[10] Geometry (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. But I, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language (far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, would not furnish matter, simply through its defects in precision, for a suit in Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true, because the doubtful expressions do not touch any interest of property; but what _does_ arise is this--that something more valuable than a pecuniary interest is continually suffering, viz., the interests of truth. [11] "_Of a Stuart sovereign_," and by no means of a Stuart only. Queen Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the last of _our princes_ who touched for the _king's evil_, (as scrofula was generally called until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on the thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of Savoy, claimed and exercised the same supernatural privilege down to a much later period than the year 1714--the last of Queen Anne: according to their own and the popular faith, they could have cleansed Naaman the Syrian, and Gehazi too. [12] One reason, I believe, why it was held a point of wisdom in ancient days that the metropolis of a warlike state should have a secret name hidden from the world, lay in the pagan practice of _evocation_, applied to the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities might be lured by certain rites and briberies into a transfer of their favors to the besieging army. But, in order to make such an evocation effectual, it was necessary to know the original and secret name of the beleaguered city; and this, therefore, was religiously concealed. [13] Hamlet, Act v., scene 1.