s with an itch for fiction, but no
talent that way; not being orientals. The 'ancile' or sacred shield
of Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious
prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter. Be just,
swallow both stories or neither. The 'Bocca della Verita' passes for a
statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day;
it is in reality an image of the goddess Rhea, and the modern figment is
one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'

"But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding,
winking, sweating, bleeding statues, to these poor abused heathens; the
Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chaeronea, so did the
Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at
Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates. The Palladium
itself was brought to Italy by Aeneas, and after keeping quiet three
centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear,
since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii assented with a nod to
go to Rome. Antony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its
marble before the fight of Actium. Others cured diseases: as that of
Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in
sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding brass--as I do. Of all our
marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and
that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen. Thus
the footprints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia. Castor and
Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the
prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them
on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see,
near Venice, a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword.
This he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in
two with his razor.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'

"Kissing of images, and the Pope's toe, is Eastern Paganism. The
Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, the
Romans of the Greeks, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus had
his toe kissed under the Empire. The Druids kissed the High Priest's toe
a thousand years B.C. The Mussulmans, who, like you, profess to abhor
Heathenism, kiss the stone of the Caaba: a Pagan practice.