Incredible it may seem—­foolish, false, inconsistent with reason, or the plain dictates of common sense, it certainly is—­but we have before us well-authenticated accounts of transactions in which the Romish priests claimed powers quite as extraordinary, and palmed off upon a credulous, superstitious people stories quite as silly and ridiculous as anything recorded in these pages.  Indeed, so barefaced and shameless were their pretensions in some instances, that even their better-informed brethren were ashamed of their folly, and their own archbishop publicly rebuked their dishonesty, cupidity and chicanery.  In proof of this we place before our readers the following facts which we find in a letter from Professor Similien, of the college of Angers, addressed to the Union de l’Ouest: 

“Some years ago a pretended miracle was reported as having occurred upon a mountain called La Salette, in the southeastern part of France, where the Virgin Mary appeared in a very miraculous manner to two young shepherds.  The story, however, was soon proved to be a despicable trick of the priest, and as such was publicly exposed.  But the Bishop of Lucon, within whose diocese the sacred mountain stands, appears to have been unwilling to relinquish the advantage which he expected to result from a wide-spread belief in this infamous fable.  Accordingly, in July, 1852, it was again reported that no less than three miracles were wrought there by the Holy Virgin.  The details were as follows: 

“A young pupil at the religious establishment of the visitation of Valence, who had been for three months completely blind from an attack of gutta-serena, arrived at La Salette on the first of July, in company with some sisters of the community.  The extreme fatigue which she had undergone in order to reach the summit of the mountain, at the place of the apparition, caused some anxiety to be felt that she could not remain fasting until the conclusion of the mass, which had not yet commenced, and the Abbe Sibilla, one of the missionaries of La Salette, was requested to administer the sacrament to her before the service began.  She had scarcely received the sacred wafer, when, impelled by a sudden inspiration, she raised her head and exclaimed, ‘ma bonne mere, je vous vois.’  She had, in fact, her eyes fixed on the statue of the Virgin, which she saw as clearly as any one present For more than an hour she remained plunged in an ecstasy of gratitude and love, and afterward retired from the place without requiring the assistance of those who accompanied her.  At the same moment a woman from Gap, nearly sixty years of age, who for the last nineteen years had not had the use of her right arm, in consequence of a dislocation, suddenly felt it restored to its original state, and swinging round the once paralyzed limb, she exclaimed, in a transport of joy and gratitude, ’And I also am cured!’ A third cure, although not instantaneous, is not the less striking.  Another woman, known in the country