barbarians were unable to pronounce the inflections of the Latin language, so their rude minds appear to have been unable to enter into the imagery which embodied the conceptions of the more civilized Christians of the Roman Empire. Their modes of depicting sacred subjects altogether were in the highest degree coarse, and the anthropomorphism which found its way into representations of the Trinity at last shocked the more cultivated of the ecclesiastics themselves.

The most familiar of all symbols, the serpent, was converted by the popular imagination from the emblem of evil into an actual reptile. Hence a number of legends representing missionary saints, who delivered a district by their preaching from its paganism and vice, as having miraculously cleared it of its reptiles. The best-known of these legends is that of St. Patrick, but Ireland does not alone enjoy the honour of supernatural purgation. The apostles of Brittany expelled the serpents which infested that country. In Wales, in the fifth century, the virgin Saint Keyna did the same for the district of Keynsham. In Pomerania a brood of fiery serpents fled before the advent of Christianity. St. Clement at Metz, St. Armand at Maestricht, St. Saturninus at Bernay, performed similar miracles. Many saints healed the bites of serpents. Holy water and the sound of church bells drove reptiles away. There is a Celtic belief that snakes, when they are some years old, get wings and fly away to Babylon. It is easy, remarks M. Maury, to recognize in this belief the emblematic character of the serpent as the personification of evil, whose kingdom is Babylon.

The lion was a symbol of force and of the devouring adversary of the Christian soul. It appears in an attitude of submission, by the side of the Hermit Saint, as an emblem of the Hermit's moral might, and of his spiritual victory. But the symbol was turned into a reality, and the story of Andronicus and his

friendly lion was reproduced in the legends of St. Jerome and other Saints. In some legends the lion was the Saints' protector, in others he was the miraculous discoverer of the Saints' relics. The wolf and the bear, like the lion, were symbols of demoniac force and cruelty, and, like the lion, were turned by popular fancy into literal animals, whose ferocity had been subdued by the supernatural virtue of the Saint. They were even compelled to serve the Saint as beasts of burden, a story which runs through several legends, each biographer in turn appropriating the marvel for the benefit of his own Saint. The hog, again, couched at the feet of St. Anthony, denoted the demon of sensuality vanquished by the austerities of the ascetic; but the popular fancy saw in it a real animal miraculously attached to the Saint.

The hart was also a sacred animal employed in symbolism, and, says M. Maury, constantly identified with the unicorn, which was supposed to bear the mark of the cross on its forehead. There is a set of legends in which deer are introduced, indicating the destined site of an abbey, or guiding to the place where relics are to be found. There are other legends in which the hart appears with the crucifix between his horns, and represents Christ himself, perhaps as the Persecuted One. Of them the legend of St. Hubert, Bishop of Liege, is the best known. On Good Friday, St. Hubert being profanely engaged in hunting, was carried by the ardour of the chase into the thickest part of the forest, leaving his train behind him. A stag of supernatural size suddenly appeared, and instead of taking to flight advanced towards the hunter. Hubert, gazing in astonishment, saw that the stag bore between its horns the image of the crucified Saviour. At first paralyzed with awe, he was at last enabled by Divine grace to dismount and fall on his knees before the apparition. As soon as he had finished his prayer, the stag addressed to him these words, "O Hubert, Hubert, how long wilt thou pursue the wild

beasts of the forest? If thou dost not quickly turn to God, and resolve to lead a better life, thou wilt be cast for ever into hell." Hubert, like St. Paul, was converted and cried, "Lord, what wilt thou that I do?" "Go," said the stag as it disappeared, " to Maestricht, "to to my servant Lambert, who will tell thee what to do." Not only is the symbolical turned into the literal stag, but St. Hubert, Bishop of Liege, is turned into a huntsman, and the patron of huntsmen, whose anniversary was celebrated at many courts by a solemn chase. In this case, also, as M. Maury remarks, the recurrence of the same animal in a whole group of miraculous legends, indicates the existence of the common cause which set the fancies of the different fabulists at work.

The dove was the emblem of innocence, and also of the presence of the Holy Spirit, in which latter signification it was a frequent ornament of the baptismal font. But when placed emblematically at the side of Saints, as it was in many cases, it became to the vulgar apprehension an actual dove, in the form of which the Holy Spirit had manifested itself to these holy personages, or descended on the scene of their preaching. Among the rest, the dove which the artist had painted at the ear of St. Gregory the Great or St. Basil, to denote that the source of their eloquence was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, lost its emblematic significance, which was replaced by a miraculous legend. The story of the Sainte Ampoule of Rheims, used at the coronation of the Kings of France and the palladium of the Monarchy, falls probably under the same category: it was brought full of divinely-scented ointment by a dove to St. Remi, at the baptism of Clovis. In a crowd of legends, too, the soul wings its way to heaven in the form of a dove from the mouth of the dying saint, especially when the saint is a virgin. In one story, which represents a dove rising from the funeral pile on which a saint's body had been burnt, it is conjectured that the

idea was derived from the pagan practice of setting loose an emblematic eagle from the funeral pile of a deceased Emperor. The raven was the symbolic opposite of the dove, and it, too, figures literally in a number of legends.

