Palacky, while a private teacher, impelled by a fondness for studies relating to the history of his own country, was, so early as the year 1820, assiduously engaged in the libraries and archives, public and private, both of Vienna and Prague, in making himself acquainted with the sources of Bohemian history. The first fruits of his studies were detached historical papers in the two monthly publications, German and Bohemian, of the Museum at Prague, of the former of which he has been editor four years, and of the latter ten. The number of his contributions to both is considerable: their subjects are various, but most of them historical.

By the efforts of Pelzel and Dobrowsky, a commencement was made of a critical edition of the old Bohemian historians. The Royal Society of Sciences, sensible of the necessity of continuing this work laudably begun by two of their members, encouraged Palacky to undertake the editorship of the Bohemian history, which, though generally known by the name of the continuation of the Chronicle of Bennesch von Horzowitz, or Pulkawa, had not yet been printed, and offered to defray the requisite expences. Palacky undertook the task, and the result of his labours was published in 1825, with the title of Scriptores Rerum Boemicarum," tom. iii. In 1829 he obtained the prize offered by the same society for an essay on the merits of the Bohemian historians, from the first of them down to the Chronicle of Hajek, and his work was published in the following year, with the title of " Würdigung der alten Böhmischen Geschichtschreiber."

In 1831, the assembly of the states of Bohemia, duly appreciating the value of M. Palacky's labours in illustration of the history of his country, elected him historiographer of the kingdom, and assured him of every necessary assistance for the composition of a new and circumstantial history of Bohemia. Since that time he has been searching archives and libraries, both at home and abroad, in quest of materials for his undertaking. By the publication of his first volume he has proved to the world his competence for the duty of the historian of his nation.

For the second volume, which is to contain the reign of Ottokar II. there was a considerable chasm, from the year 1198, where the chronicle of the contemporary Abbot Gerlach of Mühlhausen breaks off, to 1248, precisely half a century, which is an important period in the early history of Bohemia. It was believed that a rich mine of information is contained in the archives of the Vatican at Rome; and, in prosecution of this idea, Palacky, supported by the influence of the Austrian government and ambassador, undertook the journey to Italy, and made those researches, of which he gives the result in the book before us.

The archives of the Vatican occupy eleven spacious halls near the Library and the Museums. No stranger whatever is admitted into them, except reigning princes or eminent statesmen, and then only by the express command of the Pope. "This most ancient and most important of existing European archives," says Pertz, in the account of his travels in Italy, published in 1825, "seeks its origin in the obscurity of the 4th, or a still earlier century, before the Lateran library was so much as thought of. Through negligence, pillage, and conflagration, it has sustained immense losses; and yet no other collection

can compare with the portion that has been preserved: the keys of St. Peter are still the keys of the middle ages."

The contents of these archives consist of loose documents and manuscripts. The number and age of the former cannot be computed, as they are not chronologically arranged, and the catalogues of them are extremely imperfect. The Conte Marino Marini, prefect of the archives, in whose apartments Palacky was permitted to inspect and make extracts from such papers as suited his purpose, showed him, among other curiosities, some of the most remarkable golden bulls of the Emperors Frederick Barbarossa, Otto IV., and Frederick II., of the Kings of Armenia, Hungary, Sicily, Spain, &c. He also saw the deed of gift of the Emperor Otto I. in gold letters, of the year 962, a small book in 8vo., of the 8th century, "Liber diurnus Romanorum Pontificum," and a long farewell letter from Mary Queen of Scots to Pope Sixtus V. written a few hours before her execution, in which she says that she has been informed " cejourd'huy," by "Lord Burkherst" and others, that she must die. The traveller gives an exact copy of the conclusion: it is as follows:

"Vous aures le vray recit de la fasson de ma derniere prise et toutes les procedures contre moy et par moy affin qu'entendant la verite les calomnies que les enemis de l'esglise me vouldront imposer puissent estre par vous refutees et la verite congneue et a cest effect, ayie desire vous envoyer ce porteur requerant pour la fin vostre saincte benedicsion et vous disant le dernier adieu que ie prie conseruer vostre personne longuement en sa grace au bien de son eglise et de vostre tropeau desole speciallemen celuy de ceste isle que ie laysse bien esguare sans la misericorde de dieu et vostre soing paternel. De Fodringhay ce xxiii

de nouuembre. [1586.]

"De vostre sanctete tres humble et devote fille,
"Marie Royne d'Ecosse

"Excuses mon escriture sur la foiblesse de mon bras."

douayriere de France"

A second postscript, partly illegible, contains a warning to the Pope respecting his agents in England.

