But these did not seem to me to have the heads of poisonous snakes; and, in spite of the entreaties of the terrified Negroes, I opened their mouths to judge for myself, and found them, as I expected, utterly fangless and harmless.

"The son of a Saint," says Christopher North, "who seems himself to be something of a reviewer, is insidious as the serpent, but fangless, as the glow worm"; and the Tory press were, naturally, up in arms against the champion critic of their pet prodigies.

He goes about with one fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling at the end of a string.

Let us be patient, because we see some difficulties; but let us give up the war itself sooner than our resolution, that, either by this war, or after it, Slavery shall be stripped of its insignia, and turned out to cold and irretrievable disgrace, weaponless, fangless, and with no object in the world worthy of its cunning.