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"Cynthiæ figuras æmulatur Mater Amorum." that is to say, Venus vies with the phases of the moon. The discovery was an important one from its bearing on popular superstition ascribing to the planets special influences on human affairs, for since they were thus shown to transmit to us only borrowed light, belief in their beneficent or malefic powers over man's destinies received a rude shock.

Was it not enough that Guy Darrell should be so obdurate! must the mild William Losely be also a malefic in their horoscope? But when, that same evening, the old man more observantly than ever watched his grandchild, his comfort vanished misgivings came over him he felt assured that the fatal shaft had been broken in the wound, and that the heart was bleeding inly.

I translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.

The malefic Powers of savages have generally been absorbed by higher beings or have otherwise disappeared. Some gods, such as the Hebrew Satan and certain Greek deities, have been degraded to the demonic class. In some cases, particularly in the Zoroastrian system, a being who is the consolidation of all malign supernatural activities has been credited with all-but divine power and authority.

Thus planets of good influence in the native's ascendant, or first house, signified generally a prosperous life; but if at the same epoch a planet of malefic influence was in the seventh house, then the native, though on the whole prosperous, would be unfortunate in marriage.

The firing had ceased; the boat began to glide forwards once more. But Mr. Heard's eye remained fixed upon the ill-omened black rock. The sun's rays had already licked dry the moisture on its surface; it shone with a steady dull glow. Some malefic force seemed to dwell here. Some demon haunted the place, peering out of the crevices or rising up from the turquoise-tinted water at its foot.

But whatever the reasons for her deeds, let us be grateful that their results were not malefic to those whose interests concern us most. If Messer Simone had never made his brutal boast, Madonna Vittoria would never have made her wild wager.

Lady Burton was one of these; she had her feet firm set upon the everlasting Rock. The teaching of her Church was to her divinest truth. The supernatural was real, the spiritual actual. The conflict between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, between good angels and evil angels, between benign influences and malefic forces, was no figure of speech with her, but a reality.

In the Norma Vitæ Consarcinata he relates how in April 1576 there were two inmates of the Xenodochium at Rome, Troilus and Dominicus. It seemed that Troilus exercised some strange and malefic influence over his companion, who was taken with fever. He got well of this, but only to fall into a dropsy, which despatched him in a week.

With reference to the enormous publicity given in England to such malefic matter, Arnold says to Arminius: "When a Member of Parliament wanted to abridge the publicity given to the M case, the Government earnestly reminded him that it had been the solemn decision of the House of Commons that all the proceedings of the Divorce Court should be as open as the day.