In Greek, the letters which make up the word fish (ix0vs) are the initial letters of the name and title of the Saviour. Hence the fish became a mystic symbol; and the meaning of the symbol in this case, as in others, having been lost, we have legends of hermit saints fed by miraculous fish, which are reproduced as fast as they are eaten. Sometimes it is the same fish which is partly eaten each day and becomes whole again; sometimes, as in the legend of St. Neot, there is a pair of fishes, and one being eaten each day, the pair always re-appears on the morrow.

The emblem of the four Evangelists, originally taken from Ezekiel, was literalized; the crown of glory was literalized; the horns which were a symbol of brute force became a literal appendage to the hideous head of the power of evil.

When a saint had suffered martyrdom by decapitation, it was the habit of the painters to depict him with his head in his hand, simply to show what manner of death he had died. Hence we have a score of legends of saints, St. Denis among the number, who walked, after being beheaded, with their heads in their hands. In the case of St. Cecilia, the musical saint, the process of legend-making has been more subtle. The words of the original story which represented the saintly virgin, while the profane wedding music was sounding, as making a holier music in her own heart to the Lord (illa in corde suo soli Deo psallebet), were rendered symbolically by the painter under the image of an organ; and thus St. Cecilia became a musician and the patroness of music by a title much of the same kind as that by which St. Hubert became the patron of hunters.

A mere name, misunderstood, has some

times sufficed to give title to a legend. Sophia (Wisdom) has been turned into a saint. The same thing has happened to the names of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Architriclinus (Master of the Feast) has been distorted into Archiæclinus, who is made the bridegroom at the marriage feast in Cana. The Ursula and Undecimella, VV. MM., (Virgins and Martyrs) of some old calendar have filled with the bones of eleven thousand martyred virgins a sacristy at Cologne.

M. Maury disclaims any intention of putting forward his system of interpretation as infallible. But we must admit that it is at least worthy of attention; and the reasonable inquirer will probably prefer it on the one hand to belief in a multitude of prodigies often of the most grotesque description, and on the other hand to the supposition of enormous lying and stupendous fraud

for them. She would despise me if I were to give up her love at the first clap of thunder like the shadow of a tree beneath which I had dreamed away so many happy hours. Then suddenly all became still within me, and I heard only the words "her love," and they sounded again from every corner of my heart as an echo, and I was frightened at myself. "Her love!" and how had I deserved it? She hardly knew me, and if she could ever love me must I not myself confess to her that I did not deserve the love of an angel? Each thought, each hope that rose in my soul fell back like a bird which tries to soar into the blue sky, and does not see the wire which encloses him on every side. But then, wherefore all this blessedness, so near and so unattainable? Cannot God work miracles? Does He not work miracles every morning? Has He not often listened to my prayer when it rose to Him in full faith and would not let Him go till it won comfort and help for the weary soul? It is no earthly blessing for which we pray, it is only that two souls who have found.and recognized each other may finish this short journey of life arm in arm, face to face, that I may be a support to her in her sufferings, and she my comfort or my sweet charge till we reach the goal. And if a late spring were but granted to her life, if her sufferings were but removed. Oh! what blessed pictures passed before my eyes. The castle of her dead mother, in the Tyrol, belonged to her; there on the green mountains, in the fresh mountain air, among a healthy unspoiled people, far from the bustle of the world, from its cares and struggles, with no one to envy us, no one to judge us, in what blessed peace we could contemplate the evening of life, and "silently pass away like the evening glow." Then I saw the dark lake with the glance of its living waves, and in them the clear reflection of the distant glacier, and I heard the bells of the herds and the songs of the herdsmen, and saw the hunters with their rifles clamber over the mountains, and

the old and young gather together of an evening in the village, and over all I saw her form floating like an angel of peace, and I was her guide and her friend. Old fool, I cried aloud, Old fool, is thy heart still so wild and so soft? Nerve thyself; think who thou art, and how far removed from her. She is friendly and likes to see herself mirrored in another soul; but her childlike confidence and ease best prove that no deeper feeling for thee lives in her breast. Hast thou not seen on many a bright summer night in wandering alone through the beech woods, how the moon shed its silver light over every branch and leaf, and how it lighted up even the dark gloomy waters of the fishpond, and reflected itself brightly in the smallest drop. So she looks out upon this night of life, and thou mayest bear her soft light reflected in thy heart, but hope not for a warmer ray.

Then her image rose suddenly as if alive. before my eyes; she stood before me not as a memory but as a vision, and for the first time I was aware of how beautiful she was. It was not the beauty of form or of colouring such as dazzles us at the first sight of a lovely maiden, and which will pass away as quickly as a spring blossom. It was far more the harmony of the whole being, the truth of every movement, the spiritual expression, the perfect interpenetration of body and soul which gave such delight to those who saw her. The beauty which nature lavishes so profusely does not please unless the possessor can appropriate it, and as it were deserve and conquer it. No, it rather offends; as when we see an actress on the stage advance in royal robes, and observe at every step how little her dress suits her, how little

it belongs to her. it belongs to her. Grace is the real beauty. and grace is the spiritualizing of all that is dull, and material, and earthly; it is that pressure of the spirit which even makes the ugly beautiful. The more closely I observed the vision which stood before me the more I perceived the noble beauty of every linea