The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-16 00:00:00

GRITNTIIRAN'S DREAM

The same year -(686):Ville-Gruntiii-in, King of the
Franks, being weary with hunting, was sleeping in his
armour-bearer's lap, near a stream of water, the armour-
bearer saw a little animal issue out of the King's mouth.
And as it wished to cross the stream and could not do so,
the armour-bearer placed his sword across the water, and
iso made it a path to go and return. And when it came
lack into the King's mouth, he awoke and said that he
I,d dreamed that he was passing over an iron bridge, and
taid that he had seen great treasures under a certain
mountain. And when he went to the mountain, in ac-

Cordance with the faith he placed in his dream, he did find
Feat treasures there ; and when he had acquired them he
appropriated them to the uses of the Church.

Here we see that, for the benefit of the Church
of Which the venerable Matthew was no doubt a
'istinguished ornament, King Grunthran had a
dream, in some degree akin to the renowned Irish
echo, which, on being asked a question, instead of
repeating it as ordinary ill-bred and common-place
echoes would do, returns to the astonished in-
lerrogator an answer in the affirmative or negative,
according to the condition of its temper for the
time being, So the King's dream is partly an
imagination and partly a matter of very question-
ale fact. If the historical veracity of the
garrulous Benedictine is open to animadversion in
relation to the above incident, however, what shall
we make of the following case of the

REDEMPTION OF THE EMPEROR TR.AJA.N.
A.D. 605. Which is the second year of the reign of
I:locus, the blessed Gregory departed from this life to the
lord. This blessed man, while still alive, was once walk-
ant; through the forum of Trajan, the Emperor, which he
tad himself adorned with beautiful edifices; and recollect-
' aiudrn,A-t of his with whit') -, h ,led a wir'

.g -- -me, ne had consoi, ..uon
as a reward for this great humanity of the Emperor, he
'rent in haste to the church of the holy Apostle Peter,
and there it is related that he wept a long time for the
unbelief and error of that most merciful Emperor, till, on
the next night, he received an answer that he had been
heard on behalf of Trajan, on condition of never again
praying for any other Pagan. And we are to believe that
-thus the soul of Trajan was delivered from the torments
of hell. In fact, the same fire of Gehenna, if it is able
equally to detain many prisoners, at the same time is able,
ky the mercy of God, to avoid inflicting on all of them
equal punishment. For souls in Gehenna feel torture ac-
vording to the degree of their guilt.

These and such as these, then, it would appear
are what are called monkish legends, many of
which are, by authority of the Romish Church,
field forth as of, or nearly of equal authority with
the Holy Scriptures. Instances, equally absurd
with those narrated above, might easily be multi-
)lied relative to the wonder-working powers of
many of the canonized Romanists, both out of
this and other works, but we do not feel inclined
to trace the subject further for the present. We
however, be doing an injustice to the
l'alue of the volume before us (which is the first
of a series of two) did we permit it to be supposed
at nothing more important than the quotations
H`‘',,._have made are to be found within its pages.
c;g3S. important facts are narrated in these
imuVes, generally in a style of exaggerated
tisl?n, or of unnecessary detraction, yet still
in'vestij rat enunciation affording a clue to truthful
27 11

c 2:)°a(1 :Family Abroad. By Charles Lever.
Amon the
London : Chapman and Hall.
twelfth
serials for the present month, the
number of Lever's "Dodd Family Abroad"
is distinguish_ y
eu b the pungency and telling caus-
ticity of its sarcasm, coupled with a naiveti and -breadth of humour which meets with few instances
of rivalry.
The number, opens with an incidental
"galbehind the curtain, while a great matrimo-
;jai drama is 1)6
the Dodd family, c by the members of
the object of which is an attempt
to inveigle a German baron into a marriage with
xisg Nall fie' The plot, on the part of the