had tended to develop still more his liberal ideas, and he seems to have been almost as Protestant in his sentiments as the two latter which, however, is not saying very much. It is difficult to ascertain the precise theory of such men as Sarpi, or his admirers in the present day, who assail almost every Romish abuse, and yet remain Romanists, and repudiate the name of Protestant. They hold the Gallican liberties; they would abolish the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, and make very light of his supremacy; they laugh at interdicts and excommunications, and all the ghostly terrors of the old regime ; saint-worship, image-worship, and such like, they speak of as pure idolatry; purgatory and prayers for the dead they reject, as the invention and imposture of lying priests, and marvel how two of the cloth can meet without laughing in each other's face; the real presence they can refute by a joke of Erasmus; they would abolish at once the Foro Ecclesiastico and the whole tribe of clerical immunities, suppress the Inquisition, and perhaps bring the Inquisitors themselves to the torture, to give a little pleasant excitement at the close; they would suppress the Jesuits at once and for ever, abolish convents, sequestrate ecclesiastical revenues, and pay the clergy out of the funds of the State; they would overturn the whole system of Hildebrand, and make every priest a Benedict, the respectable "husband of one wife," if he were so disposed; and finally, they would reform the public service of the church, and have mass said in the vulgar tongue. And yet, though knowing that an infallible church can never reform an abuse which infallibility has sanctioned, they hold on to Rome, from some vague idea about the true church, and the indisputable primacy of St Peter's See. Santa Rosa died unshriven, and with the sin of the Siccardi laws upon his head, but he died a Romanist. Professor Nuytz, after making fearful havoc of old Papal theories, and incurring the most solemn censures of the church, appeals from the Pope to his fellow-citizens, and maintains that he is more orthodox than Pius IX., both Catholic and Roman Catholic, and the students of Turin shout Viva! But these theories of liberal writers, and disputes about the limits of ecclesiastical authority, are preparing the way for something better than Professor Nuytz has "dreamed of in his philosophy." We shall leave these matters, however, and return to Sarpi.

In 1619, an Italian work, printed in London, with the title, "Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, &c., di Pietro Soave Rolano," excited the most intense interest in the literary world. It was dedicated to King James, and edited by the well-known Marc Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, who had a short time before made public renunciation of the Roman

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Catholic faith in the Cathedral of St Paul's; but the author had evidently concealed his name in an anagram, after the manner of those days. De Dominis acknowledged that he had been confided with a copy of the work by the author, and that he had of his own accord resolved to publish it without consulting the writer. This is probably the true account; at all events, the addition to the title, professing that the book “disclosed the artifices of the Court of Rome to hinder the statement of the truth in doctrine, and to prevent the reform of the Papacy and of the church," and the pungent and satirical dedication, seem to have been the work of the clever and versatile Archbishop. A history so singularly erudite, with its style so energetic, and concise, and sarcastic; and, above all, with its minute details, removing the mystery that hung over the great Council, and reducing the pomp of an inspired assembly to a squabble of intriguing divines, of very questionable character-could not fail to attract the most marked attention, especially as the Court of Rome had studiously veiled the arcana of her councils, and sent forth her decrees from a mysterious enclosure as the decisions of infallible wisdom. year after its publication it had been translated into French, Latin, German, and English, and in ten years it had gone through about as many editions. That the book was Sarpi's there can be no doubt; the learned were not slow in discovering in Pietro Soave Rolano, the anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto. There is a copy in the library of St Mark's at Venice, corrected by Father Paul's own hand, and he was, as Ranke says, the only man of that age who could have written it. The Tridentine Council, stretching over a period of eighteen years -from 1545 to 1563-and embracing the most memorable events of eight pontificates, had from his earliest years excited the curiosity of Sarpi, and few men had better opportunities of penetrating its mysteries. In addition to the printed authorities open to all-Jovius and Guicciardini, Adriani and Sleidan-and the abundant materials collected for him by his literary friends, the archives of the Venetian Republic, with letters and relations of cardinals, legates, and ambassadors, furnished information accessible to scarcely any other writer of the age. Ranke, who has admirably sifted his authorities in the Appendix to the History of the Popes, has borne strong testimony to Sarpi's correctness. He copied often almost verbatim, but copied in such a way as to throw life and spirit into the dull material he was elaborating, and the more mosaic and ponderous details he relieved by a biting sarcasm, introduced at the proper moment. The style is concise and energetic, not the soft Italian of singing women, or a faultless model for the Della Crusca, but at times hard and Latinised in form, and

even descending to the homely phraseology of Lombardy and Venice; in power of description he may perhaps rank next to Macchiavelli. His great work, belonging to those ponderous "folios, from which industry itself recoils," seems to have been the matured fruit of a lifetime's study, and by this history Rome was assailed in her own strongholds, and in the secret of her mysterious authority. The decrees of Trent were intentionally ambiguous, and Sarpi said that Edipus himself could not have made out their meaning, but no commentaries were allowed, and the interpretation was confined by Papal authority to a committee of cardinals; and now these decrees, so solemnly set forth by Rome on the tables of her law as "Sacro Sancti," were reduced to the vague conclusions of an intriguing, and at times sorely-puzzled assembly. The Papal power, the infallibility of the Pontiff, the mysterious authority of the Church, the secrets of Romish usurpation, the Inquisition, were set forth in such a way that the world might get behind the scenes, where the most imposing spectacles were reduced to 66 a sham.” *

