filbert on the plants. Who delayed the mad project so long? who permitted it at last? who punished it? and for what end? Never afterward did Anco-Marzio pass an effigy of the blessed Virgin, but he kissed it again and again with due reverence, although it were wet with whitewash or paint. Every day did he renew the flowers before the one whose tabernacle he had violated, placing them where he could bend his head over them in humble adoration as he returned at night from his business in the city. It has indeed been suspected that he once omitted this duty; certain it is, that he once was negligent in it. He acknowledged to me that, coming home later than usual, and desirous of turning the corner and reaching the villa as soon as might be, it being dusk, he was inclined to execute his duty too perfunctoriously, and encountered, instead of the flowers, a bunch of butchers-broom. None grows thereabout. I do not insist on this: but the lemons, Mr. Middleton! the thieves, Mr. Middleton! the breach in the garden-wall, made for an irreligious purpose, and serving to punish irreligion. Well may you ponder. These things can not occur among you Englishmen.

Middleton. Excuse me, I pray you, my dear sir!

Knowing the

people of this country, my wonder was (for indeed I did wonder) that the lemons had never been stolen until that year.

Magliabechi. They never were, I do assure you from my own knowledge, for the last thirty.

Middleton. The greater of the two miracles lies here.

Magliabechi. Of the two miracles?

Astonishment and sudden

terror make us oftentimes see things doubly for my part, I declare upon my conscience I can see but one.

Middleton. Nor I neither; to speak ingenuously.

Magliabechi. Ha! ha! I comprehend you, and perhaps have to blame my deficiency of judgment in going a single step aside from the main subject of prayer. Now then for it: arm yourself with infidelity: chew the base metal, as boys do while they are whipped, lest they cry out.

Middleton. I am confident, from your present good-humour, that the castigation you meditate to inflict on me will be lenient. He is not commended who casts new opinions for men, but he who chimes in with old.

Magliabechi. The wisest of us, Mr. Middleton, can not separate the true from the untrue in everything.

Middleton. It required the hand of God himself, as we are informed, to divide the light from the darkness: we can not do it, but we can profit by it. What is light we may call so; and why not what is dark?

Magliabechi. Would it fail to excite a discontent in England, if your Parliament should order Christmas to be celebrated in April? Yet Joseph Scaliger, the most learned man that ever existed, and among the least likely to be led astray by theory, has proved to the satisfaction of many not unlearned, that the nativity of our Lord happened in that month.

Middleton. As the matter is indifferent both in fact and conse

quences, I would let it stand. No direct or indirect gain, no unworthy end of any kind, can be obtained by its continuance: it renders men neither the more immoral nor the more dastardly: it keeps them neither the more ignorant of their duties nor the more subservient to any kind of usurpation.

Magliabechi. There may be inconveniences in an opposite direction. Pride and arrogance are not the more amiable for the coarseness of their garb. It is better to wrap up religion in a wafer, and swallow it quietly and contentedly, than to extract from it all its bitterness, make wry faces over it, and quarrel with those who decline the delicacy and doubt the utility of the preparation. Our religion, like the vast edifices in which we celebrate it, seems dark when first entered from without. The vision accommodates itself gradually to the place; and we are soon persuaded that we see just as much as we should see.

Middleton. Be it so: but why admit things for which we have no authority, and which we can not prove? I have left unsaid a great deal of what I might have said. Not being addicted to ridicule, nor capable of sustaining a comic part, I never have spoken a word about the bread of the angels.

Magliabechi. God forbid you should!

Middleton. Even your own church, I imagine, will hardly insist that the bread taken by Christians here on earth, in the sacrament of the eucharist, is the ordinary or extraordinary sustenance of angels. For whatever our faith may be, whatever supports it may require, theirs is perfect and has received its fruit.

Magliabechi. This is specious; so are many of your thoughts; but as I cannot prove the fact, neither can you prove the contrary; and

we both perhaps shall act wisely in considering it as a phrase of devotion.

Middleton. I should think so, if the not offered too many fields of battle. with which you threatened me.

latitude of such phrases had But let me hear the miracle

Magliabechi. My dear friend, I am now about to lay before you a fact universally known in our city, and which evinces at once the efficacy of prayer, even where it was irrational, and the consequence of neglecting it afterward.

