than to our own, we may take the liberty to quote two remarkable
instances.

The first is from the "Historia Verdadera" of Don Bernal Dias del
Castillo, one of the companions of the celebrated Cortez in his Mexican
conquest. After having given an account of a great victory over extreme
odds, he mentions the report inserted in the contemporary Chronicle of
Gomara, that Saint Iago had appeared on a white horse in van of the
combat, and led on his beloved Spaniards to victory. It is very curious
to observe the Castilian cavalier's internal conviction that the rumour
arose out of a mistake, the cause of which he explains from his own
observation; whilst, at the same time, he does not venture to disown the
miracle. The honest Conquestador owns that he himself did not see this
animating vision; nay, that he beheld an individual cavalier, named
Francisco de Morla, mounted on a chestnut horse, and fighting
strenuously in the very place where Saint James is said to have
appeared. But instead of proceeding to draw the necessary inference, the
devout Conquestador exclaims--"Sinner that I am, what am I that I should
have beheld the blessed apostle!"

The other instance of the infectious character of superstition occurs in
a Scottish book, and there can be little doubt that it refers, in its
first origin, to some uncommon appearance of the aurora borealis, or the
northern lights, which do not appear to have been seen in Scotland so
frequently as to be accounted a common and familiar atmospherical
phenomenon, until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The passage
is striking and curious, for the narrator, Peter Walker, though an
enthusiast, was a man of credit, and does not even affect to have seen
the wonders, the reality of which he unscrupulously adopts on the
testimony of others, to whose eyes he trusted rather than to his own.