reader suppose, for example, that the theory of volcanic action is all a myth, and that it is to the magic of Virgil, and to nothing else, that the south of Italy is indebted for all the earthquakes and subterranean convulsions that have afflicted it for centuries? Yet so it is, if we are to credit all the stories of "Virgilius the Magician" that were current during the Middle Ages. The celebrated Benedictine monk, Bernard de Montfaucon, author of Antiquité Expliquée one of the most learned and curious works in existence, repeats the story as it was told and credited in the Dark Ages. The following is from an old translation, quoted by Scott in his notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, in illustration of the magical spells attributed to the Ladye of Branksome Tower. Virgil it seems, among other things, was famous for his gallantries. On one occasion he fell in love with and carried away the daughter of a certain "Soldan," and the story proceeds:--"Than he thoughte in his mynde how he myghte marye hyr, and thoughte in his mynde to founde in the middes of the see a fayer towne, with great landes belongynge to it; and so he did by his cunnynge, and called it Napells (Naples). And the foundacyon of it was of egges, and in that town of Napells he made a tower with iiii. corners, and in the toppe he set an apell upon an yron yarde, and no man culde pull away that apell without he brake it; and thoroughe that yren set he a bolte, and in that bolte set he an egge, and he henge the apell by the stauke upon a cheyne, and so hangeth it still. And when the egge styrreth so should the town of Napells quake; and when the egge brake, then shulde the town sinke. When he made an ende, he lette calls it Napells." Thomas of "Ercildoune," and he of "Balivearie," and the two Merlins,--for there were two of them, the Merlin of the Arthurian legends, and Merdwynn Wylet, or Merlin the Wild, who seems to have been a Scotchman, and whose grave is still pointed out beneath an aged thorn-tree at Drumelzier in Tweeddale,--these were accounted great magicians and "pretty fellows in their day;" but what were they to Virgilius the earthquaker, who at least attained to such an enviable state of independence, that he is represented as frequently playing at pitch and toss with the "devyl," and cheating and outwitting that crafty potentate as if he were the veriest greenhorn! The Sortes Sacræ were just the Sortes Virgilianæ, with this difference, that in the former case, instead of a copy of Virgil, the New Testament was used in the process of divination. The oracle is consulted in this case, according to our information, by the introduction at random of the wards end of a key (some allusion probably to the Apostolic keys) between the leaves of the closed volume, which is then opened at that place, and from the first verse that arrests the eye the desired knowledge is extracted. On inquiry, we find that this superstition