Angiolina Cecci on the day before her nuptials took the sacrament most devoutly, and implored of our Florentine saint, Maria Bagnesi, to whose family she was related, her intervention for three blessings: that she might have one child only; that the cavaliere serviente, agreed on equally by her father and her husband, might be faithful to her; and lastly that, having beautiful hair, it never might turn grey. Now mark me. Assured of success to her suit by a smile on the countenance of the saint, she neglected her prayers and diminished her alms thenceforward. The money-box, which is shaken during the celebration of mass to recompense the priest for the performance of that holy ceremony, was shaken aloud before her day after day, and never drew a crazia from her pocket. She turned away her face from it, even when the collection was made to defray the arrears for the beatification of Bagnesi. Nine months after her marriage she was delivered of a female infant. I am afraid she expressed some discontent at the dispensations of Providence; for within an hour afterward she brought forth another of the same sex. She became furious, intractable, desperate; sent the babes, without seeing them, into the country, as indeed our ladies usually do; and spake slightingly and maliciously of Saint Maria Bagnesi. The consequence was a puerperal fever, which continued several weeks, and was removed at great expense to her family, in masses, wax-candles, and processions. Pictures of the Virgin, wherever they were found by experience to be of more peculiar and more speedy efficacy, were hired at heavy charges from the convents: the cordeliers, to punish her pride and obstinacy, would not carry theirs to the house for less than forty scudi.

She recovered, admitted her friends to converse with her, raised herself upon her pillow, and accepted some consolation. At last it was agreed by her physicians that she might dress herself and eat

brains and liver. Probably she was ungrateful for a benefit so signal and unexpected; since no sooner did her cameriera comb her hair, than off it came by the handful. She then perceived her error, but, instead of repairing it, abandoned herself to anguish and lamentation. Her cavaliere serviente, finding her bald, meagre, and eyesore, renewed his addresses to the mother. The husband, with two daughters to provide for, the only two ever reared out of the many entrusted to the same peasants, counted over again and again the dowry, shook his head, sighed piteously, and, hanging on the image of Maria Bagnesi a silver heart of five ounces, which, knowing it to have been stolen, he bought at a cheap rate of a Jew on Ponte Vecchio, calculated that the least of impending evils was to purchase an additional bed just large enough for one.

You ponder, Mr. Middleton: you appear astonished at these visitations : : you know my sincerity: you fully credit me: I can not doubt a moment of your conviction: I perceive it marked strongly on your countenance.

Middleton. Indeed, M. Magliabechi, I now discover the validity of prayer to saints, and the danger of neglecting them: recommend me in yours to Saint Maria Bagnesi.*

* Saints in general make a great quantity of oil disappear; but Saint Maria Bagnesi on the contrary made a good deal of it come suddenly out of nothing; as will be evident to whoever reads Breve Ragguaglio della produzione d'oglio sequita o scoperta il di 30 Maggio 1806, nel venerabile monastero degli Angele e S. Maria-Maddalena de' Pazzi, ad intercessione della B. M. Bartolommea Bagnesi, Virg. Fior. del Terz. Ordine di S. Domenico. Verificata autenticamente per sentenza della Curia Arcivescovite Fiorentina del di 10 Decembre 1806. The quantity was not stinted to a flask or two, but filled up to the brim an earthen vessel containing six or seven barrels, which, by order of the Queen of Etruria, sister of Ferdinand VII. of Spain, was granted in small quantities to the faithful. The minutest portion of it rubbed on the body, as the book attests, with the simple invocation of Saint Maria Bagnesi, produced its own miracle. The courtiers were deeply impressed with this awful verity; so were some in the religious orders; to others it only gave (as oil of old) a cheerful countenance; for Saint Maria Bagnesi did not belong to them.

VI. MILTON AND ANDREW MARVEL.*

Milton. Friend Andrew, I am glad to hear that you amuse yourself in these bad times by the composition of a comedy, and that you have several plans in readiness for others. Now let me advise you to copy the better part of what the Greeks and Romans called the old, and to introduce songs and music, which, suitable as they are to Tragedy, are more so to the sister Muse. Furthermore, I could desire to see a piece modelled in every part on the Athenian scheme, with the names and characters and manners of times past. For surely you would not add to the immorality of the age, by representing anything of the present mode upon the theatre. Although we are more abundant in follies, which rather than vices are the groundwork of Comedy, we experience less disgust in touching those of other times than of our own; and in a drama the most ancient would have the most novelty. I know that all the periods and all the nations of the world united, have less variety of character than we find in this one city: yet, as you write to amuse yourself and a few learned friends, I am persuaded you would gladly walk out of it for once, and sit down to delineate a Momus or a Satyr, with at least as much complacency as a vulgar fopling or a party-coloured buffoon.

O, Andrew albeit our learning raiseth up against us many enemies. among the low, and more among the powerful, yet doth it invest us with grand and glorious privileges, and confer on us a largeness of beatitude. We enter our studies and enjoy a society which we alone

* Milton had given his opinion in full on government and religion, and on many kinds of poetry; what he may be supposed to have thought on comedy was wanting.