RAVEN. 
233 
crafty legislators of these celebrated 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 desolation. 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 light of Christianity, 
have exhibited as much folly, through the impious 
curiosity of prying into futurity, as the Romans them- 
selves. It is true that modern nations have not insti- 
tuted 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 multitude. 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 ail tbs ardour of devotion, to avert the 
impending calamity. 
divination. Dent. chap, xviii. The Romans derived their know- 
ledge of augury chiefly from the Tuscans or Etrurians, who prac- 
tised it in the earliest times. This art was known in Italy before 
the time of Romulus, since that prince did not commence the 
building of Rome till he had taken the auguries. The successors 
of Romulus, from a conviction of the usefulness of the science, and 
at the same time not to render it contemptible by becoming too 
familiar, employed the most skilful augurs from Etruria to intro- 
duce 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 Abbe Banier. 
