urite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent. Our
vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he
prays ten times for once to God. Call you that invention? Invention is
confined to the East. Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were
monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and
'Regina caelorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists;
they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her the 'Star of the Sea,' and
the 'Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doubtlet
with a new button. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is
absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator;
now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and
would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping them.
But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.
The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before
them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers
before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them
just to the smallest tittle as we their imitators do."

Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the
most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropped
from heaven.

"Ay," cried Colonna, "such are the tutelary images of most great Italian
towns. I have examined nineteen of them, and made drafts of them. If
they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels. But my mind
is easy on that score. Ungainly statue or villainous daub fell never yet
from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All
this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had Oriental imaginations,
and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long,
fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils
of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their
Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus;
'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui credere
possit."

"What, would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed
Lady, which scarce a century agone hung lustrous in the air over this
very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St. Peter's
Church?"

"I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome. This is the story of
Numa's shield, revived by theologian