latter-day sceptics from suggesting for Wolf and Woodpecker, Cock and Bull. There is what Dean Liddell calls "a mysterious story" in the annals of ancient Rome under the patricians, to the effect that Nine Tribunes were burnt alive. "It cannot be a fiction," argues the Very Reverend Doctor, "for the names of the unfortunate men are given by a trustworthy writer, and the place of their martyrdom was (he tells us) marked by a slab of marble." The proof may not be held satisfactory by a more exacting school of historical critics. Would the late Sir G. C. Lewis, for instance, labouring more laboriously in the same field of history, have accepted the names and the slab of marble as unanswerably demonstrative? Never, perhaps, was man less apt than that lamented Minister to draw conclusions after the sort of Smith the Weaver's. In his incidental yet elaborate discussion, for instance, of the question whether the Persian institutions and customs described in the Cyropædia may or may not have really originated with Cyrus, as founder of the Persian monarchy, Sir George characteristically observes that Xenophon's explanations, in order to be correctly understood, must all be read backwards. "The subsisting custom is the starting-point, and the origin is an illustrative story invented by Xenophon himself." There were certain political institutions, certain usages, or local peculiarities which Xenophon found existing in the Persian empire in his own day, and which he inter wove into his fiction, either by tracing them to imaginary incidents in the life of Cyrus, or by assigning the reasons for them, in the form of motives which had actuated that prince in their establishment. The subsisting custom would no more convince Sir George that Cyrus originated it, than the existence of the Lacus Curtius, a reservoir of water in the forum at Rome, would convince him that M. Curtius actually leaped into the chasm, on horseback; from which event the prevailing belief deduced the origin of the name, and for the truth of which event the existence of the lake was, to that prevailing belief, an all-sufficient voucher. When the German traveller, Herr J. G. Kohl, visited Chester, he was, to his astonishment, shown the tomb of one of his German sovereigns, no less a potentate than the Emperor Henry IV., whom the good folks of Chester profess to have received, when wearied and worn out with the vexations of this troublesome world, to have nourished and cherished him till death did them part, and to have buried him in their cathedral, where they erected a monument to his memory. Kohl told his guide that he very much doubted the truth of his tale. The man replied that there were some people in Chester who doubted it; " but," said he, "I have no doubt on the subject, else why should they put it in the books?" Nay, was not the monument there to speak for itself? We are told in German legend that when Sir Eppo of Eppstein rid his afflicted country of the giant that, among other misdoings, had recently battered Eppo's fine castle to fragments with his iron mace,—the grateful people immediately commenced rebuilding the castle, which, when completed, yielded to no Schloss in Deutschland for beauty and strength; -and that in order to remind future generations of the wonderful circumstances which led to its erection, the bones of the giant were fixed over the entrance-gate. When these mouldered away, effigies of them were carved in stone, as undeniable testimony to the truth of the story-"evidence, I think," says one commentator and eye-witness, “as irrefragable as was the brick in the chimney to prove the identity of Jack Cade's house." The two false witnesses engaged to prove a case against Rebecca the Jewess, accused of witchcraft, were largely indebted for success to the demonstrative logic favoured by Smith the Weaver. A credulous assembly greedily swallowed the deponent's affirmation that Rebecca, when tending the wounded knight, at the castle of Torquilstone, did make certain signs upon the wound, and repeated certain mysterious words, which he blessed God he understood not, whereupon the iron hand of a square cross-bow bolt disengaged itself from the wound, the bleeding was staunched, the wound was closed, and the dying man was, within the quarter of an hour, walking upon the ramparts, and assisting the witness in managing a mangonel, or machine for hurling stones. It was "difficult to dispute the accuracy of the witness, as in order to produce real evidence in support of his verbal testimony, he drew from his pouch the very bolt-head, which, according to his story, had been miraculously extracted from the wound; and as the iron weighed a full ounce, it completely confirmed the tale, however marvellous." When John Locke was a tourist in France, he records his inspection, "about half a league from St. Vallier," of a house a little out of the way, "where they say Pilate lived in banishment. We met the owner, who seemed to doubt the truth of the story; but told us there was mosaic work very ancient in one of the floors,"-and what more would you have, if only you were a weaver, of the clan Smith ? Mr. Locke's gravity is unimpeachable under any circumstances. It is quite otherwise with lighter travellers, of the style, say, of my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who, in her gaiety, that perhaps trenches on irreverence, thus reports one item of her sight-seeing in the Convent of St. Lawrence at Vienna: "But I could not forbear laughing at their showing me a wooden head of our Saviour, which, they [the nuns] assured me, spoke during the siege of Vienna; and, as a proof of it, bade me mark his mouth, which had been open ever since." This practical ensample of the perennial force of Smith's logic, must have been a deal too much, at any time, for her very lively ladyship's sense of the ludicrous. One is reminded of the closing stanza of Southey's metrical legend of the Holy Thumb which miraculously subdued the fierce young Dragon of the abyss: But at Constantinople The arm and hand were shown, O'erthrew the Grecian throne. And when the Monks this tale who told To pious visitors would hold The holy hand for kissing, They never fail'd, with faith devout, That there the thumb was missing. In Mr. Froude's history may be read how the Nun of Kent used to relate many startling stories, not always of the most decent kind, of the attempts which the devil made to lead her astray; the devil and the angels being, in fact, alternate visitors to her cell, where the former, on one occasion, burnt a mark upon her hand which she exhibited publicly, and to which the monks were in the habit of appealing, when there were any signs of scepticism in the visitors to the priory. Something of a parallel passage—all question of delusion or honest conviction apart-may be suggested from Coleridge's psychological analysis of Luther's temptation in the Warteburg. All at once the reformer sees the arch-fiend coming forth from the wall of the room, from the very spot, perhaps, on which his eyes have been fixed vacantly in perplexed meditation: the inkstand which he had at the same time been using, becomes associated with |