oks of devotion, and a multitude of special writings, some
of them in manuscript, upon the glories of the saint, including a large
mass of material at the Royal Library in Munich and in the British
Museum. I have relied entirely upon Catholic authors, and have
not thought it worth while to consult any Protestant author. The
illustration of the miracle of the crucifix and the crab in its final
form is given in La Devotion de Dix Vendredis a l'Honneur de St.
Francois Xavier, Bruxelles, 1699, Fig. 24: the pious crab is represented
as presenting the crucifix by which a journey of forty leagues he has
brought from the depths of the ocean to Xavier, who walks upon the
shore. The book is in the Cornell University Library. For the letter
of King John to Barreto, see Leon Pages's Lettres de Francois Xavier,
Paris, 1855, vol. ii, p. 465. For the miracle among the Badages, compare
Tursellinus, lib. ii, c. x, p. 16, with Bouhours, Dryden's translation,
pp. 146, 147. For the miracle of the gift of tongues, in its higher
development, see Bouhours, p. 235, and Coleridge, vo. i, pp. 151, 154,
and vol. ii, p. 551

It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biographers
generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact is, that as
a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to the natural
laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and legend in the warm
atmosphere of love and devotion which constantly arises about great
religious leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of
natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when
he who believes most is thought most meritorious.(296)

(296) Instances can be given of the same evolution of miraculous legend
in our own time. To say nothing of the sacred fountain at La Salette,
which preserves its healing powers in spite of the fact that the miracle
that gave rise to them has twice been pronounced fraudulent by the
French courts, and to pass without notice a multitude of others, not
only in Catholic but in Protestant countries, the present writer may
allude to one which in the year 1893 came under his own observation.
On arriving in St. Petersburg to begin an official residence there,
his attention was arrested by various portraits of a priest of the
Russo-Greek Church; they were displayed in shop windows and held an
honoured place in many private dwellings. These portraits ranged from
lifelike photographs, which showed a pl