It avails nothing to stigmatize a faith so deeply rooted and so universal as mere superstition. Among the mass of errors which in the course of ages have accumulated around the creed, the little grain of truth, the indubitable power of man's mind to act through the eye, ought not to be overlooked. It is the same with the magic known as such to the two great nations of antiquity. If the Greeks saw in Plato the son of Apollo, who came to his mother Perictione in the shape of a serpent, and in Alexander the Great the son of Jupiter Ammon, they probably intended merely to pay the same compliment to their countrymen which modern nations convey by calling their rulers Kings and Kaisers "by the Grace of God." But the consistency with which higher beings came to visit earth-born man in the shape of favored animals, is more than an accident. The sons of God came to see the daughters of men, though it is not said in what form they appeared, and the suggestion that they were the "giants upon the earth," mentioned in Holy Writ, is not supported; but exactly as the gods came from Olympus in the shape of bulls and rams, so the evil spirits of the Middle Ages appeared in the shape of rams and cats. A curious instance of the mixture of truth and falsehood appears in this connection. It is well-known that the Italians of the South look upon Virgil as one of the greatest magicians that ever lived, and ascribe to his tomb even now supernatural power. The poet himself had, of course, nothing whatever to do with magic; but his reputation as a magician arose from the fact that, next to the Bible, his verses became, at an early period, a favorite means of consulting the future. _Sortes Virgilianæ_, the lines which upon accidentally opening the volume first met the eye, were a leading feature of the art known as stichomania.