io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



man spoke very well the language of those barbarians without 

 having learned it, and had no need of an interpreter when he 

 instructed." And, finally, in our own time, the Rev. Father 

 Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the natives, says, "He 

 could speak the language excellently, though he had never 

 learned it." 



In the early biography, Tursellinus writes : " Nothing was a 

 greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese 

 tongues ; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression 

 offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech 

 of Francis was a cause of laughter." But Father Bouhours, a 

 century later, writing of Xavier at the same period, says, " He 

 preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their language, but 

 so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be taken 

 for a foreigner." 



And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus, 

 speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flow- 

 ingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life." 



Nor was even this sufficient : to make the legend complete, it 

 was declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various 

 tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which 

 he was born.* 



It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biogra- 

 phers generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact 

 is, that as a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to 

 the natural laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and 

 legend in the warm atmosphere of love and devotion which con- 

 stantly arises about great religious leaders in times when men 

 have little or no knowledge of natural law, when there is little 

 care for scientific evidence, and when he who believes most is 

 thought most meritorious. 



* For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters with Life, published by 

 Leon Pages, Paris, 1855. Also, Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum, Libri xvi, Venice, 1589. 

 Also the Lives by Tursellinus, various editions, beginning with that of 1596; Vitelleschi, 

 1622; Bouhours, 1682; Massei, second edition, 16S2 (Rome), and others; Fabers Bartoli, 

 Baltimore, 1868; Coleridge, 1872. In addition to these, I have compared, for a more ex- 

 tended discussion of this subject hereafter, a very great number of editions of these and 

 other biographies of the saint with speeches at the canonization, the Bull of Gregory 

 XIII, various books of devotion, and a multitude of special writings, some of them in 

 manuscript, upon the glories of the saint. The illustration of the miracle of the crucifix 

 and crab in its final form is given in La Devotion de Dix Vcndredis a l'Honneur de St. 

 Francois Xavier, Bruxelles, 1699, Fig. 24. For the letter of King John to Barreto see 

 Leon Pages's Lettres de St. Francois Xavier, Paris, 1855, vol. ii, p. 465. For the mira- 

 cle among the Badages, compare Turscllin. lib. ii, c. x, p. 16, with Bouhours, Dryden's 

 translation, pp. 146, 147. For miracle of the gift of tongues, in its higher development, see 

 Bouhours, p. 143, and Coleridge, vol. i, pp 172 and 208; and as to Xavier's own account 

 see Coleridge, vol. i, pp. 151, 154, and vol. ii, 551. 



