est nobles and kings. English peers whose ancestors came in
with the Conqueror; the Guelphs, Hapsburgs, and Hohenzollens of our
European thrones; are things of yesterday compared with his Highness the
Devil. The Caesars themselves, the more ancient rulers of Assyria, and
even the Pharaohs of the first dynasty, are modern beside him. His
origin is lost in the impenetrable obscurity of primitive times. Nay,
there have been sages who maintained his eternity, who made him coeval
with God, and placed upon his head the crown of a divided sovereignty of
the infinite universe.

But time and change are lords of all, and the most durable things come
to an end. Celestial and infernal, like earthly, powers are subject to
the law of decay. Mutability touches them with her dissolving wand,
and strong necessity, the lord of gods and men, brings them to
the inevitable stroke of Death. Senility falls on all beings and
institutions--if they are allowed to perish naturally; and as our august
Monarchy is the joke of wits, and our ancient House of Lords is an
object of popular derision, so the high and mighty Devil in his palsied
old age is the laughing-stock of those who once trembled at the sound
of his name. They omit the lofty titles he was once addressed by, and
fearless of his feeble thunders and lightnings, they familiarly style
him Old Nick. Alas, how are the mighty fallen! The potentate who was
more terrible than an army with manners is now the sport of children
and a common figure in melodrama. Even the genius of Milton, Goethe, and
Byron, has not been able to save him from this miserable fate.

When this sobriquet of Old Nick first came into use is unknown.
Macaulay, in his essay on Machiavelli, says that "Out of his surname
they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name
a synonym for the Devil." A couplet from _Hudibras_ is cited to support
this view.

Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick Tho' he gave his name to our Old Nick.

"But we believe," adds Macaulay, "there is a schism on this subject
among the antiquaries." The learned Zachary Gray's edition of _Hudibras_
shows that "our English writers, before Machiavel's time, used the word
Old Nick very commonly to signify the Devil," and that "it came from
our Saxon ancestors, who called him Old Nicka." No doubt Butler, whose
learning was so great that he "knew everything," was well acquainted
with this fact. He probably meant the couplet as a broad stroke o