razors for so close a shave. He is no editor, but every one has heard of the Satanic press. He is no tailor, but ever since he sat cross-legged over the first suit of fig-leaves, he has had a remarkable run in furnishing the disguises in which cant, humbug, duplicity, and villainy appear. He is not in the mercantile line, strictly, but yet he is
Who sells by the shortened yard;
Who keeps his accounts in a way of his own.
When he sells two ounces, he sets three down,
And charges two shillings as half-a-crown,
And prover by his clerk 't is true!"
In fact, he attends to no body's business, only because no body's business is every body's business. The whirr of his unseen wings, as he goes skurrying through the air, may be heard at any time by any one who chooses to listen! Any one who is after the devil will find the devil after him.
To define this ubiquitous personage is as difficult as to "paint chaos, to take a portrait of Proteus, or to catch the figure of the fleeting air," which is his principality.
But that would be a poor transcript of human thought in which this element of evil were omitted.
Whether its introduction into literature has been of any benefit to our race, we do not now consider. Even in poetry and fiction, familiarity with its presence is by no means to be coveted. If the devil is truly represented, he must be shown as a fiend of tact and talent; and then he is as certain to excite admiration as he is to blaspheme; and if, as an amiable devil, why the better devil he is made the worse devil he is; for his character then would be altogether mistaken. If the bad passions are sought to be represented in him, if he is portrayed as one seeking whom he may delude and devour, there are enough of his clan in the human mould, which the varied pen of literature has delineated, and may yet delineate.
The spirit of evil may as well be illustrated indirectly in the human character as in the direct Satanic character, for the reason that the old rogue appears more at home when abroad, more easy in a