"But the incomparable treasure of the whole establishment," again quoting the words of Pertz, "consists in the 2016 volumes of papal Regesta, which contain, in an almost uninterrupted series, an official contemporary collection of the letters, documents, orders, and instructions of the papal court, together with many illustrative letters and documents written by the representatives of other powers, from the time of Innocent III. The traveller brought back with him copies of, and extracts from, 429 documents in this collection.

The Vatican Library contains 24,277 MSS., 2317 of which are in the Oriental languages, all the others being Greek or Latin; and the printed books amount to about 100,000 volumes. Here he found works of considerable length, and of particular importance for his purpose, such as: The second book of the Chronicle of Peter of Zittau, abbot of Königssaal, evidently an autograph of the author's, remarkable for reprehensions of king John and certain barons, suppressed in later MSS.; the collected works of John of Jenstein, archbishop of Prague,

containing some materials for the history of the Hussites; Æneas Sylvius's work "De Viris illustribus," probably an autograph also, which, though said to have been published, is not at all known; Huska's Bohemian translation of Æneas's History of Bohemia; separate papers relative to the history of the 16th and 17th centuries, collected from various codices, among which is particularly remarked-"Secreta Instructio Gallo-Britanno-Batava Friderico V. Comite Palatino Electori data;" and various extracts relating to Slavonian history and literature.

The other libraries at Rome and in the south of Italy the traveller was prevented from visiting by want of time and the cholera quarantines. Proceeding on his return to Civita Vecchia, he there embarked in the steam vessel for Leghorn, and returned by Pisa, Florence, Milan, and Venice, where, however, the literary harvest proved but small, to Germany.

In the Ambrosian library at Milan he was particularly struck by an account of a "Guillelma Bohema, vulgo Gulielmina," the founder or occasion of a sect of fanatics at Milan, of which, by way of relieving what may appear to some readers a dry article, we extract the particulars furnished by the author.

This Guillelma or Wilhelmina is given out in the MSS. examined by M. Palacky as the daughter of Ottokar I. king of Bohemia, and his queen, Constantia of Hungary: she spent the last twenty or thirty years of her life as a widow in Milan, died there in 1281, and was buried in the convent of Chiaravalle, to which she bequeathed her property. Whether this lady was really of such high birth as is attributed to her, the author will not venture to decide; but so much is certain, that she was a woman of superior mind and extraordinary virtue, who soon collected around her a circle of votaries of both sexes, to whom she extended her beneficence, and was a pattern of wisdom and piety. So decided was her reputation for sanctity, that the sick thronged to her in hopes of being cured, and the appellation of "sancta Guillelma” escaped even the Inquisitors themselves. At the head of her admirers was a man of equivocal character, a learned citizen of Milan, Andreas Saramita, who founded upon her fame plans of the basest self-interest. Not content with seeing her honoured as a mere saint, he began to give out before her death that she was an incarnation of the Holy Ghost. This idea might perhaps have been originally suggested by the circumstance of her having been born on Whitsunday. as she was informed of this report, she angrily reproved him as guilty of a wicked blasphemy, and insisted on his doing penance for it. He therefore relinquished the idea for the moment, hoping on some future occasion to make himself amends. When she died, he would not suffer her body to be buried, taking it for granted that it would be removed to Bohemia, whither he repaired, as he himself afterwards very ingenuously confessed," to signify her death to the king, and to "to see if he could obtain something from the king for the honour paid by him, Andreas, to the said Guillelma." The anarchy then prevailing in that country defeated his hopes of being able to effect the canonisation and the translation of the new saint at the royal expense; and, on his return from Bohemia, the corpse, which had lain for two months in the church of St. Peter, was solemnly interred in the conventual church

As soon

of Chiaravalle. A month afterwards, it was exhumed, washed with wine and water, and dressed in costly garments of purple, gold, and silver. A magnificent altar was erected over her grave, and was soon visited by numerous pilgrims.

