Dante himself, the great man of his age, the deep in soul and intellect, but individualises the character of an age; and, as far as individual character can portray a general, tends to confirm the observations into which the nature of our subject led us. Dante lived a whole life of injury and wrong, of sorrow, of persecution, which doubtless darkened and embrowned every faculty of his consummate genius. The persecutions of the early Christians drove men into solitudes, where the tumult and fear of the world was exchanged for tumult and fear within; for they were where nature, ordaining every man to work for a common good, never intended them to be, and therefore would not give them peace. No wonder, if, in their bewildered fancies, they were haunted by demons, and took their fevered visions for realities. No wonder if they enacted the extravagant vagaries of insanity, and their faith (still faith) became mixed with a fabulous superstition. The anchorite was sought as a holy man; people believed in his miraculous powers as people have believed since--and people believe now, though no longer in anchorites. There are even Protestant miracle-workers, and thousands who have a kind of belief in their hearts which they will not acknowledge in words; and, while they ridicule the Romish calendar, have their own Protestant saints, and worship them, too, with an idolatry perhaps not less in reality than that which they so vehemently condemn in others. It is well to discountenance seriously and gravely the lying legends of Rome, and to sift from the fables the evil purpose with which they are fabricated or propagated, to expose the hidden design--a dominant power over minds and persons. But, to be candid, there was a time when legends of miracles were household words, and yet had nothing to do with priestcraft and Popery. Such things were before Popery; and that corrupt Church but took advantage of a human propensity, which they could not hope to eradicate. It would indeed be wonderful if there was not at all times a ready belief in them, as long as people believed anything, and that there might be powers above the human. And be it remembered, that many legends of miracles are of that early date which may be said to have begun ere miracles had ceased--ere the belief, not in the possibility, but in the present existence, could be well worn out. The necessity of keeping up the show of them has indeed been the crime, and is the crying disgrace, of the Romish Church. All we mean to assert is, that, considering the contiguity of the true and the false, in point of time, there is at least a great diminution of disparagement of intellect in those who, in the earliest times, took visions and dreams for facts, and events, that happened to be simultaneous, for miracles. Then, again, we know that many of these legends were but repetitions, and in their origin not intended to pass for truth. The lives of saints were the school-themes in convents--the only, schools.