In miracles, the hand of God is manifested; when the dead are raised, and the blind suddenly restored to sight, we question not the Almighty power; but we doubt St. Peter lacerating the back of Dunstan, and even acquit the latter of so merry a joke, as that which was invented about his taking the devil by the nose with his red hot tongs, and alarming all the neighbourhood by his bellowings. If "possibility" is dragged into the argument, we must remain silent, for no one is impious enough to limit the power of the Deity. Where it would evince a want of faith to doubt the holiness of the apostles, it would be no sin to hesitate before we pronounced Dunstan, or Thomas-à-Becket, or Peter the Hermit, saints. What a simple-minded peasant would devoutly believe to be the truth in the present day, an intelligent person would be scarcely tolerated in enlightened society for asserting,--and by such homely facts as these are the truths of history only to be tested. [Illustration: _Dunstan dragging King Edwy from Elgiva._] The first act which brings Dunstan so prominently forward in the reign of Edwin is his rude attack upon the king on the day of his coronation. Edwin had retired early from the banquet-hall, to seek the society of his beautiful wife Elgiva, in her own apartment, when his absence was remarked by the assembled guests. Odo, the Danish archbishop, was present at the coronation feast, and perceiving that the retirement of the king displeased the company, commanded those persons who were attendant upon him to fetch Edwin back. After some demur by the party whom Odo addressed, Dunstan and another bishop, his relation, undertook to bring back the king. Elgiva's mother was in the chamber with Edwin and her daughter when the two bishops entered, rudely, and unannounced. Edwin, it appears, at the moment of their entrance, was in one of his merry moods, and doubtless glad that he had escaped from the drunken revels of a Saxon feast, had taken off his crown and placed it on the ground, and was engaged in a playful struggle with his queen, when the bishops broke so rudely upon his retirement; or it is very probable that the crown had fallen off his head while toying with her, and that seeing the emblem of sovereignty thus cast aside like a bauble, may for a moment have chafed the temper of the irritable and decorous Dunstan. We could see nothing to condemn on the part of the bishop, if he had respectfully solicited the return of the king to the banquet; but when Edwin refused to go, and Dunstan dragged him rudely from his seat, and forced the crown again upon his head, the latter far out-stepped his commission, and acted more like a traitor than a loyal subject in thus attempting to coerce the king. It would, in those days, have been held a justifiable act on the part of Edwin to have laid the haughty prelate dead at his feet. Elgiva, with the spirit of a true woman, upbraided the bishop for his insolence, and Dunstan, we fear, made use