Bugs and Beasts before the Law gering mind of the jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowl edge and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the so-called "Wisdom of ages," renders him peculiarly liable to regard every act and utterance of the past as wise and authoritative. In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenee refers to the cursing of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, David's malediction of the moun tains of Gilboa, and the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, " Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire," he interprets as implying a punishment of the tree, and adds, "If, therefore, it is permitted to de stroy an irrational thing because it does not produce fruit, much more is it permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less." An English professor of divinity, Richard Chenevix Trench, justifies the withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground. "It was punished, not for beingwithout fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such; not for being barren, but for being false." According to this exe gesis, it was the telling of a wilful lie that "drew on it the curse." The guilty fig was also conscious of the crime for which it suf fered : " almost as soon as the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through all the leaves of the tree which was thus stricken at the heart." As regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern divine and the mediaeval jurist occupy the same stand point; only the latter, with a stricter ju dicial sense, insists that there shall be no infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due process of law, and that he shall enjoy all safeguards which legal forms and technicalities have thrown around him. Coming down to more recent times. Chassenee mentions several instances of the effectiveness of anathemas. Thus a priest
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excommunicated an orchard because its fruits tempted the children and kept them away from mass. The orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of Burgundy, the excommunication was re moved. In like manner the Bishop of Lau sanne freed Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to interfere with boating and bathing. By the same agency an abbot changed the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted heresy, into black, moldy bread, so that he who would fain feed souls with cor rupt spiritual food was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with coarse and unsavory provender. Egbert, Bishop of Trier, anathe matized the swallows which disturbed the devotions of the faithful by their chirping and chattering and sacrilegiously defiled his vestments whilst officiating at the altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and it is still a popular superstition at Trier that if a swallow flies into the Cathedral it immediately falls down and gives up the ghost. It is also related of St. Bernard that he excommunicated a countless swarm of flies which annoyed the worshipers in the abbey church of Foigny; and lo, on the morrow they were, like Sennacherib's host, " all dead corpses." The rationalist, whose chill and ruthless breath is ever blasting the tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden frost may have helped the maledic tion. The saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish chron icler, because " no other remedy was at hand." Perhaps this may refer to the "deacons with fly-flaps," who, according to a contemporary writer, were appointed " to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth." In his First Counsel, Chassenee not only treats of methods of procedure and gives useful hints to the pettifogger in the exercise of his tricky and tortuous profession, but he also discusses many legal principles touch
