One of the wonders to us, looking back upon the middle ages, rich in all the experience they lacked, is their faith in heathenism as a fact, long after heathenism as a theology had given way to the victorious Cross. It seems not only as if many Christian churches were erected on what were once pagan temples, but as if, under new names, the old pagan superstitions still lingered, as if their hold on the heart of man were too firm to be driven out by any doctrine, however new or true. In the middle ages, before a Bacon had led forth the sciences from their house of bondage—before men had ceased to theorize, and to believe alone in facts, and the truths facts utter, what confidence, for instance, was given to that pagan science, or jargon, for it ought not to be called a science, named astrology. The old heathen gods still remained. Jupiter and Mars, Saturn, and Venus, and Mercury, were still the arbiters of human destinies. Take up the great philosopher of that age—Cardan for instance—and you shall read in him more of the mysterious influences of the heathen’s Jupiter than of the Christian’s God. Every educated man exclaimed in language as plain, though not, perhaps, so poetical, as that of Max Piccolomini, that— ‘Still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names, And to yon starry world they now are gone, Spirits or gods that used to share this earth With man as with their friend; and to the lover Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky Shoot influence down, and even at this day ’T is Jupiter who brings whate’er is great, And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.’