innocent things.

Some of the Fathers once discovered an old altar in Rome with the inscription, "Semoni Sanco, Deo," the title of an old Roman god. But the brilliant idea occurred to them that the inscription should have run "Simoni Sancto, Deo," and, on the strength of this, they wrote long accounts describing how Simon Magus went to Rome, and there by his sorceries and infernal arts persuaded the people to regard him as a god and to raise altars in his honour. Among numberless other intimations of the birth of Our Lord, there is the story that Augustus in his old age consulted the oracle of Delphi as to the choice of a successor. After many vain efforts to extract an answer to his question, he had to rest satisfied with the following enigmatical announcement: "The Hebrew child, whom all the gods obey, drives me forth from hence, and sends me down to hell. Depart from this temple in silence."

But occasionally the stories were told without a due regard to chronology. It would be interesting, for example, to know on what possible basis of fact the story of Thulis could rest. We learn that he was a king of Egypt whose empire extended even unto the ocean. "It is he, as tradition hath it, who gave the name of Thule to the island which men now call Iceland. As his empire seems to have extended over all the intervening country also, it must have been of considerable dimensions. This king, puffed up with his success and his prosperity, went to the oracle of Serapis, and said: "Thou who art the lord of fire, and dost govern the course of heaven, tell me the truth. Has there ever been, or will there ever appear, one as powerful as I am?' To this the oracle answered him: 'First God the Father, then the Word, and with Them the Spirit, Three in One, Whose power is everlasting. Get thee forth quickly from this place, thou mortal, whose life is ever uncertain.'” "On going forth," the narrator quaintly adds, "Thulis had his throat cut." As a criticism of this story it is enough to point out, as Fontenelle does, that apart from the initial improbability that God should have. revealed the mystery of the Trinity to a heathen divinity, even before it was known by the Jews, there could not have been any god of the name of Serapis in Thulis' time, which must have been before that of the Ptolemies, who first introduced the worship of Serapis.

Fontenelle finds a parallel to the absurd stories accepted by the Fathers on mere hearsay evidence in an incident that occurred nearer his own time. It may be worth quoting for its absurdity and for the light that it throws on the growth of miraculous stories. A report spread through Silesia in 1593 that a golden tooth had appeared in the mouth of a child aged seven, Two years later a treatise appeared

from the pen of one Horstius, a professor of medicine in the University of Helmstad, giving the history of the tooth, and asserting that it was partly natural and partly miraculous, and had been sent by God to console the Christians for their oppression by the Turks. In the same year another history of the tooth was published by a certain Rullandus. Some time after this another man of science, called Ingolsterus, wrote in opposition to Rullandus' view of the tooth, whereupon Rullandus published "une belle et docte réplique." Then another great man, Libavius, collected all that had been said so far about the tooth, and added his own opinion thereon. Finally the tooth was examined by a jeweller, who discovered that it was simply an ordinary tooth that had been coated with gold leaf.

However, to return to the oracles. Perhaps those which played the most important part in the history of the Catholic Church were those delivered by the Sibyls. None of the Fathers ever attributed more than a demoniac inspiration to the oracles in pagan temples, but their belief is almost unanimous that the Sibyls' answers were actually suggested by God. Indeed, the common derivation of the name from Oɛóg and Bovλý is a sufficient indication of the wide-spread nature of this belief. Augustine quotes long extracts from the "Sibylline books," to prove that they contained prophecies of the Coming of Christ. To judge from the following quotation, which is typical, they appear to have borne a suspicious resemblance to Isaiah and other Jewish prophets: "He shall be cast into the hands of the unbelievers they shall strike the face of their God, and their tongues shall spit forth foul venom upon Him." Constantine the Great, who, as emperor, had abundant facilities for consulting the Sibylline books, which were kept among the state-archives at Rome, was so impressed with their appositeness that he quoted them freely at the Council of Nicea. Since that time the Sibyls have always been regarded as prophets of Christianity in the Catholic Church, as is attested by the well-known line of the Dies Ira

Teste David cum Sibylla.

For many centuries a belief in the real inspiration of oracles, whether demoniac or divine, lasted throughout Christendom. It is interesting to notice in a book, written by Caspar Peucerus as late as 1570, that Satanic agency in the oracles is taken as a matter of course, and that no hint is expressed that any other view was held. In fact, it was not till the close of the seventeenth century that this theory was seriously called in question. In 1683 a Dutchman, Van Dale, propounded the view that ancient oracles were simply instances of clever VOL. CCLXXI.

