withstands this trial, conquering both Satan and the world by conquering himself. He bows not down before the idols of time, but is constant to the divine ideal that haunts his heart-a spirit of serene and perpetual peace. Every age is a Judas, and betrays its Messiahs into the hands of the multitude.

Enduring fame is ever posthumous. The orbs of genius and virtue seldom culminate during their terrestrial periods.

A man must live his life to apprehend it.

Man's impotence is his pusillanimity. Duty alone is necessity: valour, might. This bridles the actual, yokes circumstance to do its bidding, and wields the arms of omnipotence.

In moments of true life, I feel my identity with Nature. I breathe, pulsate, feel, think, will, through her members, and know of no duality of being.

My love must be as free
As is the eagle's wing,
Hovering o'er land and sea
And every thing.

I must not dim my eye
In thy saloon,

I must not leave my sky
And nightly moon.

Be not the fowler's net
Which stays my flight,
And craftily is set
T'allure the sight.

But be the favouring gale
That bears me on,
And still doth fill my sail
When thou art gone.
I cannot leave my sky
For thy caprice,

True love would soar as high
As heaven is.

The eagle would not brook
Her mate thus won,
Who trained his eye to look
Beneath the sun.

H. D. T.

V.

Make a right dedication
Of all thy strengh to keep

From swelling that so ample heap
Of lives abused, of virtue given for
nought;

And thus it shall appear for all in nature
thou hast wrought.

If thou unconsciously perform what's good,

Like nature's self thy proper mood.

VI.

A life well spent is like a flower,
That had bright sunshine its brief hour-
It flourished in pure willingness;
Discovered strongest earnestness;
Was fragrant for each lightest wind-
Was of its own particular kind;
Nor knew a tone of discord sharp;
Breathed alway like a silver harp;

And went to immortality

A very proper thing to die.

I slept, and dreamed that life
Beauty-

was

I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream, then, a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noon-day light and truth to thee.

Birds, shooting swiftly through air and
light,

Pause oftentimes in their rapid flight;
Poised on the wing, a joyous song

They wildly warble, then sweep along.
Songs of high triumph thus should we
pour

Forth from our souls as upward we soar
Through boundless Truth-for ever-

more.

SUPPRESSION OF THE INQUISITION.

Z.

THE following memorial regarding the tribunal of the Holy Office, in Rome, at the time of its suppression, in February last, is a document which deserves preservation in our columns. It illustrates that fearful dominancy of the Church in secular affairs which the Italians have at last resolved to strike down.

In consequence of a decree of the Roman Constituent Assembly, by which the suppression of the tribunal of the holy office was resolved, the government ordered that the Fathers of the Dominican order, then inhabiting that vast locality, should remove to the convent called 'Della Minerva' the chief seat of their order. They were in number eightexercising the functions of commissary, chancellor, &c. The doors were then carefully sealed by the Roman notary Caggiotti, to prevent the abstraction of any object, and a keeper was appointed to the premises. These precautions taken, the inventory was commenced. The first place visited was the ground floor of the edifice, where were the prisons, and the stables, coach-houses, kitchen, cellars, and other conveniences for the use of the accessor and the father inquisitors. This part of the building was to be immediately prepared for the reception of the civic artillery, with the train belonging to it.

Some new doors were opened in the walls, and part of a pavement raised in this operation human bones were found, and a trap-door discovered, which induced a resolution to make excavations in certain spots pointed out by persons well acquainted with the locality. Digging very deep in one place, a great number of human skeletons were found; some of them placed so close together and so amalgamated with lime, that no bone could be moved without being broken. In the roof of another subterranean chamber a large ring was found fixed. It is supposed to have been used in administering the torture. It still remains there. Along the whole length of this same room, stone steps, rather broad, were attached to the wall-these probably served for the prisoners to sit or

recline on. In a third underground room was found a quantity of very black rich earth, intermingled with human hair, of such a length that it seemed women's rather than men's hair; here, also, human bones were found. In this dungeon a trap-door was formed in the thickness of the wall, which opened into a passage in the flat above, leading to the room where examinations were conducted. Among the inscriptions made with charcoal on the wall, it was observed that many appeared of very recent date-expressing, in most affecting terms, the sufferings of every kind endured in these chambers. The person of most note found in the prisons of the Inquisition was a bishop, named Kasner, who had been in confinement for above twenty years. He related that he arrived in Rome from the Holy Land, having in his possession papers which had belonged to an ecclesiastic there. Passing himself for that person, he succeeded in surprising the Court of Rome into ordaining and consccrating him a bishop. The fraud was afterwards discovered, and Kasner being then on his way to Palestine, was arrested and brought to the prison of the holy office, where he expected to have ended his days, less, as he expressed himself, to expiate his own fraud, than the gross blunder of the Court of Rome, which had no other means of concealing his character of bishop, its own absolute laws preventing his being deprived of it.

The inventory of the contents of the ground flat being finished in a few days, it was then thrown open to the impatient curiosity of the public. The crowd that resorted to the scene was very great, and the public indignation rose so high that there was a loud and general cry for the destruction of an edifice of such detestable memory. This feeling was so strong that, on a Sunday afternoon in March, faggots were thrown into the cellars and other underground rooms, with the intention of setting fire to the building, and this wou'd have been accomplished had not a battalion of civic guards rushed to the spot from the Piazza di S. Pietro. To the truth of all that is here related, thousands, both Italians and foreigners, who visited the place, can testify; and there exists a detailed account of everything, written and solemnly attested with legal forms.

Passing to the upper flat, the attention of the government was especially directed to the chancery, and the archives; the first containing all the current affairs of the Inquisition, the second jealously guarding its acts from its institution until now.

