But if the Pope had so great a taste for beautifying our valleys with those costly specimens of art, whereof some are at least eighteen feet in height, composed of a single stone, and chiselled into devices of the most elaborate mysteries, is it not _marvellous_ that he has not, in the plenitude of his piety, thought proper to adorn the neighbourhood of the Holy See with any similar trophies? And why has he not preserved in the archives of the Vatican any _record_ of the bequest, as he has taken care to do in the case of the four _palls_? But, transcendently and lastly, why did he deem it necessary to depict _centaurs_ upon those _crosses_, with snakes, serpents, dogs and other animals, such as this following one exhibits, which is that at Kells, and which has been alluded to, by promise, some pages backwards.[576] [Illustration] I have now done with the _appropriation_ of those columns; and shall just _whisper_ into my adversaries’ ears--_if they have but recovered from the downcrash of their_ fabric--that so far from laying claim to the honour of their erection, the Pope has actually excommunicated all such as revered them! and has otherwise disowned all participation therein, by the fulminating of bulls and of anathemas![577] Yet did the zealots of party, after the history of those crosses was forgotten, associate them individually with some favourite saint! “This notion,” says Mosheim, referring to such _diversions_, “rendered it necessary to multiply prodigiously their number, and to create daily new ones. The clergy set their invention at work, and peopled at discretion the invisible world with imaginary protectors; they invented the names and histories of saints that never existed; many chose their own patrons, either phantoms of their own creation or distracted fanatics whom they sainted.” Here, however, the historian is as _inaccurate_ as he is _severe_: for not only did the majority of those _saints_, if not all of them, exist, but the greater part also of those _exploits_ ascribed to them have actually occurred! _The imposition consisted in making them the heroes of events and legends belonging to former actors._[578]