As for their belief in relics, it is only fair to point out what may not occur to every reader, that they had the same reason, neither more nor less, for believing so, as we for believing that the earth moves round the sun: it is common knowledge. 'Common knowledge'—is not all of it, whether scientific or theological, equally an act of faith? and is it more reasonable for us to quote Baedeker to ourselves than for pilgrim Nicholas to put his trust in friar John? "Howbeit (if we will truly consider it), more worthy is it to believe, than to know as we now know"—that is not a quotation from a theologian but from Bacon's "Advancement of Learning." Of two things we may be sure, that the true history of a relic would probably be far stranger than its legend, and that whatever marvels the southerner saw or heard, he came across nothing more novel or more miraculous than the ebb and flow of the northern tides. In speaking of relics, the secular ones must be remembered, too: foremost among them the original Ephesus statue of Diana, which Hentzner saw at Fontainebleau and Evelyn at the Louvre. Most frequently mentioned is the buck's head at Amboise. It bore antlers of enormous size, and for that reason had enjoyed Francis I's special protection while alive. By Sir John Reresby's time (1654) it had been ascertained that the buck was of English birth, having reached France by swimming the Channel; while thirty-three years later it had been dead for three hundred years and at the date of its death was nine hundred years old. These details need no explanation; any caretaker can equal them under pressure. The writer once asked the sextoness of the church where Spinoza lies buried how he came to be laid there considering he was not exactly orthodox: the answer was, without hesitation, that he became a Protestant before he died!