gers were cheerfully braved. They were thought to preserve
from all evils, and to cure the most inveterate diseases. Annual
pilgrimages were made to the shrines that contained them, and considerable
revenues collected from the devotees.

Next in renown were those precious relics, the tears of the Saviour. By
whom and in what manner they were preserved, the pilgrims did not inquire.
Their genuineness was vouched by the Christians of the Holy Land, and that
was sufficient. Tears of the Virgin Mary, and tears of St. Peter, were
also to be had, carefully enclosed in little caskets, which the pious
might wear in their bosoms. After the tears the next most precious relics
were drops of the blood of Jesus and the martyrs, and the milk of the
Virgin Mary. Hair and toe-nails were also in great repute, and were sold
at extravagant prices. Thousands of pilgrims annually visited Palestine in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to purchase pretended relics for the
home market. The majority of them had no other means of subsistence than
the profits thus obtained. Many a nail, cut from the filthy foot of some
unscrupulous ecclesiastic, was sold at a diamond's price, within six
months after its severance from its parent toe, upon the supposition that
it had once belonged to a saint or an apostle. Peter's toes were
uncommonly prolific, for there were nails enough in Europe, at the time of
the Council of Clermont, to have filled a sack, all of which were devoutly
believed to have grown on the sacred feet of that great apostle. Some of
them are still shewn in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle. The pious come
from a distance of a hundred German miles to feast their eyes upon them.

At Port Royal, in Paris, is kept with great care a thorn, which the
priests of that seminary assert to be one of the identical thorns that
bound the holy head of the Son of God. How it came there, and by whom it
was preserved, has never been explained. This is the famous thorn,
celebrated in the long dissensions of the Jansenists and the Molenists,
and which worked the miraculous cure upon Mademoiselle Perrier: by merely
kissing it she was cured of a disease of the eyes of long standing.[71]

[71] Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XIV_.

What traveller is unacquainted with the Santa Scala, or Holy Stairs, at
Rome? They were brought from Jerusalem along with the true cross, by the
Empress Helen, and were taken from the house which, according to popular
tradition, w