ing laid to pledge by a monastery for forty
pounds, was left unredeemed at the dissolution of the house; the king's
commissioners, who upon surrender of any foundation undertook to pay the
debts, refusing to return the price again." That is, they did not
choose to repay the _forty pounds_, to receive _apiece of the finger of
St. Andrew_.

About this time the property of relics suddenly sunk to a South-sea
bubble; for shortly after the artifice of the Rood of Grace, at Boxley,
in Kent, was fully opened to the eye of the populace; and a far-famed
relic at Hales, in Gloucestershire, of the blood of Christ, was at the
same time exhibited. It was shown in a phial, and it was believed that
none could see it who were in mortal sin; and after many trials usually
repeated to the same person, the deluded pilgrims at length went away
fully satisfied. This relic was the _blood of a duck_, renewed every
week, and put in a phial; one side was _opaque_, and the other
_transparent_; the monk turned either side to the pilgrim, as he thought
proper. The success of the pilgrim depended on the oblations he made;
those who were scanty in their offerings were the longest to get a sight
of the blood: when a man was in despair, he usually became generous!

PERPETUAL LAMPS OF THE ANCIENTS.

No. 379 of the Spectator relates an anecdote of a person who had opened
the sepulchre of the famous Rosicrucius. He discovered a lamp burning,
which a statue of clock-work struck into pieces. Hence, the disciples of
this visionary said that he made use of this method to show "that he had
re-invented the ever-burning lamps of the ancients."

Many writers have made mention of these wonderful lamps.

It has happened frequently that inquisitive men examining with a
flambeau ancient sepulchres which had been just opened, the fat and
gross vapours kindled as the flambeau approached them, to the great
astonishment of the spectators, who frequently cried out "_a miracle!_"
This sudden inflammation, although very natural, has given room to
believe that these flames proceeded from _perpetual lamps_, which some
have thought were placed in the tombs of the ancients, and which, they
said, were extinguished at the moment that these tombs opened, and were
penetrated by the exterior air.

The accounts of the perpetual lamps which ancient writers give have
occasioned several ingenious men to search after their composition.
Licetus, who possessed more erudition