of regard to her humble submission, she was strangled before being thrown into the fire.

John and Constance de Vibero, a brother and a sister of the preceding, appeared in the other group, under the sentence of imprisonment for life, confiscation and infamy. The latter was a widow with thirteen children. Cazalla the elder, when passing before the princess, on his way to execution, implored her protection for the orphans. The request must have been fruitless; for what could be expected from hearts that could behold and hear these things without breaking?

Our limits forbid us entering upon an enumeration of the victims which were, at this period, committed to the flames, or doomed to the worse pangs of a wretched existence in infamy, poverty and durance. We do not mean to harrow the feelings of our readers, nor keep our own on the rack longer than is absolutely necessary to do justice to the memory of the most worthy among these unknown martyrs of reformation.

Thirteen perished in the flames at the second Auto of Valladolid, on the 8th of October, 1559. Sixteen were confined for life under the usual aggravations of infamy and loss of their property. Don Carlos Seso, a noble Venetian, who had been the most active promoter of the Protestant cause, was among the first. He perished nobly at the stake. His wife, a descendant of the ancient kings of Castile, by a natural daughter of Peter the Cruel, wanted courage to follow her husband's example, and submitted to endure a life of infamy in a prison.

There was still another Cazalla, the brother of those who perished in the preceding execution, to be

exhibited at these cannibal shows. He twice lost and recovered his courage. A friar, who, with the usual obstinacy and perseverance, had harassed him to the last, ex torted an act of submission when

he was already bound to the stake. But we strongly suspect that many: of these final triumphs were pretended by the assistant priests, to prevent the impression which the constancy of the victims might make upon the people.

Among the females who suffered at this time, were four nuns-one, in her twenty-first year. Though steady in their profession of the protestant faith, they were strangled before the wood was lighted; probably to obviate the shock which the sight of so many females burnt alive would give even to hearts armed, with the triple mail of Roman orthodoxy. The priests gave out that they had asked absolution. It is, however, a fact, that all were bound to the stake before the supposed; act of submission.

(

The protestants of Seville afforded their persecutors much fewer opportunities of real or invented triumph. The instances of heroic firmness among them were so frequent and unquestionable, that they hardly left room for fabricated reports of final conversions. This pious fraud seems, however, to have been resorted to in the case of Don Juan Ponce de Leon, the son of, a grandee, whose connexion with all the peerage of Spain probably induced the inquisitors to diminish the imaginary infamy of his execution by the story of his late recantation. Montes, the Spanish protestant priest, who, having saved himself by flight, published an account, in Latin, of the persecution at Seville, affirms that Leon died in the profession of the reformed doctrines. The Catholic records consulted by Llorente did not venture to deny his firmness till the last moment. Even allowing to the assistant priests that candour which, we well know, it is not the nature of their zeal to cherish, few victims would be found of such a powerful frame as to preserve their faculties unimpaired to the last. A long solitary imprisonment-the

torture endured more than oncethe often repeated and alike distracting examinations before the se. cret court of the tribunal-the agony of the whole period terminated by a day wholly employed in a barbarous exhibition, where every circumstance within the ingenuity of cruelty, indulged in the name of heaven, is employed to break the hearts of the prisoners by the agency of shame and terror such overwhelming torrents of bitterness must, in the end, oppress and confound the faculties of any mind not endowed with something above human strength. Yet, of the thirtyfive men and women who died at the two Autos of Seville, no less than twenty-seven submitted to be burnt alive rather than belie their conscience.* Thirteen of these heroic sufferers were females; and most of them the wives, daughters, or sisters of distinguished individuals. Two Englishmen, the one named Burton, the other Brook, perished in the same flames, and with equal firmness.

If the manly courage and Christian fortitude of the victims, support the mind in the contemplation of these scenes, there is something approaching to satisfaction in the view of fallen virtue recovering, as it were, from the swoon which exposed her to pollution, and wrenching the palm of victory from her enemies at the very moment when death is about to exalt her for ever, far, far above their reach. readers probably recollect the fears which made Arias, the Hieronymite, betray his religious associates. No Spanish theologian had equalled him in the vehemence of his censures upon the doctrines which he secretly held in common with them. But this dastardly subterfuge could not clear him

Our

Thirteen of these Autos da Fe took

place on the 24th September, 1559; the second on the 22d December, 1560.

from the strong suspicions which existed against his orthodoxy. His trial and confinement lasted till the second Auto da Fe, when he was joined to his departed friendsthose friends whoin he had cruelly injured, but whom he might meet unblushing in the regions of bliss; for now the same fire which freed them from the dross of mortality, dispersed also the last stain of his

shame.

A priest named Gonzalez, had, among other proselytes, gained over two young females, his sisters, to the protestant faith. All three were confined in the dungeons of the Inquisition. The torture, repeatedly applied, could not draw from them the least evidence against their religious associates. Every artifice was employed to obtain a recantation from the two sis ters, since the constancy and learn. ing of Gonzalez precluded all hopes of a theological victory. Their answer, if not exactly logical, is wonderfully simple and affecting. We will die in the faith of our brother: he is too clever to be wrong, and too good to deceive us.' The three stakes on which they died were near each other. The priest had been gagged till the moment of lighting up the wood. The few minutes that he was allowed to speak he employed in comforting his sisters, with whom he sang the 109th Psalm, till the flames smothered their voices.

