a corruption of St. Vedast, all the steps of which we now know.  My friend Mr. Danby P. Fry worked this out some years ago, but his difficulty rested with the second syllable of the name Foster; but the links in the chain of evidence have been completed by reference to Mr. H. C. Maxwell Lyte’s valuable Report on the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.  The first stage in the corruption took place in France, and the name must have been introduced into this country as Vast.  This loss of the middle consonant is in accordance with the constant practice in early French of dropping out the consonant preceding an accented vowel, as reine from regina.  The change of Augustine to Austin is an analogous instance. Vast would here be pronounced Vaust, in the same way as the word vase is still sometimes pronounced vause.  The interchange of v and f, as in the cases of p 15_Vane_ and Fane and fox and vixen, is too common to need more than a passing notice.  We have now arrived at the form St. Faust, and the evidence of the old deeds of St. Paul’s explains the rest, showing us that the second syllable has grown out of the possessive case.  In one of 8 Edward III. we read of the ``King’s highway, called Seint Fastes lane.’’ Of course this was pronounced St. Fausts, and we at once have the two syllables.  The next form is in a deed of May 1360, where it stands as ``Seyn Fastreslane.’’ We have here, not a final r as in the latest form, but merely an intrusive trill.  This follows the rule by which thesaurus became treasure, Hebudas, Hebrides, and culpatus, culprit.  After the great Fire of London, the church was re-named St. Vedast (alias Foster)—­a form of the name which it had never borne before, except in Latin deeds as Vedastus.[1] More might be said p 16of the corruptions of names in the cases of other saints, but these corruptions are more the cause of blunders in others than blunders in themselves.  It is not often that a new saint is evolved with such an English name as Foster.

[1] See an article by the Author in The Athenum, January 3rd, 1885, p. 15; and a paper by the Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson in the Jourral of the British Archological Association (vol. xliii., p. 56).

The existence of the famous St. Vitus has been doubted, and his dance (Chorea Sancti Vit) is supposed to have been originally chorea invita.  But the strangest of saints was S. Viar, who is thus accounted for by D’Israeli in his Curiosities of Literature:—­

``Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some pious Spaniards who applied to the Pope for consecrating a day in honour of Saint Viar.  His Holiness in the voluminous catalogue of his saints was ignorant of this one.  The only proof brought forward for his existence was this inscription:—­