X. 



THE TERKIBLE. 



Man's connexion with tlie creation around him occa- 

 sionally brings him into circumstances of more serious 

 result than a temporary excitement of the imagination, 

 and a thrilling of the nerves, which might be on the 

 whole rather pleasant than otherwise. He was indeed 

 invested with lordship over the inferior creatures, and in 

 general they own his dominion ; but many of them are 

 endowed with powers for evil, to which he can oppose no 

 effectual resistance ; at least, none so invariably effectual, 

 but that occasions occur in which the mastery is reversed. 

 Some are furnished with enormous weight and strength, 

 able to crush him with mere brute momentum ; others 

 carry formidable weapons, horns and hoofs, claws and 

 teeth, tusks and fangs, wielded with consummate skill, 

 and made more effective by the aid of muscular strength, 

 fleetness of pace, agility, instinct of combination, or cun- 

 ning strategy. Others, small and aj^parently contemptible, 

 are yet armed with implements so terribly lethal, that 

 the slightest puncture of the skin by one of them, darted 

 too with lightning-like rapidity and almost unerring pre- 

 cision, is inevitably and immediately followed by the most 

 horrid form of death. 