The fatal end of Maria Gomez, the widow, who, in a state of mental derangement, betrayed the protestant congregation of Seville, is too affecting to be passed over. No sooner had she recovered her reason than the protestant doctrines resumed their former ascendancy in her mind. She was doubly united by the ties of blood and relig ious feeling with Leonor Gomez, her widowed sister, and three unmarried daughters of the latter, Elvira Nunez, and Theresa and

Lucy Gomez, whom, notwithstand ing the difference in their surnames, she had by the same husband, a physician of Seville. One of these young women being arrested, every effort of cruelty and deceit was employed to extort a confession implicating her mother, aunt and sisters. But she endured the rack in perfect silence. An inquisitor, piqued at this extraordinary firmness, took the determination of entrapping the prisoner by affecting a decided interest in her favour. He gave her private audiences, where his tone of paternal affection soon melted a heart which had so long been fed with tears and bitterness. She was made to believe that all danger would be removed from her dear relatives if the judge, who seemed so bent upon saving her, was put at once in possession of the whole truth. A declaration of this kind was all that the evidence wanted to be complete; and the five female relatives were condemned to the flames. Without the least sign of weakness, subterfuge, or wavering, the helpless creatures prepared themselves to die. They comforted each other on the scaffold-the young thanking the old for their cares, and religious instruction and these pointing to heaven, where, within a few moments, they all firmly hoped to embrace in never-ending happiness. We confess ourselves unable to dwell any longer upon this subject. There may be some who can look on these facts with stoic indifference, or over-refined fastidiousness. As for ourselves, the painful agitation under which we have executed this part of our task will, we trust, plead our excuse with such as might wish for a fuller account of this comparatively late period of religious persecution. To those, whom the monotony of these, alas! too often repeated scenes of martyrdom may move to charge us

with some partiality to this sort of description, we pledge our word that, far from the attraction which either invented, or real but distant horrors have for some minds, it affects us with all the intolerable keenness of present reality. The scenes we have laid before them are deeply and indelibly stamped on our imagination. In one case, indeed, we have seen the scaffold, supported on combustibles, where, a few hours after, a female perished at Seville.* Of more ancient executions we have that vivid conception which might haunt an eye-witness; for we have scanned, in early life, every figure of the large historical pictures of these scenes, which held a conspicuous place. in the church of the Dominicans of Seville. We have read the lists of names devoted to perpetual infamy; and, almost daily, for many years, walked by the side of the large brick pediment, on which, near that town, thousands of human beings have been reduced to ashes. It is not with the views of a romance writer that we refresh these painful recollections. We would not, indeed, have submitted to this mental torture but from the strong persua sion that the records of religious intolerance should not be allowed to moulder in oblivion; nor should they, who still cherish the principles which produced these horrors, be allowed to disguise themselves in the sheep's clothing' which they are sure to assume whenever they want power. We felt, besides, another motive, which all, but the most thoughtless, will pardon-a wish to do some justice to the memory of the Spanish protestants, whose very existence is nearly unknown to their prosperous brethren of the north.

sess it? What influence could men and events exercise over me, if, bearing my misfortunes as if inflicted by God, I expected to be compensated by him with happiness hereafter! What rewards have I not a right to expect, who have run a career so extraordinary, so tempestuous as mine has been, without committing a single crime, and yet how many might I not have been guilty of? I can appear before the tribunal of God, I can await his judgment without fear. He will not find my conscience stained with the thoughts of murder, and poisonings, with the infliction of violent and premeditated deaths, events so common in the history of those whose lives have resembled mine. I have wished only for the glory, the power, the greatness of France. All my faculties, all my efforts, all my moments, were directed to the attainment of that object. These cannot be crimes; to me they appeared acts of virtue! What then would be my happiness, if the bright prospect of futurity, presented itself to crown the last moments of my existence."

After a pause, he resumed. "How is it possible that conviction can find its way to our hearts, when we hear the absurd language, and witness the acts of iniquity of the greatest number of those, whose business it is to preach to us? I am surrounded by priests, who repeat incessantly, that their reign is not of this world, and yet they lay hands upon every thing that they can get. The Pope is the head of that religion from heaven, and he thinks only of this world. What did the present Chief Pontiff? who is undoubtedly a good, and a holy man, not offer to be allowed to return to Rome! The surrender of the government of the church, of the institution of bishops, was not too high a price for him to give, to become once more a Secular Prince. Even now, he is the friend of all the Protestants, who grant hin

every thing, because they do not fear him. He is only the enemy of catholic Austria, because her territory surrounds his own," &c.

he observed

"Nevertheless," again, it cannot be doubted, that as Emperor, the species of incredulity which I felt was favourable to the nations I had to govern. How could I have favoured equally sects so opposed to one another, if I had been under the influence of one of them? How could I have preserved the independence of my thoughts, and of my actions, under the control of a confessor, who would have governed me by the dread of hell? What power cannot a wicked man, the most stupid of mankind, thus exercise over those by whom whole nations are governed? Is it not the scene shifter at the opera, who from behind the scenes, moves Hercules at his will? Who can doubt that the last years of Lewis XIV. would have been very different, had he been directed by another confessor? I was so deeply impressed with the truth of these opinions, that I promised to do all in my power, to bring up my son in the same religious persuasion, which I myself entertain, "&c.

The Emperor ended the conversation, by desiring my son to bring him the New Testament; and taking it from the beginning, he read as far as the conclusion of the speech of Jesus on the mountain. He expressed himself struck with the highest admiration, at the purity, the sublimity, the beauty of the morality it contained; and we all experienced the same feeling.

On this extract, allow me to hazard a few remarks.

1. The questions in the first part of this conversation, admit of a ready answer. If, as the Emperor allows, the mind of man requires a religion, and if men were ignorant of a revelation from God, it is evident that they would form & system for themselves. And hence