which a young and beautiful girl was forced at night-time to prevent her marrying a Protestant officer who was quartered in the neighbourhood. She lay immured for months "in a damp closet near that of the abbess." "One of the sisters who had founded the nunnery had had her feelings so agonised by what she had seen that symptoms of insanity made their appearance in her, urging her occasionally to run from the house, seeking sympathy with her friends in the city; but she was each time brought back, to be not only locked up in her cell, but to be disciplined by the unnatural hands of her own sister, until her clothes were saturated with blood, which was left to coagulate upon them."

"Mrs. W- was a boarder in the house at this time, and tells me that the screams of this poor creature were piercing; but it was given out that they were the screams of her madness when she would rush from her tormentors, and her deplorable condition was revealed to all. In the year 1829, I was about to say mass there instead of another priest; and, whilst I was vesting in the sacristy, this poor lady, who had not the least appearance of a maniac in her face, rushed into the room frantically, followed by two of the sisters, and falling on her knees threw her feeble arms around me, imploring me, in the name of every saint in heaven, to take her away, saying she had property enough to live on, and that her sister was murdering her in the house. In the midst of this painful scene her sister came in, and, giving her a look that would have cut adamant, gave her in charge to the other two to conduct her to her cell. I offered some delicate remarks in her behalf; but they were met by words implying that she, the abbess, acted under the guidance of the bishop and of the chaplain! I visited the place again four years ago, and on enquiring for this poor creature I found that she had died a perfect maniac some years before and had been buried privately."

"These religious women (says Dr. Ullathorne) are truly the most happy, the most cheerful, and the most peace-loving on the earth, and the British constitution does not afford such safeguards against abuse of despotic power!!!" (14.)

The case of Miss Talbot leads one to suspect that the property possessed by this poor lady was the solid reason for her detention; and what kind of mercy she had to expect from bishop or chaplain is shown by extracts from a journal found in a convent by a priest, which had been left there accidentally by the "Provincial, or General Spiritual Visitor, of the Nunneries of the Carmelite Order in It is probably in

England, but the place is not given :—

“I directed that sister Teresa, a novice in her ninth month, should for seven successive Fridays undergo discipline at the hands of the community whilst singing the psalm Miserere mei, Deus;' and that

after the performance of each discipline to lie prostrate across the threshold of the choir door, whilst each sister stepped over her into the choir this to be repeated on entering or leaving the choir. Sister Teresa likewise to fast on bread and water each Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, for those seven weeks."

"Sister Magdalen, professed, for having refused to give up a letter required by her Mother Abbess, to be kept on bread and water for thirty-one days, and to perform the stations on naked knees twice each day during that time, and to receive discipline at the hands of a sister whilst performing the stations (19). The stations are fourteen; she is to perform them twice a-day, and to be flogged at each-that is, twenty-eight floggings a-day, for thirty-one days!!!"

We give this merely as the first extract which Mr. Drummond has made from this journal, and as a sample of the kind of treatment which nuns are likely to receive at the hands of the "bishop or chaplain ;" and every Roman Catholic is required to believe that the priest who is set over him stands in the place of God and cannot possibly err; so that, if a priest says that a thing which seems to be black is white, we must implicitly believe him. They who wish to be proficients in the way of God must submit themselves to an experienced confessor WHOM THEY MUST OBEY AS GOD. He who thus acts is made safe from all responsibility for his actions. GOD WILL NOT PERMIT A CONFESSOR TO ERR" (Liguori, i. 11). These are the words of one of whom Rome has said" that he never wrote a word that is worthy of blame." Of this man Dr. Drummond writes:

"As the English laity must be benefitted by hearing the opinions of one whom holy Church declares never wrote one word worthy of censure, Bishop Ullathorne will be obliged to me for giving them in the vernacular :- Amphibology, or speaking in a double sense (says Liguori), may be used in three ways:-1. When a word has a double meaning, as in Latin volo signifies to will and also to fly. 2. When the sentence has a double meaning: as, for example, this book is Peter's, may mean that Peter wrote the book, or that it belongs to Peter. 3. When the words have a double sense, one literal and the other spiritual. Thus, if any one is asked about a thing which he wants to conceal, he may answer, I say, No; meaning, I say the word, No. Cardenas doubts this; but, with due respect for his judgment, I think his difficulty worthless, for the word I say really has a double sense, and means both to pronounce and also to assert; therefore, a man truly says, I pronounce the word, No, meaning the other to believe, I say it is not so. To strengthen the equivocation with an oath is not wrong when there is sufficient reason for it, and when the equivocation itself is lawful; because, where it is right to conceal the truth and it is concealed without a lie, no irreverence is done to the oath. And even if the equivocation were without just cause, still there would be

no perjury, since at least according to one sense of the words, and mental reservation, he will swear truly " (17).

This art of lying with a quiet conscience, and taking false oaths without feeling the shame or guilt of perjury, is taught by him who says that the confessor is to be obeyed as God, and that the man who thus obeys his priest "is made safe from all responsibility for his actions." Can we, after this, believe any assertion or any oath of such a priesthood? Can we wonder at their hostility to Scripture, every page of which serves to brand such a system with infamy as proceeding from the father of lies? Or can we feel surprise at their hatred of those who would deprive them of their unhallowed influence, and their fraudulent plunder, by rending the veil of ignorance and letting the light shine upon the dark places of the earth which are full of the habitations of cruelty?