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fraud. His learned work in defence of this view would not have attracted much attention, if it had not been translated and popularised by the Frenchman Fontenelle. But Fontenelle's book was the signal for the commencement of a violent paper-war, which rivalled in length the famous Battle of the Books: writers of almost every nation took part in it, till at length the doctrine, which had held ground for so many centuries, was finally dissipated. Still, however much we may pride ourselves on our freedom from the romantic beliefs of our forefathers in demons and witches and Satanic inspiration, we proclaim our inability to dispense with occult means of investigating the future, by our ineffectual efforts to replace the demons by the prosaic devices of palmistry or spirit-rapping, "scientific religion" or Madame Blavatsky.

BASIL WILLIAMS

LEAVES FROM A DIARY.

Fove all, a habit of sincerity to oneself, it is an easy, pleasant

EW people understand how to keep a diary; but with practice, and

and useful business. There are, of course, "things in diary clothing' -dry, regular double-entry affairs--as in the annually purchased "Letts": these are so much book-keeping, records of movements, walks, &c., uninteresting, though of value to the business or busy man. In that now forgotten piece of humour, "Little Pedlington," a worthy old Fencible officer kept his diary with inflexible regularity, every day's entry being almost the same, as-"Rose 8; bre'k'ted 9; walked 11; dined 2," &c.; and so day after day, Bre'k'ted 9," &c. It has been said that as we grow old or elderly it seems to be "always Monday morning." The week flies by, headlong almost; it slips through our fingers. We may look forward, indeed, and see a long stretch before us, with crowded trees and houses; but behind it is all like the smooth, open ocean seen from the deck on which we stand. "Our days have passed by swifter than a post, or like ships laden with fruit." We have dim memories of scenes so enjoyed, but the details have vanished. Yet it is possible to retain some indications: a few spirited notes, catch-words as it were, dashed in when the sensations are fresh will revive them. But those elaborate records, kept so laboriously by Moore and Crabb Robinson, with every joke and reflection entered as in a ledger, are too artificial. They were written to be published; to be read by others, not by yourself.

"Impressions" are what we should most love to preserve and what we always long to recover. The most literal and accurate description of a scene, a town, or a building is but little; it is not suggestive, minute though it be the real charm is found in how it has affected us, in the impression left. How many delightful days have been thus lost to us for ever from want of some little record! This, however, is a sort of art; it requires a knack of composition, a power of picturesque arrangement and of selecting what is representative. In my own notes, kept for many a year, I have sketches of all sorts of dinner parties, excursions, bons mots, curious pieces of secret history,

anecdotes, travels, &c. It is extraordinary what a quantity of strange things associated with families are constantly being told to us; what strange adventures, what mysterious incidents connected with "such a one;" scandals even are freely and publicly retailed, with names, dates, &c. But among such records I find my old "impressions" to be the most agreeable and pleasing. Many commonplace or unthinking people are content with the simple enjoyment of what they have enjoyed, and then dismiss it from their recollection; yet such recollections ought to be nourished and nurtured, laid up carefully with lavender, as it were, or as in a cabinet, to be taken out occasionally. We should not let our happy days and happy seasons pass away like a weaver's shuttle." It has often been noticed that Time adds a charm to all recollections, and that all the little "disagreeables" fade out. In the old familiar phrase, "Distance lends enchantment." No one who has not practised this art can conceive how the original pleasure can be thus multiplied; as we take our solitary walk these souvenirs will accompany us and furnish amusement, and are most useful. Such memoranda, again, will suggest others long forgotten. Elia has, in his picturesque way, described to us the effect of an old play-bill in kindling these old embers; and so an old hotel bill, a dinner menu, or some scrap of the kind operates as a talisman. We always paste them in. Localities, too, seen under certain conditions have their magic. Let me supply a specimen or two.

Night journeys, usually thought inconvenient, have ever an attraction. There is a sort of romance about them; they seem to take us out of the prose of life. The journey to Paris, for instance, seems to an ordinary person a necessary evil, to be endured; yet it is interesting and full of dramatic incident. I am never tired of the scene at Dover when the London trains arrive. It may be some calm summer's night as we stand on the pier looking at the amphitheatre of the town, with all its lights like holes pricked in a piece of cardboard. In an instant there is a change from complete, solitary desertion to bustle and animation and crowds. The place becomes alive with shadowy figures. There are the lights, the hurrying on board, and the amazing spectacle of baggage tumbling on to the deck in a cataract. I recall one night during the excursion season when we lingered and loitered on that pier till near midnight, every half-hour or so bringing a fresh train and its company, until the crowds mounted up to thousands. We seemed to have been forgotten; the dark-shrouded figures were moving about. Now and again a packet would come in and discharge its belated passengers. Dover is, indeed, an up-all-night place. Its hotels are semi-nautical,