Louis on a stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth of such remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown: [53] the prodigy is attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general antidote against religious credulity. [54] [Footnote 50: Under the words _Perparus_, _Perpera_, _Hyperperum_, Ducange is short and vague: MonetÊ genus. From a corrupt passage of Guntherus, (Hist. C. P. c. 8, p. 10,) I guess that the Perpera was the nummus aureus, the fourth part of a mark of silver, or about ten shillings sterling in value. In lead it would be too contemptible.] [Footnote 51: For the translation of the holy crown, &c., from Constantinople to Paris, see Ducange (Hist. de C. P. l. iv. c. 11--14, 24, 35) and Fleury, (Hist. EcclÈs. tom. xvii. p. 201--204.)] [Footnote 52: MÈlanges tirÈs d'une Grande BibliothËque, tom. xliii. p. 201--205. The Lutrin of Boileau exhibits the inside, the soul and manners of the _Sainte Chapelle_; and many facts relative to the institution are collected and explained by his commentators, Brosset and De St. Marc.] [Footnote 53: It was performed A.D. 1656, March 24, on the niece of Pascal; and that superior genius, with Arnauld, Nicole, &c., were on the spot, to believe and attest a miracle which confounded the Jesuits, and saved Port Royal, (uvres de Racine, tom. vi. p. 176--187, in his eloquent History of Port Royal.)] [Footnote 54: Voltaire (SiÈcle de Louis XIV. c. 37, uvres, tom. ix. p. 178, 179) strives to invalidate the fact: but Hume, (Essays, vol. ii. p. 483, 484,) with more skill and success, seizes the battery, and turns the cannon against his enemies.]