In the records of the Harleian Miscellany, the curious reader may discover one which might impress his mind with some terrific ideas of the natural history of the south of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is styled, “The True and Wonderful.” The portion of the MSS. to which I allude is the “Legend of the Serpent of St. Leonard’s Forest.” This terrific legend of my own native town was a favourite of my boyish days; it has moulted some feather of its once awful interest, and is now but the shadow of a memory; and those who were once converts to its reality, now laugh the legend to scorn. ILLUSIONS OF ART. “If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me?” TEMPEST. EV. The science of chemistry has unfolded most of the secrets of _material_ miracles, as Psychology those of the intellect and senses. Not that I would attempt thus to _explain_ your wonders of Palingenesy, Astrophel; I will rather favour you with another batch, for I was once fond of unkennelling these sly foxes. It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of a Duke of Guise, that, in company with many scientific men, he saw the face of a person in his blood, which had been given by a bishop, for experiment, to La Pierre, the chemist, of Le Temple, near Paris. There is an old book of one Dr. Garmann, “De Miraculis Mortuorum,” and thus _he_ writes:—“When human salt, extracted and depurated from the skull of a man, was placed in a water dish, there appeared next morning in the mass, figures of men fixed to a cross;” and “when human skulls, on which mosses had vegetated, were pounded, the family of the apothecary who pounded them were alarmed in the night by strange and terrific noises from the chamber.” The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in Heywood’s “Hierarchie,” sat in state at the altar of the cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew one day attempted, in derision, to pull him by the beard; but on the first touch, the Cid started up, and in high resentment scared the Israelite away by the unsheathing of his mighty sword. And Master Planche has brought you legends from the church of Maria Taferl, in Lower Austria, and other noted spots on the Danube. When Bernini’s bust of Charles I. was being conveyed in a barge on the Thames, from a strange bird there descended a drop of blood on the bust, _which could never be effaced_. This is nothing but a fact in nature _mystified_, and (like the growth of the Christmas flowering thorn of Glastonbury, from the _walking-staff_ of Joseph of Arimathæa) is too glaring to be misconstrued.