Dr. Wiseman, the head of the Roman party in England, has given his sanction to the falsehood inculcated by the Jesuits, and has published a translation of the exercises of Loyola, with a commendatory preface written by himself. Dr. Cahill, in Ireland, has given vent to the wishes of his Church for a butchery of Protestants more ruthless and more universal than any that yet stands recorded in the history of Papal crimes. It would be infatuation, approaching to madness, any longer to doubt what are the intentions of the Roman priesthood towards ourselves; or to neglect any of the means of defence or self-preservation which yet remain in our power.

The priesthood of that Church we believe to be our enemies to a man, and to be ready to carry out the extremest doctrines of their creed, as expressed by the Council of Trent. We believe that none of the humanizing influences of modern times have reached them. But among the laity of that communion we have no doubt that there are multitudes of honourable men, who, like the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Beaumont, and Lord Camoys, have the feelings of Englishmen, and would reject with horror the perjuries and murders suggested by the priests of their Church. But does it not become such men to speak out, and to wash their hands of all participation in the villanies we are exposing? Should they not insist on an authoritative disclaimer of such diabolical maxims; and, if this be declined, should they not withdraw from so disgraceful a communion? We know that a disclaimer cannot be given—we know that Rome cannot change-and wo know moreover that, as old age and decrepitude is often a time of the greatest obstinacy, so it is with Rome now. But. in such a case, withdrawal should be the clear and consistent

course with every honourable man; for otherwise he must be held an accomplice and a sharer in the guilt attendant upon the working out of those abominable principles of falsehood and cruelty which Rome openly avows.

It now becomes all Englishmen, of every denomination, to unite against their common foe. Even those who are of the Roman communion would not like the days of King John to return. The acts of Runnymede are sufficient guarantee for that. Still less would the Dissenters like the return of the days of Queen Mary and the fires of Smithfield. But we should have both combined if the Romish priests had their will: our civil liberties would be trampled under foot-we should be at the mercy of foreigners-nothing but Popery, and that in its extreme ultramontane form, would be tolerated-all who dared to read the Bible would be fined or imprisoned at the least; and all who refused to confess the whole of the Papal doctrines would first be tortured and then burnt.

Such a work as that now before us renders, therefore, good service to the country, by showing all men from authentic history what the deeds of Rome have been in past ages, and what she will be again whensoever England shall be weak enough to put herself under the power of the Papacy. Mr. Rule's volume is full enough to give as much information as is necessary for the occasion, without being too long for general readers. It is an original work, and not merely a compilation; and the facts, so far as we have been able to ascertain them, are fairly and accurately given the author having examined for himself the original authorities, and generally stating where they are to be found. He goes over a good deal of the same ground as Foxe; but has the advantage of being more concise and of carrying down the history of Papal persecution and cruelty to our own time. We think, therefore, that it is a very serviceable publication, and hope that it will be very widely circulated.

ART. IV.-1. The Ministry of the Beautiful. By HENRY JAMES SLACK, F.G.S., of the Middle Temple. London: Bentley. 1850.

2. Egeria, or the Spirit of Nature; and other Poems. By CHARLES MACKAY. London: Bogue. 1850.

DR. JOHNSON, in his "Life of Akenside," informs us that "with the philosophical or religious tenets of the author he

had nothing to do: his business was with his poetry." The last century and the beginning of the present were periods of great mental sterility, and one of the chief causes of this was the separation of truth into classes, and the ignoring their innumerable points of contact. That truth, like the fabled French Republic, that never-realised idea, was one and indivisible--that its every phase was connected with every other― that each distinct truth was, like the blossom on a tree, vitally bound together with all the rest-that if one be removed and placed in a state of isolation it perishes, and that the same root supports and nourishes the whole fragrant and beautiful display--was what never occurred to these cold and unbelieving systematizers. The poet has no business with science: his office is to delight and not to instruct. It is his to add that "mixture of a lie," which "doth ever add pleasure," as Lord Bacon most strangely and unphilosophically observes. The clergyman must avoid politics: the great and awful truths of religion are enough for him to be conversant with; and they will not bear mingling with the grosser verities of earthly philosophy. Natural science must be preserved from metaphysics, or the two opposite and irreconcilable ingredients in the mixture will first neutralise and then destroy each other. Such was the theory and, in strict accordance therewith, was the practice, of a most unhappy and unphilosophical era. Religion especially was despoiled of her attractions and deprived of her sanctions: men's lives, so far as they allowed religion to influence them at all, were patch-work compositions: here was a secular and there an ecclesiastical fragment-here a square of civil and there one of religious excitement, quite enough to justify the remark that, though nominally Christian, the age was, in fact, Mosaic. The morals, too, of the period were as low as its philosophy. It seemed to be admitted that

"Grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin;

And, therefore, no true saint allows

That they be suffered to espouse."

Nor was this all. If a man boldly said, "I do not profess to be a saint-I am no hypocrite," he might live much as he pleased, and society had no right to object to him. The practice of one or two virtues, or the abstinence from one or two vices, franked such a man for the world, and entitled him to a dispensation from either cultivating or avoiding more of the rest than was quite suitable to his own taste.