The mystic number seven enters into all the principal divisions of the story. Thus, St. Denis having wandered into Thessaly was reduced to such straits as to live upon mulberries; and these so disagreed with him that he became suddenly transformed into a hart; a very illogical sequence indeed. But the mulberry tree was, in fact, Eglantius the King’s daughter, metamorphosed for her pride. Seven years he thus remained; at the end of which time, his horse, wise as any regularly-ordained physician, administered to him a decoction of roses which brought about the transformation of both his master and his master’s mistress into their “humane shapes.” That they went to court sworn lovers may be taken as a matter of course. There they are left, in order to afford the author an opportunity of showing how St. James, having most unorthodoxically fallen in love with a Jewish maiden, was seven years dumb, in consequence. St. James, however, is a patient and persevering lover. If I had an ill-will against any one I would counsel him to read this very long-winded history, but being at peace with all mankind, I advise my readers to be content with learning that the apostolic champion and the young Jewess are ultimately united, and fly to Seville, where they reside in furnished lodgings, and lead a happy life;--while the author tells of what befell to the doughty St. Anthony. This notable Italian is a great hand at subduing giants and ladies. We have a surfeit of combats and destruction, and love-making and speechifying, in this champion’s life; and when we are compelled to leave him travelling about with a Thracian lady, who accompanies him, in a theatrical male dress, and looks in it like the Duchess--at least, like Miss Farebrother, in the dashing white sergeant of the Forty Thieves--we shake our head at St. Anthony and think how very unlike he is to his namesake in the etching by Callot, where the fairest of sirens could not squeeze a sigh from the anchorite’s wrinkled heart. While they are travelling about in the rather disreputable fashion above alluded to, we come across St. Andrew of Scotland, who has greater variety of adventure than any other of the champions. With every hour there is a fresh incident. Now he is battling with spirits, now struggling with human foes, and anon mixed up, unfavorably, with beasts. At the end of all the frays, there is--we need hardly say it--a lady. The bonny Scot was not likely to be behind his fellow-champions in this respect. Nay, St. Andrew has six of them, who had been swans, and are now natural singing lasses. What sort of a blade St. Andrew was may be guessed by the “fact,” that when he departed from the royal court, to which he had conducted the half dozen ladies, they all eloped in a body, after him. There never was so dashing a hero dreamed of by romance--though a rhymer _has_ dashed off his equal in wooing, and Burns’s “Finlay” is the only one that may stand the parallel.