indurate and torture the body, in order to win the applause of the world, and the privilege of selecting its most advantageous positions. Accordingly, monastery after monastery arose with sudden and astonishing rapidity, and their cells became supplied--not with aspirants after holiness and heaven--but with aspirants after secular and ecclesiastical dignities, and the indolence, luxury, and licentiousness which they afforded. The pious flattery that was lavished on voluntary suffering, and the distinguished rewards which recompensed it, strongly tempted the feeble conscience of monks and hermits, to task their ingenuity in inventing contrivances for magnifying the apparent and diminishing the real sufferings of their self-imposed torture. By the aid of an improved invention an artful hypocrite could procure a greater reputation for sanctity than a contrite penitent, and become more eligible to the worldly honors and emoluments of the church. St. Simeon Stylltes, who sat upon a pole for thirty years, convinced Christendom, by his wonderful absurdity, that he was miraculously supported; while living he enjoyed its profoundest respect, and when dead was canonized by the Catholic Church. But an observer by describing the numerous gesticulations of this sainted mountebank, disclosed the secret of his artifice. By means of a system of gymnastics, he kept up a vigorous circulation of blood through his frame, and thus acquired a health and longevity which would have been incompatible with a state of inactivity. But it appears that he was tormented with an ulcer on the thigh, inflicted by the devil, who had tempted him to imitate Elijah in flying to heaven, but who maliciously smote him upon his raising his foot to make the ascension. His mystical gesticulations not healing, but probably inflaming the wound, may have shortened the natural term of his miserable existence. As he had gradually arisen from a pole of seven feet high to one of fifty feet high, if had not been for his vanity and his evil company he might have gained a still higher position; but whether by this means he would ever have reached heaven may be questioned by astronomy and heresy: but there is no doubt he acquired by his folly and artifice the beatification of the Catholic Church.