keep their sheep than Gallus. But for physicke and surgerie our idols exceeded them all. For St John and St Valentine excelled at the falling evil, St Roch was good at the plague, St Petromill at the ague. As for St Margaret, she passed Lucina for a midwife, and yet was but a maide; in which respect St Marpurge is joined with her in commission. For madmen, and such as are possessed with devills, St Romane was excellent. For botches and biles Cosmus and Damean; St Clare for the eies; St Apolline for teeth; St Job for the pox; and for sore brests St Agathe was as good as Ruminus."-This is the expostulation of honest Reginald Scot, who, in the true spirit of the reforming age in which he lived, comes to the conclusion, " that all these antichristian gods, otherwise called popish devils, are as rank devils" as the Dii gentium spoken of in the Psalms, or as the Dii montium, the Dii terrarum, the Dii populorum, the Dii terræ, the Dii filiorum, or the Dii alienii, cited in other places of the Scripture.

I have quoted thus freely from Scot's denunciation of the Romish saints, because it is an evidence of the ascendency over the mind, which these successors to the guardian angels of still earlier sects of Christians must have excited, while it no less satisfactorily accounts for the peculiar character imparted to the spectral illusions of Popish times.

When the tenets of Rome were succeeded by those of the reformed church, the influence of tutelar saints began to decline. Still it was found very inconvenient to the peculiar doctrines taught in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that there should not be

some hypothesis to account for human actions, which philosophy could not explain. Thus, the learned author of the Religio Medici has summed up, after the following manner, the views of the learned on the subject: Therefore for spirits," he remarks, "I am so far from denying their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian angels. It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato. There is no heresie in it, and if not manifestly defined in Scripture, yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of man's life, and would serve as an hypothesis to solve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution." It is evidently for this reason, so well explained by Sir Thomas Brown, that the hierarchy of angels soon became a leading feature in the pneumatology of the schools; poets even vying with grave metaphysicians, in rendering every compensation to these ministering spirits for the neglect into which they had fallen, when their benignant offices had been usurped by the saints of the Romish church :

How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
To come to succour us, that succour want?
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant,
Against foul fiends to aid us militant?

They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,
And their bright squadrons round about us plant,
And all for love, and nothing for reward:

O why should heavenly God to man have such regard ?

SPENSER.

A doctrine, thus sanctioned by the most eminent men of the age, again made its way among the vulgar, and in the course of time gave rise to the grossest superstitions. Thus, in a popular work, entitled, "Curiosities, or the Cabinet of Nature, by Robert Basset," published in the year 1637, when a question is asked,

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Wherefore is it that the childe cryes when the absent nurse's brests doe pricke and ake?" the answer is as follows:- "By that the nurse is hastened home to the infant to supply the defect; and the reason is, that either at that very instant that the infant hath finished his concoction, the breasts are replenished, and, for want of drawing, the milke pains the breast, as it is seen likewise in milch cattell: or rather, the good genius of the infant seems by that means to solicite or trouble the nurse in the infant's behalfe: which reason seemeth the more firm and probable, because sometimes sooner, sometimes later, the child cryeth; neither is the state of nurse and infant alwayes the same." While this quotation illustrates the popular use that was made of the doctrine of guardian angels, an extract, which I shall give from another author will prove, that the superstition at length very properly incurred the censure of divines. Thus, in Newton's "Trial of a Man's own selfe," the author cautions the Christian against the trusting "to the helpe, protection, and furtherance of angels, either good or bad, for the avoiding of any evill, or obtaining of any good ;" and he considers this belief as derived from "that paultring mawmetrie and heathenish worshipping of that domesticall god, or familiar angell, which was thought to be appropried to everie

particular person." A later writer, who has noticed the doctrine of guardian angels, is the learned and pious Nelson. He believes in their common ministry about the persons of good men, and that they are present in all public assemblies of God's worship; but he very properly cautions his readers against worshipping them, since they are nothing more than ministers to mankind. This doctrine, if it does not meet with a complete sanction from Scripture, is at least so divested of all the serious objections which can be urged against it on the score of idolatry, that none surely but the merest cavillers would venture to engage in the unwelcome task of its refutation.*

It may be now interesting to ascertain the opinions entertained on the general form and character of those angelic beings which have imparted a peculiar character to the numerous spectral illusions, that have in different periods of the Christian era been recorded. During the ascendency of popish saints, the belief in an hierarchy of angels had rather languished than expired; and when, in an early period of the Reformation, the doctrine began to be revived, the corporeal shape, or material habitation, attributed to such spirits, was checked by the authoritative voice of the metaphysicians. "Now for that immaterial world," says Sir Thomas Brown, " methinks we need not wander

* I may remark that, regarding the general history of the superstitions connected with tutelar saints, there is an interesting article on the subject in Ellis' edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities, 4to, vol. i. p. 281, to which I have been occasionally indebted.

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so far as the first moveable; for, even in this material fabrick, the spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and motion, as beyond the extremest circumference; do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their first matter, and you discover the habitation of angels." Such a doctrine would of necessity be very puzzling to the poets, whose descriptions always include material images; no alternative, therefore, remained for them but to revive the opinion that angels were capable of subsisting either with or without any sensible forms. Of this view, so strongly inculcated in the seventeenth century, particularly by Milton, it is an interesting circumstance, that the author of the sublime tragedy of Manfred has recently availed himself.

MANFRED.

I would behold ye face to face. I hear
Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds,
As music on the waters; and I see

The steady aspect of a clear large star;
But nothing more. Approach me as ye are,
Or one, or all, in your accustom'd forms.

SPIRIT.

We have no forms beyond the elements,
Of which we are the mind and principle:

But choose a form-in that we will appear.

Cowley, the most metaphysical poet of his time, was more anxious than any other descriptive writer, to render his spirits as little revolting as possible to the pneumatology of the schools; he, therefore, with