en,--elaborate in research, glowing in style, vivid in
portraiture, utterly reckless and indiscriminate in belief, extravagant up
to the very verge of idolatry in applause, and familiar far beyond the
verge of indecorum with the most awful topics and objects of the Christian
faith."--(Pp. 1, 2.)(75)

Now, I ask my reader whether the publication of such a work, in the year
of grace 1845, at Paris, is not a perfect miracle, and undoubtedly much
more genuine than all those which it describes?

We live indeed in an age of wonders, physical as well as moral, and
neither of them have escaped the all-powerful influence of the great
moving spring of our time, and the principal cause of its rapid
advance,--_i.e._, competition. England, which is foremost in many, and not
behind in any, inventions and discoveries of the day, has maintained her
rank, and even perhaps gone ahead, in the production of such moral
miracles as that of which I have given a specimen above. And, indeed, the
lives of the English saints, published in the years 1844 and 1845, in the
capital of this Protestant country, may fearlessly challenge a comparison
with the work of M. Chavin de Malan. They are, moreover, ascribed to a
clergyman of the Church of England, who, though he has since gone over to
Rome, was at that time receiving the wages of the Protestant Establishment
of this country as one of its servants and defenders.(76) The few
following extracts from this curious work will enable my readers to judge
whether I have over-estimated the capabilities of this work for a
successful competition with its French rival:--

"Many of these (legends) are so well fitted to illustrate certain
principles which should be borne in mind in considering mediaeval miracles,
that they deserve some attention. Not that any thing here said is intended
to _prove_ that the stories of miracles, said to be wrought in the middle
ages, are true. Men will always believe or disbelieve their truth, in
proportion as they are disposed to admit or reject the antecedent
probability of the existence of a perpetual church, endowed with unfailing
divine powers. And the reason of this is plain. Ecclesiastical miracles
presuppose Catholic faith, just as Scripture miracles, and Scripture
itself, presuppose the existence of God. Men, therefore, who disbelieve
the faith, will of course disbelieve the story of the miracles, which, if
it is not appealed to as a proof of the faith, at least takes it