No one could tell whether they were cut out by the hand of man, or were rude basins worked out by the sea in a fantastic form. The poor people of the island in after times told another tale about these footsteps. [Alas, for the Simple Chronicler!] They said that the blessed Virgin had once appeared there, and had left the mark of her feet upon the rock, and a small chapel was built upon the spot. Now it may be that these mysterious marks were neither left by the poor men whom Helier healed, nor yet by that holy Virgin; but still let us not despise the simple tales of the peasantry; there is very often some truth hidden beneath them.-p. 25.

And then he proceeds to conclude

that it is very likely that this story contains traces of a real miracle done by God through Helier's hand.

And he sums up with the following extraordinary specimen of solemn self-mystification:

No one need pity the poor peasants for their faith. He alone is to be pitied who thinks all truth fable and all fable truth, and thus mistakes the fantastic freaks of the tide of man's opinion for the truth itself, which is founded on that rock which bears the print of our Lord's ever blessed footsteps. Ibid.

Bishop Burnet somewhere remarks, of a very uncommon sort of argument of his own-“This argument may seem to be too subtle, and it will require some attention of mind to observe and discover the force of it; but after we have turned it over and over again, it will be found to be a true demonstration." It may be so. The bishop may be right, though I have never had the good fortune yet to stumble on any one, who had been lucky

enough to have turned his argument over and over the precise number of times required for the discovery. But, certainly, if this passage of the legend of Helier be an argument, we had need to get inside it, like a squirrel in a cage, and keep turning it over and over again for a pretty considerable time, if we are ever to find it a true demonstration. Here are, first of all, a set of miracles which even their historian gives up as apocryphal. Secondly, and notwithstanding, the spot where they were worked is determined (and if it be, of course the miracles themselves demonstrated,) by a simple chronicler,who had all the advantage of impartiality, at least, as he lived three hundred years after. And then, thirdly-just as some personification of Old Mortality is setting off to Jersey, to hunt up these wondrous footsteps, he is told, alas! that the said footsteps are no longer in existence! the rock in which they once were, having been blown up and turned into a fort, which, to be sure, may be used to silence incredulous disbelievers, quite as effectually as ever the mysterious rocks could, before their integrity was tampered with by gunpowder. And then, fourthly, it is just suggested, that those who lived later than "the simple chronicler" had another way of accounting for the marks,-which need not be further particularized; and, of course, they should be believed, as the credibility of such tales is in the inverse ratio of the nearness of the historian to the

time of the event related. And, still more astonishing, after one is left but the choice of two miracles to account for these marks, it turns out, fifthly, that they were all along such strange looking marks, that it is quite uncertain (or was, namely, when there were any marks to be uncertain about) whether they were cut out by the hand of man, or were rude basins worked out by the sea in a fantastic form, — in other words, whether there ever could have been any miracle in the affair at all. And in fine, just as we are beginning to think, that we have at last found out the gist of this "true demonstration," we are driven to give it another turn, by the author softly whispering, that, after all, there is probably "some truth hidden beneath," and "that it is very likely this story contains traces of a real miracle."

The most remarkable part of this whole affair, perhaps, is this,—that there is not the slightest reason to suppose all this to have been written with any design of making Mr. Newman's system appear ridiculous. The book is printed and published by the same persons, who have printed and published the rest of Mr. Newman's edition of the Lives of the English Saints. No one has ventured to suggest a suspicion of this volume being spurious. In fact, no such thought could be entertained for a moment; and therefore, I cannot avoid asking the question, What conceivable object can Mr. Newman have in suffering such rubbish to be circulated

under the sanction of his name? Why does he consider such writing likely to benefit "most erring and most unfortunate England?" And-to look at the matter in another point of view-if such books find any sale, except for waste paper, why should he consider England so erring and unfortunate? For, surely, if there are people enough in the country, to make it worth a publisher's while to embark his capital in such legends as this, England may still lay claim to the possession of some portion of the spirit of those ages of faith, when" men were not critical about believing a little more or a little less," as this author pleasantly informs us.

CHAPTER XXXI.

ST. HELIER'S DEATH-HE CARRIES HIS HEAD IN HIS HANDST. NINIAN'S STAFF AND THE SCHOOLBOY.

I MUST hasten however to the events connected with the death of Helier:

For twelve long years after his spiritual father had left him did Helier dwell on his barren rock. His scanty history does not tell us expressly what he did, nor whether he with his companion converted the islanders to the Christian faith. His life is hid with Christ in God. We are however told minutely how at last he fell asleep, after his short but toilsome life. One night when he was resting on his hard couch, our blessed Lord for whom he had given up all things, appeared to him in a vision, and smiling upon him, said, "Come to me, my beloved one; three days hence, thou shalt depart from this world with the adornment of thine own blood.""p. 30.

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The author, be it remembered, has so little reliance on the authority of his "simple chronicler," that he does not venture to call this life anything more than a legend;" and the utmost he ventures to say is, that he will not go so far as "to assert that the whole of the narrative is fiction;" much less, of course, to deny that it may be. And yet, although he knows the sole foundation for this legend to be a tale written "at least three hundred years after St. Helier," and so full of palpable mistakes and anachronisms, as to be of no sort of value as an authority,—he still tells us,-with as much solemnity as if he were transcribing from the Holy