You are preaching to the deaf; to prepossessed and prejudiced ears; to presons so besotted and addicted to their vices, that they will not listen to you, though your advice be most suitable to them, and such as they cannot reject, but to their manifest disadvantage. "They are like to the deaf adder, which stoppeth her ears, and refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely." As the following narrative seems to give an ingenious explanation of this passage in the Psalms, it is here added. "There is a kind of snake in India," Mr. Forbes says, in his Oriental Memoirs, lately published, "which is called the dancing snake. They are carried in baskets throughout Hindostan, and procure a maintenance for a set of people, who play a few simple notes on the flute, with which the snakes seem much delighted, and keep time by a graceful motion of the head, erecting about half their length from the ground, and following the music with gentle curves, like the undulating lines of a swan's neck. It is a well attested fact, that when a house is infested with these snakes, and some others of the coluber genus, which destroy poultry, and small domestic animals, as also by the larger serpents of the boa tribe, the musicians are sent for, who, by playing on a flageolet, find out their hiding places, and charm them to destruction; for no sooner do the snakes hear the music, than they come from their retreat, and are easily taken. I imagine," Mr. Forbes says, "that these musical snakes were known in Palestine, from the Psalmist comparing the ungodly to the deaf adder, which stoppeth her ears, and refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. When the music ceaseth, the snakes appear motionless, but if not immediately covered up in the basket, the spectators are liable to fatal accidents. Among my drawings is that of a cobra de capello, which danced for an hour on the table, while I painted it, during which I frequently handled it, to observe the beauty of the spots, and especially the spectacles on the hood, not doubting but that its venemous fangs had been previously extracted. But the next morning I was informed by my servant, that while purchasing some fruit, he observed the man who had been with me the preceding evening, entertaining the country people, who were sitting on the ground around him, with his dancing snakes, when the animal that I had so often handled, darted suddenly at the throat of a young woman, and inflicted a wound, of which she died in about half an hour."