waving circular and serpentine
lines exceedingly curious. On Calais pier may be seen a footprint
where Louis XVIII. landed in 1814; and on the rocks of Magdesprung, a
village in the Hartz Mountains, a couple of hundred feet apart, are
two immense footprints, which tradition ascribes to a leap made by a
huge giantess from the clouds for the purpose of rescuing one of her
maidens from the violence of an ancient baron.

In not a few places in our own country and on the Continent, rough
misshapen marks on rocks and stones, bearing a fanciful resemblance to
the outline of the human foot, have been supposed by popular
superstition to have been made by Satan. Every classical student is
familiar with the account which Herodotus gives of the print of
Hercules shown by the Scythians in his day upon a rock near the river
Tyras, the modern Dnieper. It was said to resemble the footstep of a
man, only that it was two cubits long. He will also recall the
description given by the same gossipy writer of the Temple of Perseus
in the Thebaic district of Egypt, in which a sandal worn by the god,
two cubits in length, occasionally made its appearance as a token of
the visit of Perseus to the earth, and a sign of prosperity to the
land. Pythagoras measured similar footprints at Olympia, and
calculated "ex pede Herculem"! Still more famous was the mark on the
volcanic rock on the shore of Lake Regillus--the scene of the
memorable battle in which the Romans, under the dictator Posthumius,
defeated the powerful confederation of the Latin tribes under the
Tarquins. According to tradition, the Roman forces were assisted by
Castor and Pollux, who helped them to achieve their signal victory.
The mark was supposed to have been left by the horse of one of the
great twins "who fought so well for Rome," as Macaulay says in his
spirited ballad. On the way to the famous convent of Monte Casino,
very near the door, there is a cross in the middle of the road. In
front of it a grating covers the mark of a knee, which is said to have
been left in the rock by St. Benedict, when he knelt there to ask a
blessing from heaven before laying the foundation-stone of his
convent. As the site of the monastery was previously occupied by a
temple of Apollo, and a grove sacred to Venus, where the inhabitants
of the surrounding locality worshipped as late as the sixth
century,--to which circumstance Dante alludes,--it is probable that
the sacred mark on the rock may have