APPENDIX. 357 



The candidates who had lately contended with 

 him in aspiring to supreme command, having been 

 appointed his chief ministers, he was sworn to 

 redouble his vigilance : in return for which it was 

 finally decreed that he should, in future, have seven 

 links added to his tail, and his head adorned with 

 six horns, instead of two. His infernal honour 

 being thus pledged, the work of mischief was 

 instantly begun, by his commanding his ministers 

 and their satellites to redouble their vigilance, by 

 throwing the mists of ignorance over the minds of 

 the rulers and teachers of mankind, and to fill their 

 minds with superstition, bigotry, pride, and arro- 

 gant zeal. All the imps of minor consideration 

 were also ordered to direct the unreasoning, lazy, 

 envious, wicked, gross, vulgar herd of mankind, 

 high and low, into the paths which lead to misery. 

 Having thus concluded their mission, the innumer- 

 able host set off, like a whirlwind, amidst the glare 

 of lightning and the roar of thunder, to take up 

 their abode in the minds of men, where they had 

 been nursed before ; but millions of their number, 

 who had been dismissed from the minds of good 

 men, dropped behind, and, in their fall through 

 endless space, by the violence of their motion, ig- 

 nited, were whirled into balls of fire, and gravitated 

 to the sun. The rest proceeded ; their numbers 

 eclipsed the moon, and the effluvia which exhaled 

 from them in their flight caused plague, pestilence, 

 and famine in the countries they passed over, and 

 the concussion they made in the air is said to have 

 shaken the ices from the poles. 



