6. Abbot Pambo, being summoned by St. Athanasius to Alexandria, met an actress, and forthwith began to weep. "I weep," he said, "because I do not strive to please my God as she strives to please the impure."

7. An old monk fell sick, and for many days could not eat; and his novice made him some pudding. There was a vessel of honey; and there was another vessel of linseed-oil for the lamp, good for nothing else, for it was rancid. The novice mistook, and mixed up the oil in the pudding. The old man said not a word, but ate it.

The novice pressed him, and helped him a second time; and the old man ate again.

When he offered it the third time, the old man said, "I have had enough;" but the novice cried, "Indeed, it is very good. I will eat some with you."

When he had tasted it, shall be the death of you!

he fell on his face, and said: Father, I Why didn't you speak?"

The old man answered: "Had it been God's will that I should

eat honey, honey thou wouldest have given me."

J. H. N.

A Myth of Modern Days.

Ir would be a great advantage to the cause of historical truth if some industrious person were to compile a dictionary of exploded myths, of false stories and anecdotes which have either been invented out of nothing or founded on facts of which they have given a distorted representation, and which, after a shorter or longer period of unquestioned existence, have been suspected, exposed, confuted, and demolished. The constant increase of the family of myths is a thing which we can hardly hope to prevent. They are like the weeds in the fields or in the streams; and we must be continually at work to keep them under, unless we are willing to see them cover our lands and choke-up our rivers. Thought, speculation, conversation, reading, writing, and travelling cannot go on without engendering them, not to speak of the workings of prejudice and malice; but we might diminish their number and their immense influence, perhaps, by pensioning them off after a certain period of service. Of course a lie with a circumstance cannot always be disproved, especially when time and place have been skilfully chosen. Still, not all myths are invulnerable, and therefore not all ought to be immortal. It would therefore be of some use if there were a kind of register or index expurgatorius of confuted myths,—something in the way of a Joe Miller of history,—with which writers and talkers should be bound to make themselves acquainted, in order not to repeat its contents. Society knows how to make an offender feel when he has tried to pass-off some time-honoured pun and wellworn jest as a novelty of his own invention. A similar punishment should be the lot of any one who repeats a confuted myth as an historical truth. Some will still do it, I fear, whenever they can calculate on the ignorance of their audience or their readers; but the majority of those who offend in this way do it from ignorance of their own.

I fear that it cannot be said that any given party or set of persons is entirely free from the propensity to generate and propagate myths. It is a human weakness, against which few of us can altogether afford to throw stones. Still, a false cause has need of them, and a true cause has not; and they find their natural welcome among the prejudiced and the passionate. Nationalism fosters them, and gives them protection and authority; and religious differences, on

which the most invincible prejudices are founded, sometimes make people think it a kind of duty to believe them. There are whole sets of good people abroad with whom it is in vain to protest against the monstrous statements circulated-sometimes from simply political and commercial motives-about the condition of the poor in this country. They will smile politely, but go on believing that our people take their wives to market with halters round their necks, and that children are commonly bought at so much a head, notwithstanding the patriotic disclaimers of the most respectable of Englishmen.

It may be generally stated that every myth has some kind of foundation, just as it has some kind of distorted resemblance to a positive truth; and when its history and transformations can be traced out, the result is amusing and even instructive, and reminds us somewhat of the interesting accounts of the fortunes of a word or of a root in its passage through different languages, and the relationship of the various meanings of its derivatives one to another, which have been given us in Professor Max Müller's Lectures on Language.

I am going to speak of a common myth, which perhaps most Englishmen who have visited Naples have met with, and which turned up in a very amusing form not long ago, in an admirablyconducted Anglican newspaper. The Hon. and Rev. W. H. Lyttelton, Rector of Hagley, was a few weeks since engaged in a correspondence that arose out of a sermon preached in London by Dr. Temple, one of the writers in the Essays and Reviews. Mr. Lyttelton was led to argue with his opponents on the importance of discriminating between what was essential in Revelation and what

was not so.

"What is wanted," he said, "above almost all other things in our time, is to teach men to distinguish what is really essential to the faith from what is unessential; to prevent them, as I have said, mistaking mere outposts for the central citadel. . . . . If we are seen tremblingly defending any point of faith as if it were a matter of life and death, spectators will think it is so indeed; and should it happen, as it very probably may, that this outpost is taken, they will be ready to lay down their arms and give up all for lost. So I happen to know of one case-and I believe very many similar ones might be adduced-of a Roman Catholic whose whole faith in the great truths of revealed religion was shaken, and, indeed, given up by him, when the French general stopped the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood at Naples. He had been taught that no truth in religion rested on any sccurer ground than that of the latter fact: what therefore discre

dited it, also in his mind discredited all that the Church taught." (Guardian, May 10th.)

