THE DECLINE OF SERPENT-WORSHIP. 437

survey of the causes which produced the declineof serpent-worship : the chief of which appearsto have been the uniform hostility of the wor-shippers of the sun. Whatever this hostilityspared, was almost annihilated by the preachingof the early Christians or the sword and theKoran of the inflexible Mohammedans. TheMohammedans in the east, and the Christians in the west, completed what had been begun bythe children of Surya, and carried on by thevotaries of Crishna or Apollo,—the adventurersof the heroic ages, and the arms of the host ofJoshua. So that few and almost imperceptibleare the traces now existing of an idolatry whichonce called the world its own. The subjects ofthe poetical apostrophe of Lucan,-—

“ Vos quoque qui cunctis innoxia Numina ternsSerpitis aurato nitidi fulgore Dracones,”

are now coiled obscurely in the woods of theAbyssinian Shangalla, or the almost inaccessiblemountains of central Africa , protected only bythe impossibility or inutility of the pursuit.

But it is not for us to lament the feeble tracesof a superstition which only commemorates thevictory of the evil spirit over the soul of thefallen man. Idolatry has been permitted long