patrons, and with her family attributing the birth of the prince to his miraculous interference.  This may have provoked the opposers of popery to take every means of satirising the Jesuits; and the following circumstances related in the Life of Xavier probably suggested the idea of making the lobster one of the symbols of the superstitions and impositions of the Jesuits, and a means of discrediting the birth of the prince by ridiculing the community by whose impositions they asserted the fraud to have been contrived and executed.

The account is given by a Portuguese, called Fausto Rodriguez, who was a witness of the fact, has deposed it upon oath, and whose juridical testimony is in the process of the Saint’s canonization.

“‘We were at sea,’ says Rodriguez, ’Father Francis, John Raposo, and myself, when there arose a tempest which alarmed all the mariners.  Then the Father drew from his bosom a little crucifix, which he always carried about him, and leaning over deck, intended to have dipt it into the sea; but the crucifix dropt out of his hand, and was carried off by the waves.  This loss very sensibly afflicted him, and he concealed not his sorrow from us.  The next morning we landed on the Island of Baranura; from the time when the crucifix was lost, to that of our landing, it was near twenty-four hours, during which we were in perpetual danger.  Being on shore, Father Francis and I walked along by the sea-side, towards the town of Tamalo, and had already walked about 500 paces, when both of us beheld, arising out of the sea, a crab fish, which carried betwixt his claws the same crucifix raised on high.  I saw the crab fish come directly to the Father, by whose side I was, and stopped before him.  The Father, falling on his knees, took his crucifix, after which the crab-fish returned into the sea.  But the Father still continuing in the same humble posture, hugging and kissing the crucifix, was half an hour praying with his hands across his breast, and myself joining with him in thanksgiving to God for so evident a miracle; after which we arose and continued on our way.’  Thus you have the relation of Rodriguez.”—­Dryden’s Life of St. Francis Xavier, book iii.

EDW.  HAWKINS.

* * * * *

JOHN AUBREY.

As the biographer and editor of that amiable and zealous antiquary JOHN AUBREY, I noticed with peculiar interest the statement of your correspondent, that the date of your first publication coincided with the anniversary of his birthday; but, unhappily, the coincidence is imaginary.  Your correspondent has, on that point, adopted a careless reading of the first chapter of Aubrey’s Miscellanies, whereby the 3rd of November, the birthday of the Duke of York, afterwards James the Second, has been frequently stated as that of the antiquary himself.  See my Memoir of Aubrey, 4to. 1845, p. 123.  In the same volume,