hissing serpent
in the dust. But he was not fully cursed, until "by devilish art" he
reached "the org