own parish, which he has
made his specialty, has been petrified to find what he thought his
discoveries all laid down with careful precision as matters of ordinary
knowledge in some corner of these mighty volumes. The Bollandists
obtained their information from the spot, and it is on the spot that
this kind of literature must be worked out. A thoroughly accomplished
antiquary, working within a limited district, will thus bring forth more
full and satisfactory results, so far as they go, than even the
Bollandists have achieved, and hence the great value of the services of
the book clubs to hagiology.

The writer of the letters bearing the signature "Veritas," in all the
newspapers, would, of course, specially object to the resuscitation of
this class of literature, "because it is full of fabulous accounts of
miracles and other supernatural events which can only minister to
credulity and superstition." But even in the extent and character of
this very element there is a great significance. The size of a current
falsehood is the measure of the size of the human belief that has
swallowed it, and is a component part of the history of man.

The best critical writers on ancient history have agreed not to throw
away the cosmogony and the hierology of Greece. It is part of Grecian
history that the creed of the people was filled with a love of embodied
fancies, so graceful and luxuriant. No less are the revel rout of
Valhalla part of the virtual history of the Scandinavian tribes. But the
lives of our saints, independently altogether of the momentous change in
human affairs and prospects which they ushered in, have a substantial
hold on history, of which neither the classical nor the northern
hierology can boast. Poseidon and Aphrodite, Odin and Freya, vanish into
the indefinite and undiscoverable at the approach of historical
criticism. But separately altogether from their miracles, Cuthbert and
Ninian, Columba and Kentigern, had actual existences. We know when they
lived and when they died. The closer that historical criticism dogs
their steps, the clearer it sees them, and the more it knows about their
actual lives and ways. Even if they were not the missionaries who
introduced Christianity among us,--as men who, in the old days before
Britain became populous and affluent in the fruits of advanced
civilisation, trod the soil that we tread, it would be interesting to
know about them--about the habitations they lodged in, the g