ght principle; that
the poet only employed the ideas and the materials which is found in his
own country and his own times.]

[Footnote 284: Michelet, in his "Life of Luther," says the Spanish
soldiers mocked and loaded him with insults, on the evening of his last
examination before the Diet at Worms, on his leaving the town-hall to
return to his hostelry: he ceased to employ arguments after this, and
when next day the archbishop of Treves wished to renew them, he replied
in the language of Scripture, "If this work be of men, it will come to
nought, but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it."]

[Footnote 285: The miracles of Clovis consisted of a shield, which was
picked up after having fallen from the skies; the anointing oil,
conveyed from heaven by a white dove in a phial, which, till the reign
of Louis XVI. consecrated the kings of France; and the oriflamme, or
standard with golden flames, long suspended over the tomb of St. Denis,
which the French kings only raised over the tomb when their crown was in
imminent peril. No future king of France can be anointed with the
_sainte ampoule_, or oil brought down to earth by a white dove; in 1794
it was broken by some profane hand, and antiquaries have since agreed
that it was only an ancient lachrymatory!]

[Footnote 286: This fact was probably quite unknown to us, till it was
given in the "Quarterly Review," vol. xxix. However, the same event was
going on in Italy.]

[Footnote 287: One of the most absurd reports that ever frightened
private society was that which prevailed in Paris at the end of the
seventeenth century. It was, that the Jesuits used a poisoned snuff
which they gave to their opponents, with the fashionable politeness of
the day in "offering a pinch;" and which for a time deterred the
custom.]

[Footnote 288: It is now about thirty-seven years ago since I first
published this anecdote; at the same time I received information that
our female historian and dilapidator had acted in this manner more than
once. At that distance of time this rumour, so notorious at the British
Museum, it was impossible to authenticate. The Rev. William Graham, the
surviving husband of Mrs. Macaulay, intemperately called on Dr. Morton,
in a very advanced period of life, to declare that "it appeared to him
that the note does not contain any evidence that the leaves were torn
out by Mrs. Macaulay." It was more apparent to the unprejudiced that the
doctor must have singularly