'You have the water for your dwelling—a clear, transparent element, brighter than crystal; you can see from its deepest bottom everything that passes on its surface. You have the eyes of a lynx or of an Argus; you are guided by a secret and unerring principle, delighting in everything that may be beneficial to you, and avoiding everything that may be hurtful; you are carried on by a hidden instinct to preserve yourselves, and to propagate your species; you obey, in all your actions, works, and motions, the dictates and suggestions of nature, without the least repugnance or contradiction.
'The cold of winter and the heat of summer are alike incapable of molesting you. A serene or a clouded sky are indifferent to you. Let the earth abound in fruits or be cursed with scarcity, it has no influence on your welfare. You live secure in rains and thunders, lightnings and earthquakes; you have no concern in the blossoms of spring or in the glowings of summer, in the fruits of autumn or in the frosts of winter. You are not solicitous about hours or days, months or years, the variableness of the weather or the change of seasons.'
The saint still further 'butters his fish' by reminding them, among other things, that they were specially favoured by God at the time of the universal deluge, they being the only species of creatures that were insensible of the mischief that had laid waste the whole world! He then begs of them, as they are not provided with words, to make some sign of reverence; give some show of gratitude, according to the best of their capacities; express their thanks in the most becoming manner that they are able, and be not unmindful of all the benefits which the divine Majesty has bestowed upon them.
He had no sooner done speaking, but behold a miracle! The fish, as though they had been endued with reason, bowed down their heads with all the marks of a profound devotion, and then went joyously bobbing around with a kind of fondness, as in approval of what had been spoken by the blessed father, St. Anthony.
Many of the heretics, as a matter of course, were converted at beholding the miracle; and the polite and pious little fishes, having received his benediction, were dismissed by the saint.
Shakspeare authoritatively asserts that—
'Travellers ne'er do lie,
Though fools at home condemn them.'
Here I beg to differ with the sweet Bard of Avon, who, I am sure, would have retracted his statement had he read the above fishy discourse, and also the following among many other strange anecdotes which are published regarding the 'denizens of the deep.'
An Eastern traveller tells us that, 'in a certain river whose waters flow from Mount Caucasus into the Euxine, there arrives every year a great quantity of fish.' This information not being particularly novel in regard to most rivers, will fail to excite surprise in the mind of the reader. A different result, however, will follow when he hears that, according to Abon-el-Cassim, 'The people cut off all the flesh on one side of those inhabitants of the deep, and let them go. Well, the year following,' as this veracious writer avers, 'the same creatures return and offer the other side, which they had preserved untouched; it is then discovered that new flesh has replaced the old!'