288 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT SPIDERS. 



represents hell as their common producer, thus addressing the 

 insect and the personified disease : 



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

 D'etre pour 1'humaine lignee 

 Egalement k redouter." 



Matthiolus, 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 tl Arachne's rival spirit," so the same imple- 

 ment may be said now to have subdued the spirits of evil 

 clothed by Superstition in Arachne'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 



* Wolsey. 



