We have been assured by many respectable clergymen of Naples, who, of course, know their own people, and often have to chide them, that there is not a word of truth in this charge. The clergy and the laity of Naples, of all classes, learned and unlearned alike, believe most steadfastly and earnestly in the miraculous character of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. Many strangers who have seen it and have examined it critically have come to the same conclusion. Although the church has not spoken authoritatively on the matter, still the consensus of so many learned, intelligent, and pious persons who have so accepted it--the fact that during so many centuries it has stood the test of time, and that science has not been able to explain it away or to reproduce it artificially--and the very character of the liquefaction itself, with its attendant circumstances, so clear, so plain, and so decisive--all leave no room for reasonable doubt. To complete our statement, we must, perhaps, go still further back, 206 and inquire how it has come about that a portion of the blood of a Christian bishop, beheaded in the year 305, under Diocletian, and in virtue of edicts by that emperor for the suppression of Christianity, should, after the lapse of so many centuries, be now found in a glass ampulla, or vial, at Naples. To some, this primary fact may, at first sight, appear as strange and as extraordinary, if not as unaccountable, as the subsequent liquefaction itself. To an Italian Catholic, indeed, a doubt on this head would scarcely present itself. The usages and the thoughts of his ancestors in the faith have come down to him so naturally that they form, as it were, part of his being. He thinks, and feels, and knows as his fathers did before him. In such cradle-lands of Christianity, and among a people that has never swerved from the faith since the early ages of the church, there is what we might term an inherited Catholic instinct, a readiness and a correctness of Catholic thought in religious matters, which those of other lands that received the light of Christianity only at a later period, and consequently have not such a bond of ancestral connection with the Christians of the days of persecution, can only reach by study and cultivated piety. However, even a moderate acquaintance with the usages and customs of those early ages will show in many instances that what some have considered peculiar national traits of perhaps later growth are in reality deeply rooted in the customs of those ancient times; and that many a point, often set down as a fond fancy or a singular product of superstition, is firmly established as a truth, by historical research into their records. This is the case with the question before us.