56 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



Servants ;, They their Procession of Priapus, we our 

 fetching-in, erection, and dancing about May-Poles ; 

 and Dancing is one kind of worship ; They had their 

 Procession called Ambarvalia, and we our Procession 

 about the Fields in the Rogation week" ' 



Middleton examined the matter on the spot, and in 

 his celebrated Letter from Rome (published in 1729), 

 gives numerous examples of ' an exact CONFORMITY 

 between POPERY and PAGANISM.' Since few read 

 his book nowadays, some of these may be cited, 

 because their presence goes far to explain why the 

 conglomerate religion which Christianity had become 

 was proof against ideas spurned alike by pagans and 

 ecclesiastics. Visiting the place for classical study, 

 and not ' to notice the fopperies and ridiculous cere- 

 monies of the present Religion/ Middleton soon found 

 himself 'still in old Heathen Rome/ with its rituals of 

 primitive Paganism, as if handed down by an uninter- 

 rupted succession from the priests of old to the priests 

 of new Rome. The ' smoak of the incense ' in the 

 churches transports him to the temple of the Paphian 

 Venus described by Virgil (/Eneid, i. 416, 417) ; the 

 surpliced boy waiting on the priest with the thurible 

 reminds him of sculptures on ancient bas-reliefs re- 

 presenting heathen sacrifice, with a white-clad attend- 

 ant on a priest holding a little chest or box in his 

 hand. The use of holy water suggests numerous 

 parallels. At the entrance to Pagan temples stood 

 vases of holy liquid, a mixture of salt and common 

 water ; and, on bas-reliefs, the aspergillum or brush 

 for the ceremony of sprinkling is carved. In the 

 annual festival of the benediction of horses, when 

 the animals were sent to the convent of St. Anthony 



