As to the images, tricked out in curious robes and gewgaws, Middleton "could not help recollecting the picture which old Homer draws of _Q. Hecuba of Troy_, prostrating herself before the _miraculous Image of Pallas_," while his wonder at the Loretto image of the "Queen of Heaven" with "a face as black as a Negus" reminds him of the reference in Baruch to the idols black with the "perpetual smoak of lamps and incense." In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Rhys refers to churches dedicated to Notre Dame in virtue of legends of discovery of images of the Virgin on the spot. These were usually of wood, which had turned black in the soil. Such a black "Madonna" was found near Grenoble, in the commune of La Zouche. Then, in the titles of the new deities, Middleton correctly sees those of the old. The Queen of Heaven reminds him of Astarte or Mylitta; the Divine Mother of the Magna Mater, the "great mother" of Oriental cults. In other attributes of Mary, lineal descendant of Isis, there survive those of Venus, Lucina, Cybele, or Maria. He gives amusing examples of myths and misreadings through which certain "saints" have a place in the Roman Calendar. He apparently knew nothing of the strange confusion by which Buddha appears therein under the title of Saint Josaphat; but he tells how, by misinterpretation of a boundary stone, Proefectus Viarum, an overseer of highways, became S. Viar; how S. Veronica secured canonization through a blunder over the words Vera Icon: still more droll, how hagiology includes both a mountain and a mantle! The marks of hands or feet on rocks, said to be made by the apparition of some saint or angel, call to mind "the impression of Hercules' feet on a stone in Scythia"; the picture of the Virgin, which came from heaven, suggests the descent of Numa's shield "from the clouds"; that of the weeping Madonna the statue of Apollo, which Livy says wept for three successive days and nights; while the periodical miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius is obviously paralleled in the incidents named by Horace on his journey to Brundusium, when the priests of the temple at Gnatia sought to persuade him that "the frankincense used to dissolve and melt miraculously without the help of fire" (Sat., v, 97-100).