146 RAVEN. 
brated nations, from a deep knowledge of human nature, made 
superstition a principal feature of their religious ceremonies, 
well knowing that it required a more than ordinary policy to 
govern a multitude ever liable to the fatal influences of passion, 
and who, without some timely restraints, would burst forth 
like a torrent, whose course is marked by wide-spreading de- 
solation. Hence to the purposes of polity the raven was made 
subservient ; and the Romans having consecrated it to Apollo, 
as to the god of divination, its flight was observed with the 
greatest solemnity, and its tones and inflections of voice were 
noted with a precision which intimated a belief in its infallible 
prescience. 
But the ancients have not been the only people infected 
with this species of superstition ; the moderns, even though 
favoured with the hight of Christianity, have exhibited as much 
folly, through the impious curiosity of prying into futurity, as 
the Romans themselves. It is true that modern nations have 
not instituted their sacred colleges or sacerdotal orders for the 
purposes of divination, but in all countries there have been 
self-constituted augurs, whose interpretations of omens have 
been received with religious respect by the credulous multi- 
tude. Even at this moment, in some parts of the world, if a 
raven alight on a village church, the whole fraternity is in an 
uproar, and Heaven is importuned, in all the ardour of devo- 
tion, to avert the impending calamity. 
The poets have taken advantage of this weakness of human 
nature, and, in their hands, the raven is a fit instrument of 
terror. Shakespeare puts the following malediction into the 
mouth of his Caliban :— 
As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed 
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen, 
Drop on you both !* 

from Etruria tointroduce the practice of it into their religious ceremonies ; 
and by a decree of the senate, some of the youth of the best families 
in Rome were annually sent into Tuscany to be instructed in this art.— 
Vide Ciceron. de Divin.; also Calmet and the Abbé Banier. 
* Tempest, act i. scene 2. 
