attacked the commandant of the town in a
cul-de-sac.

Puck is not the devil with a glossy black
skin, saucer eyes, horns, hoofs, a tail, and a
pitchfork, who was vanquished by St. Cuthbert,
and many other saints, as recorded by
learned hagiologists; who was associated with
Tom Walker in that peculiarly disadvantageous
partnership (for Tom), recorded by
Washington Irving; who carries off Don
Juan in the pantomime; who is generally
associated with the idea of blue flames,
sulphur, brimstone, and red-hot Wallsend.
And, O Neophyte, Puck is not the awful
fiend of Milton, stretched on a burning lake,
floating "many a rood;" the arch spirit of
Evil, who, amidst agonies which cannot be
conceived without horror, deliberates,
resolves, and executes, whose fiendish spirit
stands unbroken "against the sword of
Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah,
against the flaming lake, against the marl
burning with solid fire, against the prospect
of an eternity of unintermittent misery."
He is not the ?ia?o?o? of the Greek—the
demon of Æschylus, the Prometheus,
half-fiend, half-redeemer, the friend of man, the
sullen, and implacable enemy of heaven.
He is not one of the chattering, bestial,
grinning, mopping herd of devils, bloated
with meat and wine, and reeling in ribald
dances, who stagger and leap round the lady
in the Masque of Comus; he is not one of
the inexorable spirits who hover in the
silence and gloom of Dante's Inferno, who
point pitilessly to the hopeless inscription
above the portal, who watch inflexibly the
agonies of Ugolino, and the remorse of
Francisca, and Facinata writhing in her burning
tomb. Puck is not The Devil, but a
devil—a diablotin. He is a very monkey, a
mischievous ape, having a special delight in
the annoyance of saints and hermits. The
writings of the Fathers are full of authentic
relations of his knavish tricks. 'Twas he
who tempted Saint Anthony (pace Thomas
Ingoldsby); 'twas he who

      "——sat in an earthen pot,
        In a big-bellied earthen pot sat he,"

and with a rabble rout of devils with tails
and devils without, devils stout and meagre,
devils serious and jocund, church-going devils
and revel-haunting devils, endeavoured first
in his own proper likeness as a hobgoblin, and
afterwards as a laughing woman with two
black eyes—the worst devil of all—to decoy
the Saint from the perusal of the holy book.
This devil it was who as Saint Benedict was
saying his prayers on Monte Casino, did
(according to Saint Gregory) appear to him
in the likeness of a doctor riding upon a mule,
avowing his intention to physic the whole
convent, although, if we are to believe other
accounts, it was to Saint Melanius that he
appeared in this medical guise. Whichever
way it was, however, Saint Benedict had the
mischievous little devil on the hip on a
subsequent occasion. There was a certain monk
in the convent, who somewhat after the style
of our old acquaintance, Daddy Longlegs,
couldn't or wouldn't say his prayers. After
praying a little while he always rose up
suddenly and vamosed out of the oratory, as
though the devil was at his heels;—which
indeed he was as you shall hear. The monks
told the prior, and the prior told the abbot,
and the abbot told Saint Benedict of the
non-praying brother's irreverent conduct;
and in goes the Saint to the oratory, with a
big walking-stick, just as the monk is
coming out as usual. "See ye not who leadeth
our brother?" says Saint Benedict to
Father Maurus and Pompeianus, the prior.

"We see nought," they answer.

"I do," says the Saint, directing a meaning
and somewhat menacing look towards his
subordinates, "I see plainly a little black
devil lugging violently at our brother's gown,
and leading him towards the door."

The obtuse Pompeianus still persisted in
seeing nothing; but Father Maurus, who
was in training to be a saint, and had
besides an eye to the reversion of the prior's
berth, immediately declared that he saw the
devil, and that he was very little and very
black.

"Of course," says Saint Benedict. "Perhaps,
Brother Pompeianus, when you have administered
to yourself the seven score stripes I
now prescribe to you, and said the four Greek
epistles which you will be good enough to
repeat to me without book to-morrow
morning, you will be able to see the devil
too. In the meantime, he must be exorcised
from the person of our dear brother;"
whereupon whack! whack! whack! goes
the big walking-stick about the legs, head,
back, and shoulders of the dear brother, till,
as Saint Benedict declares, the little devil is
completely exorcised, and the dear brother is
covered with bruises. The legend adds that
the D. B. was ever afterwards distinguished
for his remarkable assiduity of attendance
and attention at matins, complins, and
vespers.

This little devil of Puck's kindred, if not
Puck himself, was evidently the same who
lay in wait so many years in order to bring
to shame the chaste and pious Saint Gudule.
It was the custom of this noble maiden to
rise at cockcrow every morning and walk to
church with her maid before her carrying a
lantern. What did the devil, but blow the
candle out? What did Saint Gudule, but blow
it in again by her prayers? And this is her
standard miracle. Then there was a St. Brituis,
who, you must know, was clerk or deacon to
St. Martin. One day, while his principal was
performing mass, St. Brituis saw a sly little
devil behind the altar, busily employed in
writing on a strip of parchment as long as an
hotel bill all the sins of the congregation.
There were a good many sins that day both