is deception. He
bestrides the nib of the statesman's pen and guides it into falsehood
and treason. He perches on the cardinal's hat and counsels bigotry and
oppression. He sits on the tradesman's counter and bears down the
unweighted scale. He hides in the lawyer's bag and makes specious pleas
for adroit rogues. He slips into the gambler's greasy pack and rolls
over his yellow dice. He dances on the bubbles of the drunkard's glass,
swings on the knot of the planter's lash, and darts on the point of the
assassin's knife. He revels in a coarse oath, laughs in a perjured vow,
and breathes in a lie. He has kept celebrated company in times gone by.
He was Superintendent of the Coliseum when the Christian martyrs were
given to the wild beasts. He was long time a familiar in the Spanish
Inquisition, and adviser of the Catholic priesthood in those days, and
Governor of the Bastile afterwards. He was the king's minister of
pleasure in the days of the latter Louises. He was court chaplain when
Ridley and Latimer were burned. He was Charles IX.'s private secretary
at the time of the St. Bartholomew affair, and Robespierre's right-hand
man in the days of Terror. He was Benedict Arnold's counsellor,
Jefferson Davis's bedfellow, and John Wilkes Booth's bosom friend.

A personage, and yet none ever saw him. His cloven hoof, his twisted
horns, his suit of black, his gleaming eyes, his limbs of flame, are but
the poet's dream, the painter's color. Mephistopheles is but the
creature of our fancy, and exists but in the fears, the passions, the
desires of mankind. He is born in hearts where love is linked with
license, in minds where pride weds with folly, in souls where piety
unites with intolerance. We never meet the roaring lion in our path; yet
our hearts are torn by his fangs and lacerated by his claws. We never
see the sardonic cavalier; yet we hear his specious whisperings in our
ears. The sunlight of truth shines forever upon us; yet we sit in the
cold shadow of error. We put the cup of pleasure to our lips, and quaff,
instead of cooling draughts, the fiery flashes of searing excess. We
long for forbidden delights, and when the fiend Opportunity places them
within our reach, we sign the compact of our misery to obtain them. The
charmed circle this unholy spirit draws around his fatal power is traced
along the devious line that marks our weakness and our ignorance. Storm
as we may, he stands intrenched within our souls, defying all