288 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT SPIDERS. 



represents hell as their common producer, thus addressing the 

 insect and the personified disease : 



" Mes lilies, leur dit-il, vous pouvez vous vanter, 

 D'etre pour I'lmmaiiic liguec 

 Egalement a rcdouter." 



MatthiohiSj giving another fable as matter of fact, declares 

 that every oak-gall contains either a fly, a spider, or a worm, 

 adding thereto the notable prediction that while the first and 

 third foretell war and famine, the second, namely the spider, 

 comes a harbinger of no less dread calamity in the shape of 

 pestilence. Such cobweb rubbish has been long since swept 

 away by science. As Minerva's needle was fabled once to have 

 subdued " Araclme's rival spirit/' so the same implement may 

 be said now to have subdued the spirits of evil clothed by 

 Superstition in Araclme's form. Herein we should perhaps 

 though make exception of the spirit of the haughty cardinal,* 

 whispered to haunt still, at Hampton Court, the scenes of his 

 inflated pride and forced humility, in the shape of the swollen 

 spiders which are seen at times to issue from behind the arras 

 of those ancient walls. 



In the death of the darker superstitions which used once to 

 attach to spiders, the remnant of one more cheerful still sur- 

 vives in the name of the " money-spinner," and the toleration, 

 even complacency, wherewith, in comparison with the rest of 

 her sisterhood, this little visitant is still regarded ; and truly 



* YVolsev. 