Attention was especially directed to the book, called 'Solecitazione' (it contains reports) and to the correspondence. This was done by order of the government, which thereby gave another proof of the moderation which its enemies deny to it. There results from a careful examination of these documents, which remain for the inspection of such as desire proofs, that the past government made use of this tribunal, strictly ecclesiastical in its institution, also for temporal and political objects; and that the most culpable abuse was made of sacramental confession, especially that of women, rendering it subservient both to political purposes and to the most abominable licentiousness. It can be shown, from documents, that the cardinal secretaries of state wrote to the commissary to the assessor of the holy office, to procure information as to the conduct of suspected individuals, both at home and abroad, and to obtain knowledge of state secrets by means of confession, especially those of foreign courts

and cabinets. In fact, there exist long correspondences, voluminous processes, and severe sentences, pronounced upon La Giovine Italia, La Jeune Suisse, the masonic societies of England and Scotland, and the anti-religious sects of America, &c.

Passing from the chancery to the archives, which is in the second floor, it appeared on first entering as if everything was in its usual place, but, on further inspection, it was found, with much astonishment, that though the labels and cases were in their places they were emptied of the packets of papers and documents indicated by the inscriptions without. Some conjecture that the missing packets have been carried to the convent 'Della Minerva,' or were hidden in the houses of private persons, while others suppose that they were burnt by the Dominican fathers. This last hypothesis receives weight from the circumstances that, in November, 1848, shortly after the departure of the Pope from Rome, the civic guard came in much haste to the holy office, from having observed great clouds of smoke issuing from one of its chimnies, accompanied by a strong smell of burnt paper. But, whatever were the means, the fact is certain, that, in the archives of the Inquisition, the most important trials were not to be found; such, for instance, as those of Galileo Galilei and of Giordano Bruno, nor was there the correspondence regarding the reformation in England, in the sixteenth century, nor many other precious records. There remains, however, nearly complete, a collection of decrees, beginning with the year 1549 down to our own days. They are divided year by year, each volume containing the decrees of one year. Of these, of all that was contained in the chancery and archives of the holy office, a catalogue has been taken, with every legal formality of certification. It ought to be added, that after the above mentioned threat of setting fire to the holy office, it was unanimously decreed by the Assembly, that instead of destroying the vast edifice, it should be portioned into dwellings for poor families of Rome. In consequence of this decision, the government was obliged to remove all the papers in the chancery and archives, with three libraries existing in the holy office, to the Palazzo dell' Apolinare, which was the residence assigned to the Minister of Finance.

Of these three libraries, one was private property, the other two belonged to the Inquisition. Of these last, one is most important, containing copies of the original editions of the works of the reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, now become extremely rare. The other is of less consequence. In it are many recent publications.

It must not be omitted to notice that the holy office had its independent revenue, arising from gifts of state property, chiefly bestowed by Sixtus V. and Pius IV., amounting clear to about 8,000 scudi. This sum was chiefly spent in paying the monks attached to the Inquisition, some of whom received considerable salaries. In the above income is not included the money exacted from prisoners as board; the account of what was paid, for example, by the famous Abbess of Monte Castrilli was found to be 3,000 scudi. The authorised paid agents of the holy office, called 'patentali,' were well remunerated; indeed, this was a system by which many persons were demoralised and corrupted, whose birth and education should have removed them far from such a base and guilty traffic, but who were tempted, perhaps, by necessity.

To conclude. In a few categories we may sum up the results of this inquiry. 1. That the Court of Rome availed itself of the tribunal of the holy office for temporal and political ends. 2. That to succeed in its purposes the holy office had especially recourse to confession, of which it made the most enormous and abominable abuse, not only violating its secresy, but tampering with its integrity. 3. By means of confession, the most odious licentiousness was insinuated in the confessionals. With this branch the holy office occupied itself with extraordinary diligence, but without finding a remedy for the causes of such scandal. 4. That the holy office corrupted all classes, buying information and secrets. 5. And lastly. That the ecclesiastical nuncios at foreign courts are in constant correspondence with the holy office, and, from possessing means of procuring intelligence quite peculiar to themselves, keep the Court of Rome informed of the most hidden political secrets.

TO THE HONOURABLE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED.

THE MEMORIAL OF THE UNDERSIGNED

SHEWETH-That your Memorialist has observed with pleasure the gradual political emancipation of all sects of Christians, and has witnessed, with feelings of admiration and respect, the conduct of the electors of the City of London, and the disposition of your Honourable House to recognise the right of the Jews, born in British dominions, to all the privileges of the Constitution.

That your Memorialist is still suffering under disabilities by reason of his inability to call himself a Christian.

That your Memorialist would suggest that if it is still thought desirable to exact vows from holders of office, the faith of an Englishman would be a security not inferior to that of a Jew.

That your Memorialist would further remind your Honourable House, that whereas the Roman Catholic and the Jews were accused (though on insufficient grounds) of holding a double allegiance, and of being interested in the welfare of Rome and Zion only; that your Memorialist does not lie under any similar imputation, and is above all things interested in the welfare and prosperity of the British Empire.

That your Memorialist would further remark that the exclusion of persons of his opinions is particularly unjust, as it affects them only in proportion to their determination to speak the truth.

Your Memorialist, therefore, entreats your Honourable House to abolish all religious tests whatever, by a comprehensive enactment which shall declare the principle of entire equality, and thus render unnecessary any further piecemeal concessions to particular sects.

[As the House of Commons is abundantly committed to the principle of Jewish emancipation, the controversy is transferred to the Lords and the Electors of London; and as the more obstinate the Lords are, the better we would rather add a piquancy to their opposition than not, and therefore set the example of seeking a further and final measure of tolerance.]