cing our course, we arrive at the time of the Hebrew
occupation of the country. A purer form of religion has rejected
most of the mythological material. But the old name of the
spring remains, and, what is still more pertinent, the old belief
in its healing power. We have evidence of this belief in St.
John's Gospel, which contains the peculiar story of the healing
at the pool of Bethesda, most probably connected with this same
spring. The popular view that at times an angel came to trouble
the water is perhaps an attempted explanation of its intermittent
action.

Now should have come the time, according to Milton, for the
departure of the sighing genius--the dying out of the
superstition. But those who anticipate such a _denouement_
will be grievously disappointed. For the Jews still bathe in its
waters, at the times of overflow, for cure of various maladies.
And on the Christian side of the history, it has gained the name
of the Virgin's Pool!

Similar stories might be found in any part of the globe where
tradition is sufficiently continuous to preserve them, testifying
to the almost astounding persistency of belief in the power of
springing water. No doubt simple faith healing has played its
part--but that part is very subsidiary; the strongest influence has
been that exercised by the movement of the water itself,
suggesting as it does the idea of spontaneous life. Not less
surprising is the hold such springs retain upon the imagination
and affections. Pathetic proof of this meets the traveller at every
turn on the west coast of Ireland. As he tramps the byways and
unfrequented paths of County Clare, his eye is caught from time
to time by an artless array of shelves on the sloping banks of
some meadow spring. On the shelves are scanty votive offerings,
piteous to see. Piteous, not on the score of the superstition
which prompts them--that is a matter to be dealt with
in a spirit of broad sympathy, on its historic and social
merits--but because of the dire poverty they reveal. Even its of
broken crockery are held worthy of a place at these little
shrines; so bereft are the peasantry of the simplest
accompaniments of civilised life.

How thoroughly natural is the growth of such sentiments and
beliefs! Jefferies felt the charm. "There was a secluded spring"
(he writes) "to which I sometimes went to drink the pure water,
lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking the lucid water,
clear as light itself in solutio