I do not intend to enter on the many questions that might be raised by this passage, which contains a great deal for which a theologian might find occasion to take the writer to task-for inaccuracy of language at all events, if not for great confusion of thought. Nor am I concerned with the case of the "Roman Catholic" mentioned, or how he came to be taught that a fact such as the well-known Neapolitan prodigy rested on ground as secure as any of the "great truths of revealed religion." I am only concerned with the statement implied about the French general; though I suppose if it be shown that the French general did not stop the liquefaction, or rather (for Mr. Lyttelton has got hold of the story by the wrong end) did not prevent other people from stopping it, we might fairly doubt the assertion whether any one ever gave up his faith in consequence of what never took place. Here we have one of the myths that have overgrown modern, and even recent history; unless I am wrong in using the word "history," for I do not know that any one calling himself an historian has even mentioned the story in question. It so happens that this myth can be traced to its source, and can be refuted; and as I suppose that it is not a part of the "central citadel" of Mr. Lyttelton's belief, it is probable that he will show that calmness and equanimity in surrendering it which he recommends to others in the case of matters of far greater mo

ment.

First, however, I suppose we ought to ask what authority there is for the story. Mr. Lyttelton, of course, gives none at all; nor, as he only mentions the fact by way of illustration, is he to be blamed for giving none. I very much question whether, search as long as he may, he will be able to give any better authority for the myth -which, I must say, he has quite spoilt by his manner of telling it; a very common phenomenon in the propagation of myths-than that which I shall presently assign to it as its source, that is, the pages of a French novel. As, however, the story has been told the wrong way by him, it is necessary that I should first set that matter right, by explaining what it is that the French general is supposed to have done.

Nothing is more common than to hear people talk of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius as a standing scandal at Naples; and yet very few who have not been to Naples, and few even of those who have, seem to know what they are talking about. I have known English people living in Naples for years who would talk like any -one else about it, and yet had never once taken the trouble to go and

satisfy their own eyes on the matter. As this is not the place for controversy on the subject, I shall simply state what happens, according to the belief of the Neapolitans themselves, and, as far as I have means of knowing, of every single person, Protestant or Catholic, who ever was present on the occasion. The relic of the head of St. Januarius is kept in a safe or closet behind the altar, in what is called the Treasury, a part of the Cathedral, and the reliquary containing the phial of his blood in another. They are side by side, but separated one from another. On the two feasts of the saint in the year-the one in May, and the other in September-they are taken out, and placed side by side on the altar. In May they are carried in procession through the city, and remain, I think, at the great church of Sta. Chiara during the octave. The ordinary state, as is natural, of the blood in the phial is, that it is hard and congealed, and in this state it is usually found when the closet in which it is kept is unlocked. When, however, it is placed by the side of the head, it becomes, after a time, fluid, clear, and even seems to boil up and foam. This effect is not at all uniform: sometimes the liquid state ensues at once, sometimes only after many hours; sometimes it is imperfectly attained, part of the blood remaining hard; and it has been known to remain unliquefied during the whole feast. As the Neapolitans consider the liquefaction to be a sign of the continued protection of their patron saint, they are of course inclined to look upon the failure of the prodigy as a sign of calamity. I should add, that the two relics are never exposed side by side except on the feasts mentioned and during their octaves, unless it be for some special purpose, to satisfy public devotion in some emergency, or to indulge the piety of some distinguished or important person, who could not be present at the ordinary times of exposition.

Such being the facts of the case, it is obvious that it is in the power of any one-French general, or whoever he may be that holds the reins of government at Naples-to "stop the liquefaction," as Mr. Lyttelton says, at any time that he pleases; for he may simply forbid the exposition of the relics side by side, and then nothing can take place, or, at least, nothing can be seen to take place. But if he were to do this-if the government of Victor Emmanuel were to do it next September, and continue the prohibition as long as it remains in possession, it would not do a thing that would shake the faith of a single soul in Naples or elsewhere. The most ignorant of the lazzaroni would believe just as much in San Gennaro as before. But the government would do a thing very foolish and impolitic; for it would set the whole population strongly against itself. The French general, therefore, would have been very unwise if he had done what