ss which would punish a
silly joke, by which the dignity of the priestly order was offended, with
a heavy calamity, entailed upon the innocent descendants of its
perpetrators through many generations; and yet the fables of this modern
mythology cannot be, according to our author, rejected _without disbelief
of the Catholic doctrine_. This is not, however, his personal opinion; and
he has only asserted, in a more decisive manner than it has been done for
a considerable time, a principle which the Roman Catholic Church cannot
disavow, though it may place her in an embarrassing position; and as an
illustration of this, I shall give the following anecdote:--

Under the reign of Frederic II., a Prussian soldier stole a costly
ornament from an image of the Virgin, which enjoyed a great reputation for
its miraculous powers. The theft being discovered, the culprit pleaded in
his defence that, having addressed a fervent prayer to the above-mentioned
image for help in his poverty, it gave him this ornament to relieve him
from his distress. This affair was reported to the king, who, being much
amused by the soldier's device, required the Roman Catholic bishop in
whose diocese this theft was committed to give a positive opinion whether
the image in question could work miracles of this kind or not? The bishop
could not, without showing _disbelief in the Catholic doctrine_, deny the
possibility of the miracle, and was therefore obliged to give an
affirmative reply. The king, therefore, pardoned the soldier, on condition
of never accepting presents from this or any other image or saint
whatever.

The author of this essay, though a firm believer in the existence of God
and the truth of the Scriptures, has not the advantage of being inspired
with faith in the Catholic doctrine; he therefore will continue his
researches in the same manner as before.

Many legends originated from misunderstanding the emblematic character of
some pictures. Thus the celebrated Spanish lady saint and authoress, St
Theresa, was, on account of her eloquent and impassioned effusions of love
addressed to the Deity, painted by a Spanish artist having her heart
pierced with an arrow, in allusion to the words of the Psalmist, "For
thine arrows stick fast in me," &c.--(Ps. xxxviii. 2.) She died quietly in
her convent towards the end of the sixteenth century, and though the
particulars of her life and death are generally known, there were some
legend writers who re