58 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



how it is ; for those are never painted who happen to 

 be drowned/ Horace (Odes, Bk. I. v.) tells of the 

 shipwrecked sailor who hung up his clothes as a 

 thank-offering in the temple of the sea-god who had 

 preserved him ; Polydorus Vergilius, who lived in the 

 early part of the sixteenth century, that is, some 1500 

 years after Horace, describes the classic custom of 

 ex voto offerings at length, while Pennant the anti- 

 quary, describing the well of Saint Winifred in 

 Flintshire in the last century, tells of the votive 

 offerings, in the shape of crutches and other objects, 

 which were hung about it. To this day the store is 

 receiving additions. The sick crowd thither as of old 

 they crowded into the temples of ^Esculapius and 

 Serapis ; mothers bring their sick children as in 

 Imperial Rome they took them to the Temple of 

 Romulus and Remus. A draught of water from the 

 basin near the bath, or a plunge in the bath itself, is 

 followed by prayers at the altar of the chapel which 

 encloses the well. When the saint's feast-day is held, 

 the afflicted gather to kiss the reliquary that holds her 

 bones. Perhaps one of the most pathetic sights in 

 Catholic Churches, especially in out-of-the-way vil- 

 lages, is the altars on which are hung votive offerings, 

 rude daubs depicting the disease or danger from 

 which the worshipper has been delivered. 



Middleton ' could not help recollecting the picture 

 which old Homer draws of Q. Hecuba of Troy, pros- 

 trating herself before the miraculous Image of 

 Pallas? while his wonder at the Loretto image of 

 the ' Queen of Heaven ' with ' a face as black as a 

 Negus' reminds him of the reference in Baruch to 

 the idols black with the 'perpetual smoak of lamps 



