XXXV.
O Nature! can it be? The thought alone
Chills the quick pulse: Belief retires afar;
Reason grows angry; Pity breathes a groan;
And each distrusts the truth: yet “such things are.”
In the whole catalogue of all the crimes and cruelties ever recorded
since the invention of letters, there is nothing so horrid to
the imagination as the simple fact of the existence of desire in the
immediate presence of death and carnage. Peter the Great, Czar
of Muscovy, killed several of his soldiers with his own hand, at the
taking of Narva, to prevent the same atrocity related of Philomars
in the text.
“Jornandés reconte” (says M. de Châteaubriand), “que des
sorcières chassées loin des habitations des hommes dans les déserts
de la Scythie, furent visitées par des démons, et de ce commerce
sortirent la nation des Huns.” Deeds are still done which might
well serve to prove a similar origin.
Are!—nay, in this late age! God, canst thou view
Thine image so debased? The bard in grief
Thinks o'er the creed of fiends; sees what men do;
And, wondering, scarce rejects the wild belief.