he
beating of drums, tom-toms, horns, great brazen trumpets, and other
instruments, that, with dishevelled hair, and backs streaming with
blood from their own flagellations, they danced forward with a
measured convulsive motion, bellowing out and shaking their heads;
and so terrific was the excitement, that a Portuguese servant who was
passing began making the same frantic gestures, and could only be
recovered after repeated cuts with the horsewhip--the Hindoos,
meanwhile, exulting that their goddess had entered into a Christian!
That such powers are made a matter of merchandise follows of course;
and, like the woman who brought her master much gain by soothsaying,
so there are persons who make a trade of going about with some waren,
who is consulted on secret affairs, who foretells the future, and
whose utterances are sold for money. Extraordinary instances are also
recounted of warens of the necromantic class, especially when they
have worldly goods, becoming the dupes of those who foil them with
their own weapons, that they may be the more readily despoiled. In the
Mahratta country, except in the large towns, there are no physicians;
and when simple remedies fail, they say: 'Send for the god,' or
magician, just as in the case of our correspondent; and besides the
sacrifice of goats and cocks, there is, under the name of religious
fasts, a much more telling and significant prescription in the way of
regimen.

It were impossible, in a space like ours, to give even an outline of
the different species of waren and their strange practices, part of
which would seem to be akin to what we call mesmerism and
clairvoyance, with the addition of spells and sacrifices. We might
write volumes, and search every volume that has been written on the
subject, and we could expiscate nothing else than that from the
beginning of the world, and we may say in every country in the world,
there has been, under different names and forms, a very general belief
in some supernatural power walking abroad on the earth, by which, when
presuming on its possession, one man may rule over another to his own
hurt or benefit, as the case may be. We have as little sympathy with
those who pretend to account for everything, and would solve all
mysteries by natural causes, as with those who yield implicit belief,
and run after every new thing. If such powers are illusive--in their
operations they are certainly not always so--and the illusion be
mental; if f