An age of awakening criticism begins to find the legend doubtful--cannot entirely believe, cannot entirely dismiss the old familiar story,--begins to interpret it as allegory, or to separate the probable incidents from the improbable, receiving the first, rejecting the second. A new rule of faith has been introduced; not what is most captivating and strange, but what best harmonises with the common occurrences of life, is to be the most readily believed. The exuberant legend is therefore pruned down and mutilated, or it is represented as the fantastic shadow of some quite natural circumstance,--strange shadow for such substance!--and in this state it is admitted to a certain credence. But who sees not that this is no separation of history from fable, but merely a reduction of the fable into something we can pronounce to be probable? But the probability of this residue is no sufficient ground for our belief; no one, surely, supposes that imagination deals in nothing but impossibilities. The utmost effort, the wildest flight of fancy, could not always keep clear of probability; and it would be strange indeed if the romantic fiction could claim our faith at every point where, by chance, it had touched the earth. One might as well sift, in the same manner, a fiction of the Arabian Nights; and, setting aside the supernatural, admit whatever is natural to be true. The wonderful properties of Aladdin's lamp shall be given up; but that Aladdin had an old lamp, and that his wife sold it when he was out of the way, this shall remain admissible.