never been ascertained; a case by no means uncommon.  The emperor’s reserve was easily affected:  or it is possible he might not be in the secret.  There does not seem to be much weight in the observation of Tacitus, that they who were present continued even then to relate the story when there was nothing to be gained by the lie.  It only proves that those who had told the story for many years persisted in it.  The state of mind of the witnesses and spectators at the time is the point to be attended to.  Still less is there of pertinency in Mr. Hume’s eulogium on the cautious and penetrating genius of the historian; for it does not appear that the historian believed it.  The terms in which he speaks of Serapis, the deity to whose interposition the miracle was attributed, scarcely suffer us to suppose that Tacitus thought the miracle to be real:  “by the admonition of the god Serapis, whom that superstitious nation (dedita superstitionibus gens) worship above all other gods.”  To have brought this supposed miracle within the limits of comparison with the miracles of Christ, it ought to have appeared that a person of a low and private station, in the midst of enemies, with the whole power of the country opposing him, with every one around him prejudiced or interested against his claims and character, pretended to perform these cures, and required the spectators, upon the strength of what they saw, to give up their firmest hopes and opinions, and follow him through a life of trial and danger; that many were so moved as to obey his call, at the expense both of every notion in which they had been brought up, and of their ease, safety, and reputation; and that by these beginnings a change was produced in the world, the effects of which remain to this day:  a case, both in its circumstances and consequences, very unlike anything we find in Tacitus’s relation.

II.  The story taken from the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, which is the second example alleged by Mr. Hume, is this:  “In the church of Saragossa in Spain, the canons showed me a man whose business it was to light the lamps; telling me, that he had been several years at the gate with one leg only.  I saw him with two.” (Liv. iv.  A.D. 1654.)

It is stated by Mr. Hume, that the cardinal who relates this story did not believe it; and it nowhere appears that he either examined the limb, or asked the patient, or indeed any one, a single question about the matter.  An artificial leg, wrought with art, would be sufficient, in a place where no such contrivance had ever before been heard of, to give origin and currency to the report.  The ecclesiastics of the place would, it is probable, favour the story, inasmuch as it advanced the honour of their image and church.  And if they patronized it, no other person at Saragossa, in the middle of the last century, would care to dispute it.  The story likewise coincided not less with the wishes and preconceptions of the people than with the interests of their ecclesiastical rulers:  so that there was prejudice backed by authority, and both operating upon extreme ignorance, to account for the success of the imposture.  If, as I have suggested, the contrivance of an artificial limb was then new, it would not occur to the cardinal himself to suspect it; especially under the carelessness of mind with which he heard the tale, and the little inclination he felt to scrutinize or expose its fallacy.