ve pictures there exhibited. Besides,
how else could the fame of this wonder-working image have travelled
abroad so extensively unless the wonders had been not less numerous than
undoubted?

There is uncertainty as to the exact date of the arrival of the picture
at the Sanctuary: some give the year 1570; others consider this too late,
if only because wills exist dated as far back as 1422 bequeathing gifts
to Santa Maria di Custonaci; others say that this need not have anything
to do with our Madonna, because there has been a church or chapel at
Custonaci dedicated to the Virgin from very early times, and there is
nothing to show that these wills do not refer to the earlier Madonna;
others believe 1370, not 1570, to be the true date. We should have
something to guide us if we could ascertain how often the picture has
been transported to the mountain in times of calamity, but here again the
culpable negligence of the chroniclers has left us with records of only
fifty-one such occasions from the beginning of the 16th century to 1794,
viz. five when the pestilence walked by midday, four when the mountains
trembled and the earth opened, two when the locusts came without number
and devoured the fruits of the ground, four when war clouds gathered in
the sky and thirty-six when the autumn rains were delayed.

The disputes extend also to the date of the painting, some even denying
that it was painted by St. Luke. But to do this they are obliged to
ignore all the considerations which support the orthodox view, viz. the
place from which the sailors brought it, the many wonders performed by
it, the miraculous preservation of the colouring during all the years
that have elapsed since St. Luke's time, the widespread belief in the
efficacy of its powers and lastly the fact that, though many have made
the attempt, no artist has yet succeeded in producing a perfect copy of
the original.

I asked several people what St. Luke had to do with Alexandria, and was
always told that St. Mark's body was brought from there to Venice in 828,
why then should not another of the Evangelists have been there also? Why
not indeed? But this reply was as little satisfying as those with which
pre-occupied age endeavours to silence inquisitive childhood, and
produced much the same sort of result, spurring me on to further
investigations.

A musician who desires to compose a tune that shall become popular must
contrive something apparently original