blank walls, the very passages by which alone the communication could be effected. And it may be added, that there is no traditional masonry of the “Santa Casa” left at Nazareth, there is the traditional masonry close by of the so-called workshop of Joseph of an entirely different character. Whilst the former is of a kind wholly unlike anything in Palestine, the latter is, as might be expected, of the natural grey limestone of the country, of which in all times, no doubt, the houses of Nazareth were built. It may have seemed superfluous labour to have attempted any detailed refutation of the most incredible of Ecclesiastical legends. But Loretto is so emphatically the “Holy Place” of one large branch of Christendom--its claim has been so strongly maintained by French and Italian writers of our own times--and is, moreover, so deeply connected with the alleged authority of the Papal See--that an interest attaches to it far beyond its intrinsic importance. No facts are insignificant which bring to an issue the general value of local religion--or the assumption of any particular Church to direct the conscience of the world--or the amount of liberty within such a Church left on questions which concern the faith and practice of thousands of its members. But the legend is also curious as an illustration of the history of “Holy Places” generally. It is difficult to say how it originated--or what led to the special selection of the Adriatic gulf as the scene of such a fable; yet, generally speaking, the explanation is easy and instructive. Nazareth was taken by Sultan Khalil in 1291, when he stormed the last refuge of the Crusaders in the neighbouring city of Acre. From that time, not Nazareth only, but the whole of Palestine, was closed to the devotions of Europe. The Crusaders were expelled from Asia, and in Europe the spirit of the Crusades was extinct. But the natural longing to see the scenes of the events of the Sacred History--the superstitious craving to win for prayer the favour of consecrated localities--did not expire with the Crusades. Can we wonder that, under such circumstances, there should have arisen the feeling, the desire, the belief, that if Mahomet could not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mahomet? The House of Loretto is the petrifaction, so to speak, of the “Last Sigh of the Crusades”; suggested possibly by the Holy House of St. Francis at Assisi, then first acquiring its European celebrity. It is indeed not a matter of conjecture that in Italy--the country where the passionate temperament of the people would most need such stimulants--persons in this state of mind did actually endeavour, so far as circumstances permitted, to reproduce the scenes of Palestine within their own immediate neighbourhood. One such is the Campo Santo of Pisa--“the Holy Field,” as this is “the Holy House”--literally a cargo of sacred earth from the Valley of Hinnom, carried, as is well known, not on the wings of