Father Paul preserved silence, and the Court of Rome, unable to draw the writer into an acknowledgment, made no direct charge against Sarpi. The Prince of Condé, who visited him in 1621, made sundry attempts to discover from Sarpi himself if he knew who was the author of the "History of the Council of Trent," but the cautious friar answered with most provoking reserve, "In Rome they know who the author is." The book had been enrolled on the Index, but something more was needed. Sundry attempts were at length made to refute it, chiefly by the Jesuit Alciati, but no confutation worthy of note appeared till 1656, when Sforza Pallavicini issued the first volume of his History, nearly forty years after the publication of Pietro Soave Polano." A rhymester of the court of Urban VIII., an accomplished dialectician, a profound admirer of the Angelic Doctor, Pallavicini applied his ready talents to the task assigned him, with the unquestioning obedience of his Jesuit order, and dressed up in flowing Tuscan the materials prepared for him. Sarpi had not "documented " his book: Pallavicini parades his authorities on the margin, and presents also a formidable catalogue of 360 errors in the rival history. These errors are generally in mere trifles, and in the greater number of these, later researches have been all in favour of the correctness of Sarpi, and have proved Pallavi

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There have been about 30 editions of this History: seven or eight Italian, seven Latin, two English and German, and thirteen French. Of the French translations and editions, that of Courayer, with notes even more liberal than the text, is the best: the first edition, in two folio volumes, bears date London 1736. Among later Italian editions, that of Mendresio (Canton of Ticino), 1835-1836, in 7 volumes octavo, with notes of Courayer and others, is the most convenient. The other writing of Sarpi are now of comparatively little importance.

cini to be not only somewhat shallow, but, moreover, of very questionable honesty in the use of his documents. A flowing style, dexterous management of stubborn materials, great elasticity of conscience in the use of authorities, ignorance of facts in all cases where ignorance is better than wisdom, the happy act of keeping silence when silence is safest, and thoroughgoing partizanship, are the characteristics of Pallavicini. His ponderous and polished quartos were prohibited at Venice, though Sarpi and his friends had long since passed from the scene, and the Venetians of those days were a new generation "who knew not Joseph;" and as long as the Republic of St Mark continued, the decree of prohibition was unrevoked.

For sixteen years after the first attempt on his life, Father Paul continued to live and to labour against his great enemies, the Court of Rome, the Jesuits, and the Pope-" the locusts and their king." Conspiracies against his life had failed. One after another, Baronius, Bellarmine, Colonna, Paul V. himself, passed away, and their enmities were forgotten. The old man, worn with_long_contentions, began to dream of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and a peaceful death in some convent of the Levant. He laid up a store of a thousand ducats, and began to prepare for a long tour at threescore and ten. He had sundry causes of anxiety. De Dominis, always uncertain, had returned again to Rome, and that History might yet bring the writer into trouble. But the weight of years was upon him. It was time to say his "Solve Senescentem; or, in language more appropriate to the cloister, to repeat the "Nunc dimittis.' There is something exceedingly touching in the notices that have been preserved of his last days. He spent his solitary moments in kneeling in prayer before his crucifix, or in gazing at the skull which he always kept as a memento mori. He read the Psalms and Gospels, especially the history of the Saviour's Passion, and hummed the litany; and as he became still weaker and weaker, he repeated over and over again the words of the great apostle, "Quem proposuit Deus Mediatorem per fidem in sanguine suo." May we not indulge the hope that he whose whole life had been a warfare against Papal pretensions, had fled at last for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before him, and that his trust was only in Him "whom God has set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood?" He became still weaker, and the friars stood silently by his death-bed. His mind began to wander; "Come, said, "let us go where God calls us. He sank into a torpor, and then he roused himself "Let us go to St Mark'sit's late now-I have much to do." And again-"I go where God calls." "Esto perpetua!" He grasped the

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crucifix, and bowed his head, and died. It was the 15th January 1623.

We have attempted no defence of Sarpi's position in the Church of Rome. That he was more a Protestant than a Romanist never admitted of a doubt. That he was very cautious, and concealed his opinions on many subjects, and that he put forward others, such as his friend Fra Fulgenzio, while he himself should have thrown off the mask, and professed his adherence to the Reformed and Calvinistic creed, with which he sympathised so fully, may all be admitted. But he was a man of letters and a monk-cool, calm, and satirical; and he wanted those higher qualities-not intellectual, but spiritual-that "urge along," urge along," as by a power from heaven, the religious reformer. Above all, he was a Venetian. He was not even Italian, in the sense of Dante, or Macchiavel: his home and country was Venice. What he might have been, or might have done, in other circumstances, we know not. We have simply described him as he was-a man whom we admire more than a man whom we love.

ART. II.—Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity. Delivered at the University of Virginia during the Session of 1850-1. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1852.

SUCH a book, proceeding from such a source, and under such auspices, is not only a profoundly interesting phenomenon in itself, but eminently suggestive of the ultimate issue of the great and protracted controversy, to which it is so formal and massive a contribution. It is well known that the University of Virginia owes its origin, as well as its original plan, chiefly to Mr Jefferson.

The introductory Preface by the Rev. W. H. Ruffner, Chaplain of the University, under whose sagacious administration this course of Lectures was executed, and which recites the history and conditions of the introduction of Christianity into the institution, under the management of Mr Jefferson himself, is not the least curious or instructive portion of the volume. It is an amiable attempt to shelter Mr Jefferson, as far as possible, from any avowal of open hostility in the case, and to mask under the guise of prudence against the conflicts and jealousies which make up so large an element of the Christian spirit, under his conception of it, the apparent indisposition to install any definite form of Christianity. The correspondence and the documents drawn up by Mr Jefferson are