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ention may be satisfactory to many minds, in certain cases; but in others it is impossible to conceive has seemed
worthy of a miracle. Even viewing the question in its bearing on religious ideas, there are cases where it seems far more mischievous (as bringing ridicule on the very conception of the miraculous) to believe in supernatural intervention, than to reject such an explanation on the score of antecedent improbability. Horace's rule, 'Neo dens intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus,' remains sound when we write Dens' for
¢ deus.'
Now there have been cases so remarkable, yet so obviously unworthy of supernatural intervention, that we are perplexed to find any reasonable explanation of the matter. The following, adduced by De Morgan, will, I have no doubt, recall corresponding cases in the experience of readers of these lines :--'In the summer of 1865, he say, 'I made myself first acquainted with the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the first I read was about the siege of Boston in the War of Independence. I could not make it out: everybody seemed to have got into somebody else's place. I was beginning the second tale when a parcel arrived: it was a lot of odd pamphlets and other rubbish, as he called it, sent by a friend who had lately sold his books, had not thought it worth while to send these things for sale, but thought I might like to look at them, and possibly keep some. The first thing I looked at was a sheet, which, being opened, displayed "A plan of Boston and its environs, showing the true situation of his Majesty's army, and also that of the rebels, drawn by an engineer, at Boston, October 1775."
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