RAVEN. 
247 
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 light 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. Shakspeare puts the following malediction into the 
mouth of his Caliban : — 
As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d 
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen, 
Drop on you both !” * 
The ferocious wife of Macbeth, on being advised of the 
approach of Duncan, whose death she had conspired, thus ex- 
claims : — 
“ The raven himself is hoarse, 
That croaks the fatal enterance of Duncan 
Under my battlements.” f 
Tempest, Act i. scene 2. 
f Macbeth, Act i. scene 5. 
