This fable originated in the circumstance that most asses have a sort of black cross on their backs. There possibly might be an old ass in the neighborhood of Verona, on whose back the populace remarked a finer cross than his brethren could boast of; some good old woman would be at hand to say that this was the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem; and the ass would be honored with a magnificent funeral. The feast established at Verona passed into other countries, and was especially celebrated in France. In the mass was sung: _Orientis partibus_ _Adventabit asinus,_ _Pulcher et fortissimus._ There was a long procession, headed by a young woman with a child in her arms, mounted on an ass, representing the Virgin Mary going into Egypt. At the end of the mass the priest, instead of saying _Ite missa est_, brayed three times with all his might, and the people answered in chorus. We have books on the feast of the ass, and the feast of fools; they furnish material towards a universal history of the human mind. ASSASSIN--ASSASSINATION. SECTION I. A name corrupted from the word Ehissessin. Nothing is more common to those who go into a distant country than to write, repeat, and understand incorrectly in their own language what they have misunderstood in a language entirely foreign to them, and afterwards to deceive their countrymen as well as themselves. Error flies from mouth to mouth, from pen, to pen, and to destroy it requires ages. In the time of the Crusades there was a wretched little people of mountaineers inhabiting the caverns near the road to Damascus. These brigands elected a chief, whom they named Cheik Elchassissin. It is said that this honorific title of _cheik_ originally signified _old_, as with us the title of _seigneur_ comes from _senior_, elder, and the word _graf_, a count, signifies _old_ among the Germans; for, in ancient times almost every people conferred the civil command upon the old men. Afterwards, the command having become hereditary, the title of _cheik, graf, seigneur, or count_ has been given to children; and the Germans call a little master of four years old, _the count_--that is, the _old gentleman_. The Crusaders named the old man of the Arabian mountains, the Old Man of the Hill, and imagined him to be a great prince, because he had caused a count of Montserrat and some other crusading nobles to be robbed and murdered on the highway. These people were called _the assassins_, and their cheik the king of the vast country of _the assassins_. This vast territory is five or six leagues long by two or three broad, being part of Anti-Libanus, a horrible country, full of rocks, like almost all Palestine, but intersected by pleasant meadowlands, which feed numerous flocks, as is attested by all who have made the journey from Aleppo to Damascus.