have grafted upon it such extraordinary and extravagant notions of Ali that they verily fall under the denunciation of the koran against creature-worship.

Shah Abbas insisted upon it that Santiago could be no other person than Ali, whose history the Spaniards had corrupted, and that the sword which the knights of his order bore in their insignia was meant to represent Sulfagar; other christians, he said, called him St. George. Pietro della Valle ventured to remark that there were chronological and geographical objections to this hypothesis ; but he did not think it prudent to press the argument.

144. The Squid-hound.

The sea-snake has been found, and confirmed the credit of Egede (whose word I never doubted) and of Pontoppidan. We shall have the kraken next. A writer in the Naval Chronicle, who creates for the old bishop the new diocese of Pont-oppidun, advertises for

N 5

one. "I have heard," he says, "such accounts of the squid-hound from people who have been on the southern whale fishery, and at Newfoundland, as certainly reduce all the bishop's crimes to a charge of exaggeration." Some parts of one, he had been told, were at Dartmouth, and he believed that naturalists were afraid to mention this great fish, lest they should be laughed at for their credulity. He, however, signing himself Fides, requests any of his readers to send him some well authenticated particulars of this monstrous animal. I have seen no answer to his request, and wish therefore by thus repeating it, to increase the chance of obtaining one.

145. The Stigmata.

In 1222, a council was held at Oxford by the archbishop of Canterbury for reformation of the state ecclesiastical, and the religion of the monks. "In which council" says Holinshed, "two naughtie fellows wer presented before him that of

late had been apprehended, either of them naming himself Christ, and preaching many things against such abuses as the clergy in those days used. Moreover to prove their error to have a show of truth, they showed certain tokens and signs of wounds in the body, hands, and feet, like unto our Saviour Jesus, that was nailed on the cross. In the end being well apposed, they were found to be but false dissemblers; wherefore by doom of that council they were judged to be nailed to a cross of wood, and so those to whom. the execution was assigned had them forth to a place called Arborberie, where they nailed them to a cross, and there left them till they were dead." This is the only instance of crucifixion I have met with in any christian persecution, perhaps the only one of this mode of punishment in any christian country, since it.. was abolished by a feeling which might have been supposed to be inseparable. from Christianity. The stigmata are proofs sufficient of imposture, and

it is this circumstance

which bas

made me notice a fact that might otherwise have well been past over with a silent shuddering. For two years afterwards Francesco of Assissi succeeded in the blasphemous trick for which these men were put to death. Is there any earlier example of it? It was often repeated in the golden age of catholic fraud, till the detection of the Dominicans at Berne in their cruel and over-acted delusions upon Jetzer, and the discovery shortly afterwards of Maria da Visitiçam at Lisbon, brought it into disrepute.

146. Tree of Life.

In that part of the Romance of Lancelot du Lake which relates to the Sainct Graal, there is a curious account of the Tree of Life, which is more likely to be the traditionary belief of that age, than the invention of the mystical románcer who added these wild and incongruous fictions to the story.

When Adam and Eve were expelled

from Paradise, Eve still carried in her hand, unconsciously, the fatal branch which she had plucked from the forbidden tree; and casting her eye upon it, and calling to mind all the evil of which it had been the occasion, she resolved that she would keep it for ever, as a memorial of her great misadventure. But then she recollected that she had neither coffer nor hutch to keep it in, for in those times it was not yet the custom to have such things, so she planted it upright in the earth, and by the will of the Lord it struck root, and became a great tree. Now the trunk and the branches and the leaves of this tree, were all as white as a peeled nut, that it might be a type of virginity*, and by reason that she who planted it was yet a virgin. One day while they were lamenting their fall under

→ Si sachez que virginite et pucellage ne sont pas une mesme chose, ne une mesme vertu, mais y a grant difference entre lung et lautre, car pucellage ne se peut de trop com parer a virginite, et si vous diray pour quoy. Pucellage est une vertu que tous coulæ et toutes celles lont-qui nont að