weakly subjects, the jaw
slipped suddenly back into place, perhaps in consequence of a jolt, as
the woman rode towards the church. (Cap. v. 53.)[24]

There is also a good deal said about a very questionable blind man--one
Albricus (Alberich?)--who having been cured, not of his blindness, but
of another disease under which he laboured, took up his quarters at
Seligenstadt, and came out as a prophet, inspired by the Archangel
Gabriel. Eginhard intimates that his prophecies were fulfilled; but as
he does not state exactly what they were, or how they were accomplished,
the statement must be accepted with much caution. It is obvious that he
was not the man to hesitate to "ease" a prophecy until it fitted, if the
credit of the shrine of his favourite saints could be increased by such
a procedure. There is no impeachment of his honour in the supposition.
The logic of the matter is quite simple, if somewhat sophistical. The
holiness of the Church of the martyrs guarantees the reality of the
appearance of the Archangel Gabriel there; and what the archangel says
must be true. Therefore if anything seem to be wrong, that must be the
mistake of the transmitter; and, in justice to the archangel, it must
be suppressed or set right. This sort of "reconciliation" is not unknown
in quite modern times, and among people who would be very much shocked
to be compared with a "benighted papist" of the ninth century.

The readers of this essay are, I imagine, very largely composed of
people who would be shocked to be regarded as anything but enlightened
Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of them who have accompanied
me thus far may be disposed to say, "Well, this is all very amusing as a
story, but what is the practical interest of it? We are not likely to
believe in the miracles worked by the spolia of SS. Marcellinus and
Petrus, or by those of any other saints in the Roman Calendar."

The practical interest is this: if you do not believe in these miracles
recounted by a witness whose character and competency are firmly
established, whose sincerity cannot be doubted, and who appeals to his
sovereign and other comtemporaries as witnesses of the truth of what he
says in a document of which a MS. copy exists, probably dating within a
century of the author's death, why do you profess to believe in stories
of a like character, which are found in documents of the dates and of
the authorship of which nothing is certainly determined, and no