in the dust, such men will be found in a state of peculiar preparation for admitting malignant excitements. The very substance of the soul has become combustible-a spark kindles the latent heat, and the passions blaze to heaven. A settled feeling, hard to define or describe, but which might be called a chronic revenge, of which humanity at large, and all forms of enjoyment are the objects, is the habit of the mind, and is always in readiness to be shed forth upon whatever it may meet. Some grateful alleviation of the inward torment is obtained by merely witnessing sanguinary scenes; the hidden anguish which has so long silently preyed upon the heart, is diverted for an hour while torture is inflicted upon another; and the woe of the soul, which might not express itself in words, or hardly in sighs, seems to be vented in the groans of a victim. Such transitions of strong and turbid emotions from one channel to another are not very unusual. Few sensitive minds can be at a loss in recalling analogous instances from the page of personal history. If the torrent of feeling is choked on one side, it swells and bursts a passage in another and strange as it may seem not strange perhaps if we scrutinize attentively the structure of the passions, it is a fact that the gentle and genial affections have a specific tendency, when cut off from their - natural flow, to take the turn of rancour and ferocity. The spirit, baffled in its first desires, and defeated, not subdued, suddenly meets a new excitement, although altogether of a different order;-combines with the novel element, and rushes on, it knows not whither. Will it seem paradoxical to affirm that some of the most portentous exhibitions of ungovernable violence that have amazed the world, or have been signalized in history, have been nothing but the out bursting of long suppressed passions of some other kind than those which appear? We venture to say that certain extreme cases of religious ferocity might be explained (were we in possession of the secret history of the individuals) on this principle; and then would be cleared up the mystery of the union of virtue and piety (of a spurious kind) with a horrible. cruelty of temper. 22-Could we delve in some 22 Mr. Butler strenuously denies the imputation ordinarily cast upon Guzman (Saint Dominic), of instigating and personally enacting the barbarities of the Crusade against the Albigenses. It is probable that his conduct in this instance was in harmony with that of the Church generally, and especially of his spiritual progeny—the Inquisitors, who, abhorring to soil their own fingers with blood, delivered the condemned to the civil power to discharge the last "offices of Mercy." The point in question may seem of infinitely small moment. Nevertheless, as a signal and unmatched instance of the sort, the character of the Founder of the Dominican order is worthy of the labour that might be needed to set it clear from the misrepresentations, of all kinds, which cover it. The author hopes to be able, in a future work, to give the result of an examination of authorities touching the reputation of this dread personage. We find modern Romanist writers far more discreet and cautious on points of this kind than were their predecessors of the sixteenth century. Thus while the spots of the earth's surface far down toward its secret caverns, we might come upon the laboratories of nature, where chemical agents in constant turmoil have, age after age, convulsed the abyss-yet unfelt above. Yes, perhaps low beneath some of the most tranquil and smiling landscapes, where no such terror has been ever seen or surmised, furious tempests of fire are continually shaking the infernal vault. But in a moment, by the heaving of the cavern, a new element rushes down, and egress too is made:heat tenfold more intense than before is suddenly generated.-The very bowels of the world swelter and are molten :-the jagged jaws of the pit are sundered; torrents of fire rush up, and are flung to the clouds, and kingdoms are covered with dismay. -We grant at once that our comparison in appearance goes beyond the occasion, and is disproportioned to the subject.-Let it then be condemned as inappropriate. Nevertheless the truth remains certain that the mischiefs occasioned by even the most dire of volcanic eruptions have been trivial, if compared with the sorrows, and pains, and devastations, that have, in more than a few instances, sprung from the burning Author of the Lives of the Saints takes pains to keep the reputation of St. Dominic clear of blood, an Italian annalist, speaking of the pontificate of Innocent III. plainly says, Nacque allora l'eresia di Tolosa, che fu da S. Domenico ammortata.-But how extinguished? Not until fire and the sword had converted the finest countries in Europe into a wilderness. cavern of only a single human bosom. What is the descent of a river of lava through vineyards and olive groves; or what the overthrow of hamlets and the burying of villages or castles, compared with the torments and imprisonments, the conflagrations, the famines, the exterminating wars, and the ages of national degradation, all of which have had so simple and narrow an origin as the fiery malice of a friar's heart? Better were it, incomparably better for mankind, that a new volcano should heave itself from the abyss, and spout sulphur in the centre of every province of every European kingdom, than that Dominicans and Franciscans, papal legates and Jesuits, should find leave to repeat the massacres and executions which so often have stained the soil of France, and Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and Germany, and Holland, and England! There is yet another, and a very different order of men upon whom the vow of celibacy cannot fail to produce the most pernicious effects. We mean those stern natures that are, in a sense, pure and clean, but not so much by poverty of temperament, as by hardness of mental structure. They are not cold as water, but cold as marble; not solid as ice, but solid as iron. They shed no tears, and have no power of relenting, because there are no humours or lymph at all in their consti tutions. Every nerve is a chord, stretched till it vibrates, and which will sooner snap than relax. There are born a few men (men, for they have bones and muscles-senses and bodily organs) and especially do such make their appearance under the wing of gloomy superstitions, who, themselves quite exempt, as well from animal appetites as from social affections, and unconscious of the soft alternations of hope and fear, grief and joy, look with grim contempt upon humanity;-even as man may look upon the most ignoble of the brutal orders. The state of celibacy, which costs such men no struggle, they will esteem their glory, as being a fit outward sign of the intrinsic dignity which lifts them above their fellows. Celibacy to such is but a visible seal of spiritual supremacy-a scutchion of nobility in the kingdom of heaven. Conscious of immaculate and unalterable personal sanctity (if continence be sanctity) and conscious of a sort of ecstatic indifference under the voluntary pains of penance-floggings, fastings, and vigils, how can they doubt themselves to have reached the utmost summit of virtue ?— Their virtue, is it not seraphic, rather than human? What can sully such excellence ?-as easily slur the bright sky of noon, as contaminate a piety so celestial! 23 23 It is surely more than a mere coincidence that the very age in which the folly of conferring celestial *itles upon illustrious churchmen reached its height, was the era also wherein the execrable intolerance of the papacy burst forth with the greatest fury.-While torrents of blood |