When other wild beasts, as wolves and bears, are placed at the feet of a saint attired as abbot or bishop, it signifies that he cleared waste land, out down forests, and substituted Christian culture and civilisation for paganism and the lawless hunter’s life: such is the significance in pictures of St. Magnus, St. Florentius and St. Germain of Auxerre. * * * * * The HART or HIND was also an emblem of double signification. It was a type of solitude and of purity of life, and was also a type of piety and religious aspiration, adopted from the forty-second Psalm, ‘Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul for thee, O God!’ When the original meaning of the lion, the hart, and other emblems, was no longer present to the popular mind, legends were invented to account for them; and that which had been a symbol, became an incident, or an historical attribute,—as in the stories of the lion healed by St. Jerome, or digging the grave of St. Paul; the miraculous stag which appeared to St. Eustace and St. Hubert; the wounded doe in the legend of St. Giles; and the hind which spoke to St. Julian. * * * * * The PEACOCK, the bird of Juno, was an ancient pagan symbol, signifying the apotheosis of an empress, as we find from many of the old Roman coins and medals. The early Christians, accustomed to this interpretation, adopted it as a general emblem of the mortal exchanged for the immortal existence; and, with this signification, we find the peacock with outspread train on the walls and ceilings of catacombs, the tombs of the martyrs, and many of the sarcophagi, down to the fourth and fifth centuries. It is only in modern times that the peacock has become the emblem of worldly pride. * * * * *