THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 65 



The marks of hands or feet on rocks, said to be 

 made by the apparition of some saint or angel, call 

 to mind " the impression of Hercules' feet on a stone 

 in Scythia"; the picture of the Virgin, which came 

 from heaven, suggests the descent of Numa's shield 

 " from the clouds '' ; that of the weeping Madonna 

 the statue of Apollo, which Livy says wept for three 

 successive days and nights; while the periodical 

 miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Janu- 

 arius is obviously paralleled in the incidents named 

 by Horace on his journey to Brundusium, when the 

 priests of the temple at Gnatia sought to persuade 

 him that " the frankincense used to dissolve and melt 

 miraculously without the help of fire " (Sat., v, 97- 

 100). 



Middleton, and those of his school, thought that 

 they were near primary formations when they struck 

 on these suggestive classic or pagan parallels to 

 Christian belief and custom. But in truth they had 

 probed a comparatively recent layer; since, far be- 

 neath, lay the unsuspected prehistoric deposits of 

 barbaric ideas which are coincident with, and com- 

 posed of, man's earliest speculations about himself 

 and his surroundings. When, however, we borrow 

 an illustration from geology, it must be remembered 

 that our divisions, like those into which the strata of 

 the globe are separated, are artificial. There is no 

 real detachment. The difference between former and 

 present methods of research is that nowadays we 

 have gone further down for discovery of the common 



