Venus

and Ashtoreth became the Virgin Mary; Apollo and Horus became Christ; Jupiter and _ Osiris God.” But, as men increased in knowledge in northern Europe, the whole system became discredited and obsolete. Even in our own times however, after 1500 years of clerical teaching, the ultimate appeal of the peasantry, from Ireland to the i. 2 F!: Pe. ei MI it Ural mountains and from Skandinavia to Italy, is to the ancient: Paganism which corrupted primitive Christianity. Such books a8 | Stepniak’s Ru ian Peasantry (1888), or Mr Leland’s Etruseco 7 Roman Remains (1892), make this clear. As Count di Gubernatis; told Mr Gladstone, and as Mr Leland found in the Tuscan Romagna,. heathenism counts ten believers to one who is a Catholic, It is the “Vecchia Religione” or Old Religion, something more than sorcery and le than faith—the survival of Etruskan beliefs. A strega (or “ witch”) who wore, as Mr Leland noticed, the medal of a saint as ay charm, denied that this represented her real belief. This she con-fe ed was Stregheria—demonology—in comparison with which, say these Tuscans, Christianity is a thing of yesterday. They even claim that the latter has borrowed from the older faith both rites and symbols. Nor is it very different in Ireland, or in other Roman Catholic countries, where peasant ignorance and superstition are still so prevalent. Our historians, being Churchmen, have often exaggerated th succe of the Church in the early ages of British history (see Rivers of Life, ii, pp. 198-208). 483