bens sat when he painted the
immortal Descent from the Cross; or the telescope, preserved in the Museum
of Florence, which aided Galileo in his sublime discoveries. Who would not
look with veneration upon the undoubted arrow of William Tell--the swords
of Wallace or of Hampden--or the Bible whose leaves were turned by some
stern old father of the faith?

Thus the principle of reliquism is hallowed and enshrined by love. But
from this germ of purity how numerous the progeny of errors and
superstitions! Men, in their admiration of the great, and of all that
appertained to them, have forgotten that goodness is a component part of
true greatness, and have made fools of themselves for the jawbone of a
saint, the toe-nail of an apostle, the handkerchief a king blew his nose
in, or the rope that hanged a criminal. Desiring to rescue some slight
token from the graves of their predecessors, they have confounded the
famous and the infamous, the renowned and the notorious. Great saints,
great sinners; great philosophers, great quacks; great conquerors, great
murderers; great ministers, great thieves; each and all have had their
admirers, ready to ransack earth, from the equator to either pole, to find
a relic of them.

The reliquism of modern times dates its origin from the centuries
immediately preceding the Crusades. The first pilgrims to the Holy Land
brought back to Europe thousands of apocryphal relics, in the purchase of
which they had expended all their store. The greatest favourite was the
wood of the true cross, which, like the oil of the widow, never
diminished. It is generally asserted, in the traditions of the Romish
Church, that the Empress Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, first
discovered the veritable "_true cross_" in her pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The Emperor Theodosius made a present of the greater part of it to St.
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, by whom it was studded with precious stones, and
deposited in the principal church of that city. It was carried away by the
Huns, by whom it was burnt, after they had extracted the valuable jewels
it contained. Fragments, purporting to have been cut from it, were, in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, to be found in almost every church in
Europe, and would, if collected together in one place, have been almost
sufficient to have built a cathedral. Happy was the sinner who could get a
sight of one of them; happier he who possessed one! To obtain them the
greatest dan