employ, to act upon the popular imagination, sculpture with springs.” The ancient idols of Italy were of wood, like those of Greece, coloured, richly dressed, and very often capable of motion. At Præneste the celebrated group of the infants Jupiter and Juno, seated upon the knees of Fortune, their nurse, appears to have been movable. It seems evident, from certain passages in ancient writers, that the little god indicated by a gesture the favourable moment to consult the oracle. At Rome, feasts were offered to the statues of the gods, at which these did not play so passive a part as might be supposed. Religious imagination or sacerdotal address aided their immobility. Titus Livius, describing the banquet celebrated at Rome in 573, mentions the terror of the people and senate on learning that the images of the gods had averted their heads from the dishes presented to them. When we meet with these old tales of statues invited to repasts, and manifesting their good or bad will by movements, we understand by what amalgamation of antique recollections and local legends was formed, in the Spain of the middle ages, the popular tale, so touching and so dramatic, of the _Convidado de Piedra_. Between these tricks of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, and the devices resorted to by the Christian priests of the middle ages, a close coincidence is to be traced. M. Magnin touches but cursorily on this part of the subject, referring to the crucifix said to have bowed its head in approval of the decisions of the Council of Trent, to the votive crucifix of Nicodemus, which, according to popular belief at Lucca, crossed the town on foot to the cathedral, blessing the astonished people on its passage, and which, upon another occasion, gave its foot to kiss to a poor minstrel—perhaps himself a puppet-showman—and mentioning as a positive and undoubted fact the movement of the head and eyes of the crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, testified to by old Lambarde in his Perambulations of that county. It is to be observed that these winking, walking, and nodding images were not always constructed with a view to delude credulous Christians into belief in miracles, but also for dramatic purposes, with the object of exciting religious enthusiasm by a representation of the sufferings of the Redeemer and the martyrs, and probably, at the same time, to extract alms from the purses of the faithful. When thus employed, they may be said to form the link between mechanical church sculpture, used by priests for purposes of imposture, and the player-puppets of more modern times. It is the point where the hierarchical and the popular classes of puppets blend. Scenes from the life and passion of the Saviour were favourite subjects for such representations; but incidents in the lives of the Virgin and saints were also frequently acted, both in secular and monastic churches, and that almost down to our own times, notwithstanding canonical prohibitions.