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Yet we have not reached the extreme point of horror-there remains a picture which still more chills the blood. True, the Roman soldier, as well by his murderous occupations, as by his brutal usages, had become hard and cruel; yet there was no mystery in his rage :savage more than malign, his purposes of evil sprung only from the provocations of the hour; they were not profound as hell. We turn then from the bas-reliefs, and the sculptures, and coins of ancient art, and open an illuminated codex-choice treasure of a monkish library. At the head of homilies and prayers, or of meditations and miracles, and set in flowers of purple and gold, we find the veritable effigy of the canonized zealot;-abbot or brothera Dominic or a Fouquet. How delicate was the bodily frame and outward texture of the man:-the soft contour bespeaks physical and mental laxity; yet is there too, in the mobile features an indication of that resolution which excitement may give, if not that which animal courage imparts. An abject habit of soul, together with a boundless insolence;-a usage of submission to every tyranny, and an arrogance that would crush a world when provoked, meet in the tortuous brows. Under how Under how many impenetrable coverings are the secrets of that

ὄχλῳ χαριζόμενος ὁ ἡγεμὼν, ἐξέδωκε πάλιν προς θηρία. Epist. Vienn. et Lugd. Similar expressions abound in the early martyrologies.

heart concealed; if we are to judge by the wily closing of the lips, and the wrinkled temples! The face, taken at a glance, is the very pattern of penitence and ecstasy; but to look at it again is to find it wanting in the traces of every human affection.-The man, beside that his occupations have not been of the sort that give vigour to the animal system, and cheerful alacrity to the mind, has no kindly relationships, no natural cares, no mild hopes: he is not social, not domestic; but in the place of all genuine impulses, harbours the rancid desires of a suppressed concupiscence. Who could imagine him to be husband, or father, or friend, or neighbour, or citizen, or patriot? Hover where it may, this is an alien spiritforeign to whatever is human; at home only in the world of ghostly excitements :—it haunts earth; not dwells upon it.

What then, think we, shall this being shew himself when he comes to be inflamed by spiritual revenge, and quickened by the virulence of those boundless hatreds which a malignant superstition engenders! And what when the engines of a mighty despotism are entrusted to his zealous hands! Horror has now nothing worse to conceive of:-the ghastly ideal of cruelty is filled up.- Who would not rush from the grasp of the irritated ascetic to cling to the knees of the Roman soldier, and there plead for human compassion!

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Yet is this same horrific personage human, nor perhaps worse than many, if we deduct all that the bad system it has been his wretched lot to live under has done to pervert him. The Franciscan - the Inquisitor, once sucked the breast of woman, and joined in the mirth and gambols of childhood; and even now, if it were possible to take him apart for a moment from his rules and his crucifix, we might find in his bosom the germs at least of the common charities of life: yes, doubtless he is human; and if the sinewy fabric were exposed by the knife of the anatomist, the transformation that has made him so unlike to other men could not be detected. The brain, for aught that appears, might as well have entertained reason and truth as another brain; -the heart, for aught that we can see, might, as readily as another heart, have throbbed with pity.

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System and circumstance deducted Franciscan or the Inquisitor may be found in all communities. Look, for example, at that grave and abstracted, yet youthful countepallid, and somewhat fallen from the salient outline that should bespeak the actual years. What intensity in the glare of the sunken eye! What fixedness of purpose in the lips! and the movements of the youth seem inspirited with some intention beyond simple locomotion, or mechanical agency as he walks one would think that he was hastening

onward by the side of an invisible competitor for a prize at the goal. Or hear him speak:he is terse and precise: his tones too, have a certain mystic monotony in place of the natural modulations of a voice so young. But listen to his opinions; how vehement are they; how darkly coloured his representations of simple facts; exaggeration swells every sentence: and how far from youthful are his surmises; and his verdicts how inexorable!-not a look, not a word, not an action of his belongs to the level of ordinary sympathies: all is profound as the abyss, or lofty as the clouds. But, strange to say, you may find this our instance, perhaps, to be one of a community that boasts itself as the especial enemy of intolerance! - he has been bred in the heart of the very straitest sect of liberality, and would die gladly in the sacred cause of religious freedom! Ah! how like is man to man, strip him only of a garb!-Take now our fervent youth, and immure him a year or two with twenty like himself, in some dim seclusion:-there work upon his passions with whatever is acrid in the system he already holds, and draw him on with a little art-the art of sacred logic, from inference to inference, until he comes into a state of mind to which nothing, the most exorbitant, can seem strange. You must then find for him a sphere of excitement; and without beads or a cowl he will act the part of the worthiest son of the Church that has lived.

We return to matters of history. By what rule of equity is a balance to be held between the cruelties of the papacy, and the exterminating wars of the Moslem conquerors? Without affirming absolutely on which side the scale might turn, certain points of comparison at once present themselves :--such for example as these. The fury of the early propagators of the doctrine of Mohammed was that of warriors who, having launched upon the great enterprise of conquering the world, could not mince their measures. Or if we turn to those who in a later took up age the cause of the Prophet, we must remember that the ferocious hordes that pressed upon Christendom were SCYTHIAN before they were Mohammedan, and had long been used to drink the blood of their enemies from skulls, when they came to be taught a new religion from the Koran. The Moslem conquests (under the caliphs) were a storm that wasted the countries it passed over, and died away; and it is to be remembered that the conquerors, when once firmly seated in their fair possessions, exhibited in their polity and manners far more that was liberal and humane than the world had long before seen, or than it saw elsewhere, during many ages afterwards. Of the intolerance of the modern Mohammedan world, Turkish and Persian, it

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10 In the next Section the Mohammedan military fanaticism will come to be considered.

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