big with the vast design, when it conceived such a
genius as Cardinal Hippolito d'Este_. Why could not this same writer
have thought of one example more, such as that of the priest who told
the Emperor Constantine that _divine Providence, not content with
qualifying him for the empire of the world, had formed virtues in his
soul, which should entitle him to reign in heaven with his only son_.
Thus have flatterers seized the most surprising natural effects to
enhance their hero's glory, and make their court to great men. The poets
of the time of Augustus vied with each other in persuading the world
that the murder of Julius Caesar was the cause of all the prodigies that
followed. Horace, for instance, in one of his odes, attempts to prove
that the overflowings of rivers were reckoned among bad presages; and
pretends that the Tiber had not committed all those ravages, but in
complaisance to his wife Ilia, who was bent on the death of his kinsman
Caesar; and that all the other calamities which subsequently afflicted
or threatened the Roman empire, were the consequences of his
assassination. If Virgil may be credited,[127] the sun was so troubled at
the death of Caesar that it went into deep mourning, and so obscured his
beams, that the world was alarmed lest it never should appear again. In
the mean time, no sooner was the comet observed, which followed this
murder, than another set of flatterers pretended that it was Caesar's
soul received into the order of the Gods; and they dedicated a temple[128]
to the comet, and set up the image of Caesar with a star on his
forehead.

It appears from the sermons of the ancient fathers, that the Christians
of that time believed they gave great relief to the moon in an eclipse,
by raising hideous shouts to the skies, which they imagined recovered
her out of her fainting fit, and without which she must inevitably have
expired. St. Ambrose, the author of the 215th sermon _de tempore_, bound
up with those of St. Austin, and St. Eloy, Bishop of Noyon, declaim
particularly against this abuse. It appears also from the Homilies of
St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Austin, and others, that the Christians
of their days drew several kinds of presages from persons sneezing at
critical times; from meeting a cat, a dog, or an ill-looking (squinting)
woman, a maiden, one blind of an eye, or a cripple; on being caught by
the cloak on stepping out of a door, or from a sudden catch in one's
joint or limb