The following is a quaint narrative of these absurdities: "One time before the plague was begun, I think it was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined with them to satisfy my curiosity, and I found them all staring up in the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it and brandishing it over his head. She described every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motions and the form; and the poor people came into it readily. 'Yes, I see it all plainly,' says one; 'there's the sword as plain as can be.' Another saw his very face, and cried out, 'What a glorious creature he was!' One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as the rest, and said I could see nothing but a cloud. However, the woman turned from me; called me a profane fellow and a scoffer; told me that it was a time of God's anger, and dreadful judgments were approaching, and that despisers such as I should _wonder and perish_. Another encounter I had in the open day also, in going through a narrow passage from Petty-France into Bishopsgate churchyard. In this narrow passage stands a man looking through between the palisadoes into the burying-place, and he was pointing now to one place, then to another, and affirming that he saw a ghost walking upon such a grave-stone; he described the shape, the posture, and the movement of it so exactly, crying on a sudden, 'There it is--now it comes this way--now 'tis turned back!' till at length he persuaded the people into so firm a belief of it, that they fancied they saw it; and thus he came every day, making a strange hubbub, till Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the ghost would start and disappear on a sudden." Such sanctimonious tricks are historical. Don Bernal Dias del Castello tells us, in his account of the Mexican conquest, that St. Jago appeared in the van of the army, mounted on a white horse, and leading the troops on to victory. He frankly owns that he did not see this blessed vision; nay, that a cavalier, by name Francisco de Morla, mounted on a chestnut steed, was fighting in the very place where the patron of Spain was said to have appeared; but, instead of drawing the natural conclusion, that the whole business was got up as an illusion, he devoutly exclaims, "Sinner that I was, what am I that I should have been permitted to behold the blessed apostle!" These impostures remind us of the story of the wag who, fixing his eyes upon the lion over Northumberland House, exclaimed, "By heaven! it wags--it wags!" and contrived by these means to collect an immense mob in the street, many of whom swore that they did absolutely see the lion wagging his tail.