ndency to place more
stress on the fine old fictions of Germany and the North than upon
actual history. These fictions for the most part grew out of the
disturbed consciences of bad men in ignorant and barbarous times. They
were shapes of the imagination."

He continued:--

"Let me prepare your minds a little for a proper estimate of these
alluring and entertaining stories."

MASTER LEWIS ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

The front of Northumberland House, England, used to be ornamented
with the bronze statue of a lion, called Percy. A humorist, wishing
to produce a sensation, placed himself in front of the building, one
day, and, assuming an attitude of astonishment, exclaimed:--

"It wags, it wags!"

His eyes were riveted on the statue, to which the bystanders readily
observed that the exclamation referred. Quite a number of persons
collected, each one gazing on the bronze figure, expecting to see
the phenomenon. Their imagination supplied the desired marvel, and
presently a street full of people fancied that they could see the
lion Percy wag his tail!

An old distich runs something as follows:--

"Who believe that there are witches, there the witches are;
Who believe there aren't no witches, aren't no witches there."

There is much more good sense than poetry in these lines. The
marvels of superstition are witnessed chiefly by those who believe
in them.

[Illustration: ANCIENT RELIGIOUS RITES OF THE PEASANTS.]

The sights held as supernatural are usually not more wonderful than
those that arise from a disordered imagination. The spectres of
demonology are not more fearful than those shapes of fancy produced
by opium and dissipation; and the visions of the necromancer are
not more wonderful than those that arise from a fever, or even from
a troubled sleep.

Yet it is a fact, and a very singular one, that, however at random
the fancies of unhealthy intellects may appear on ordinary subjects,
those fancies obtain a greater or less credit when they touch upon
supernatural things. Instances of monomaniacs (persons insane on a
single subject) who have imagined things quite as marvellous as the
most superstitious, but whose illusions have been treated with the
greatest ridicule, might be cited almost without limit.

I once knew of an elderly lady, who thought that she was a goose.
Making a nest in one corner of the room, she put in it a fe