TRACKS IN TEME. 



61 



The preface, which is in fact a table of contents, thus con- 

 cludes : " The facts and evidence relative to each case are detailed 

 as minutely as possible, in order that, should my learned readers 

 not be satisfied with my conclusions, they may be enabled to 

 draw their own deductions therefrom." This is certainly 

 considerate, and we avail ourselves, as " learned readers," of 

 the license here given, and express our dissatisfaction and 

 dissent from the conclusion that the sign of the Bull repre- 

 sents Eve : " our own deduction therefrom " is — no, we will 

 not publish it. 



It will be obvious to our readers that we cannot enter a 

 critique on all the " cases," contained in the book of Jabez 

 Allies, Esq. ; it has been proved possible that one man 

 possessed sufficient knowledge to write on all these " cases," 

 but surely it cannot be supposed that any other should be 

 sufficiently accomplished to review him. We candidly ac- 

 knowledge, that with ourselves the attempt would be idle. We 

 are learned in the " Lives of the Saints," but we are ill versed 

 in the bones of fish ; we are amateurs in ancient camps, but 

 utterly ignorant of black rats. We will consider one " case " 

 only, that of St Catherine. 



In a stained glass window, in the church of West Wickham, 

 in Kent, is a notable effigy of St. Catherine; she is repre- 

 sented as wearing a coronet, marvellously like that of an 

 English duke, with its strawberry leaves, &c. complete ; her 

 left hand supports a sword fit for a giant, and a book probably 

 intended for the Bible ; her right hand is tracing the lines of 

 the book she is reading. BenQ^th her feet is the Emperor 

 Maxentius, crown, sceptre, and purple robe. The emperor is 

 thus punished through an infinity of ages, because whilst 

 St. Catherine and himself were both tenants of this perishable 

 clay, he caused her head to be removed from the shoulders 

 which it adorned. 



" This saint," says William Hone, " is in the Church of 

 England calendar and almanacks. It is doubtful whether she 

 ever existed; [how painful to hear such doubts expressed !] 

 yet in mass books and breviaries we find her prayed to, and 

 honoured by hymns, with stories of her miracles so wonder- 

 fully apocryphal, that even Cardinal Baronius blushes for the 

 threadbare legends. In Alban Butler's memoirs of this saint 

 it may be discovered, by a scrutinizing eye, that while her 



