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druped farther gratified St Francis by an assiduous personal attendance. Many saints have taken pleasure in associating with different animals, and St Anthony, we are somewhere told, made the goose his gossip; but this brotherhood with wolves seems peculiar to St Francis.

The Abbé de Corbie had the laudable custom of tenderly rearing a number of crows, in honour of his name. One of these birds was full of tricks and malice. Sometimes he pecked the toes of the novices, sometimes he pinched the tails of the cats, at other times he flew away with the dinner of his comrades, and obliged them to fast like the good fathers; but his highest delight was to pluck the finest feathers from the peacocks, when they dis played their plumage.

One day the Abbé de Corbie having entered the refectory, took off his ring to wash his hands: our crow darts on it adroitly, and flies off unobserved. When the abbé goes to put on his ring, it is not to be found; being unable to learn what has become of it, he hurls an excommunication against the unknown author of the theft. Soon the crow becomes plaintive and sad he does nothing but pine and drag a languishing life-his feathers drop with the lightest breeze-his wings flag-his body becomes dry and emaciated-no more plucking

of peacocks' feathers-no more pinching of no, vices' toes. His condition now inspires compassion in those he had most tormented, and the commiseration even of the peacocks is excited. With a view of ascertaining the cause of his malady, his nest is visited, to see if he has gathered any poisonous plant. What is the astonishment of all, when the ring which the abbé had lost, and now forgotten, is here discovered! As there is no longer a thief to punish, the anathema is recalled, and the crow resumes in a few days his gaiety and embonpoint.

Such were the tales invented and propagated by the monks, partly with pious, and partly with politic designs, which they imposed on the multitude as genuine history, and which were received with eager curiosity and devout credulity.

Some of these stories, absurd as they are, have served as the basis of French and English dramas: Les Fils Ingrats of Piron, coincides with one of these spiritual fictions. Another tale which occurs in the Pia Hilaria, is that of a drunk beggar, who is carried by the duke of Burgundy to his palace, where he enjoys for twenty-four hours the pleasures of command. This story is told of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in Goulart's Histoires Admirables, whence it was translated in

one of Grimstone's "Admirable and Memorable Histories," which Malone considers the origin of the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew. The first notion, however, of such an incident was no doubt derived from the east. In the tale of the Sleeper Awakened, in the Arabian Nights Entertainments, the Caliph Haroun Alraschid gives a poor man, called Abon Hassan, a soporific powder, and has him conveyed, while under its influence, to the palace, where, when he awakes, he is obeyed and entertained as the Commander of the Faithful, till, another powder being administered, he is carried back on the following night to his humble dwelling.

Of the various spiritual romances which have appeared in different countries, no one has been so deservedly popular as the

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

of John Bunyan, an allegorical work, in which the author describes the journey of a Christian from the city of Destruction to the heavenly Jerusalem. The origin of the Pilgrim's Progress has been attributed by some to Barnard's Religious Allegory, entitled The Isle of Man, or Proceedings in Man

shire, published in 1627, while others have traced it to the story of the Wandering Knight, transla→ ted from French by Wm. Goodyeare, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Le Pelerinage de l'Ame, by Ant. Girard, printed at Paris in 1480, and subsequently translated by Caxton, relates, in manner of a dream, the progress of the soul after its departure from the body, till led up to the heavenly mansions. There is also an old French work, which was written by a monk of Calais, and was versified in English as far back as 1426, relating to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and containing various dialogues between the Pilgrim's GraceDieu, Sapience, &c. The existence of such works can detract little from the praise of originality; but, if the notion of a journey through the perils and temptations of life, to a place of religious rest, has been borrowed by the author of the Pilgrim's Progress, it was most probably suggested by a Flemish work already mentioned, which describes the pilgrimage of Colombelle to Jerusalem.

The Pilgrim's Progress was written while the author was in prison, where he lay from 1660 to 1672; so that the date of its composition must be fixed between those two periods. This celebrated allegory is introduced in a manner which, in its

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mysterious solemnity, bears a striking resemblance to the commencement of the Vision of Dante :— "As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream-I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with rags, with a book in his hand. I looked and saw him open the book, and read therein, and as he read he wept and trembled," &c. The author then describes the awakening spiritual fears of his hero, Christianhis resolution to depart from the city of Destruction, suggested perhaps by the flight of Lot from the devoted cities of the plain-his ineffectual attempts to induce his wife and family and neighbours to accompany him-his departure, and all the incidents, whether of a discouraging or comforting nature, which he encountered on his journey.

It was, perhaps, ill-judged in the author to represent Christian as having a wife and family, since, whatever be the spiritual lesson intended to be conveyed by his leaving them, one cannot help being impressed with a certain notion of selfishness and hard-heartedness in the hero. "Now he had not run far from his own house," says the author," but his wife and children perceiving it, be-

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