All this did not satisfy Andreas: he reverted to his former idea of the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, and built upon it as absurd a system as any that is to be found among the most senseless aberrations of the human mind in regard to matters of religion. The principal tenets of his new heresy were as follows:-That Wilhelmina was the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, who had assumed human nature in the female form, as Christ did in the male; that the archangel Raphael announced to queen Constantia, on Whitsunday, the incarnation of the Holy Ghost through her, and that, on the same festival in the following year, Wilhelmina was born; that Wilhelmina was therefore at once God and man in the female sex, as Christ was in the male; that she died, like Christ, only in her mortal body, not in her divine nature; that, like him, she had about her body quinque plagas ; that she should rise again as he did, ascend to heaven, and inspire her disciples; that as Christ left St. Peter, so Wilhelmina left Sister Mayfreda of Pirovano, of the order of the Humiliati, as her vicegerent on earth; that Mayfreda was therefore to form a new female hierarchy, to supersede that of the pope, cardinals, &c.; and that new gospels of Wilhelmina were to be composed, and to do away with the existing ones, &c.

Thus we see that this heresy was not so innocent as it pretended to be. It attracted the notice of the Inquisition, but its adherents, recanting their errors and promising amendment, were dismissed with the imposition of penance. But Saramita's speculative imagination left him no rest till, in 1300, it drew upon him a more severe sentence, and after several examinations brought him to the scaffold, towards the

end of August in that year. His fate was shared by "Soror Mayfreda," who was flattered by the part assigned to her, and " Soror Jacoba de Bassanis," who, in spite of all remonstrances, refused to recant her errors respecting the incarnation of the Holy Ghost in the person of Guillelma. The other adherents of the sect, after recantation and penance, were absolved.

That Wilhelinina was innocent of the insane doctrines of Saramita is

evident from the testimony of all the accused persons. It was not till his last examination, probably while under the torture and terrified by the prospect of the scaffold, that Saramita, contrary to his previous depositions, ventured to throw the blame of his heresy upon her, and to make her an accomplice. If the inquisitors thereupon caused her body to be taken up and burned on the scaffold, they were no doubt influenced solely by a conviction of the necessity of doing away with what had become an object of fanatical and idolatrous veneration, and thus striking at the root of the evil.

FRENCH EXPEDITION TOWARDS THE SOUTH POLE. Expedition au Pole austral et dans l'Oceanie des Corvettes de sa Majesté, l'Astrolabe et la Zelée, sous le commandement de M. Dumont d'Urville, capitaine de vaisseau. (Expedition to the South Pole and in the South Seas of his Majesty's Cutters l'Astrolabe and la Zelée, under the command of Capt. Dumont d'Urville.) Paris, 1839. 8vo.

Captain d'Urville is well known to the world, and especially to the scientific world, as the commander of the expedition despatched some years since by the French government to the South Seas in search of any traces that might yet exist of the unfortunate La Perouse, and which traces a countryman of our own, Captain Dillon, was fortunate enough about the same time to discover in the island of Vanikoro. He has recently been appointed to conduct another enterprize undertaken by the French government, principally for the purpose of exploring the extensive lands discovered towards the south pole of the western hemisphere, and first described by Weddell. The pamphlet before us contains an official report from the commander to the minister of the marine, detailing his proceedings from the time of leaving Rio Janeiro, Nov. 13, 1837, till his arrival at Valparaiso, on the 7th of April following. Proceeding through the Straits of Magellan, a route so much but so unjustly dreaded, that Captain d'Urville recommends it from experience to vessels under 600 tons in preference to doubling Cape Horn, the French commander steered direct for New South Shetland, and fell in with the first floating masses of ice on the 15th of January, in the latitude of 59° 30' south. In spite of extremely dense fogs, he reached on the 22d the latitude of 64°, and on the 26th came in sight of the Orkney islands, "whose dreary and mournful aspect exhibits a perfect image of chaos and desolation," and to the northward of which groupe the ships passed a whole week, partly employed in hydrographic observations. The first half of February was spent in attempts to discover passages through the barrier of ice which now opposed their progress, and in the course of these they were several times involved in dangers the most imminent and appalling. At length the obstacles to their passage southward appeared so insuperable, that Captain d'Urville was induced to renounce any further efforts for that purpose.

"

"We had," says he, passed a whole month, surrounded by ice night and day, and frequently by impenetrable fogs into the bargain; we had followed the solid ice-bank for the space of nearly two hundred leagues, without finding any practicable channel, and that at the price of numerous perils; we had traversed without success all the points where Weddell asserted that he had found the sea open; the nights, which had already become long, rendered the navigation extremely precarious; lastly, the crews of the two cutters, exhausted with fatigue and with the cold and damp weather of this ice-bound region, could not think without a sort of mute terror of the prolongation of these hazardous attempts. To all these considerations, so powerful of themselves, I had to oppose but one motive, in reality very weak, since it merely interested my self-love as commander of the expedition,namely, regret to see all my efforts baffled in the 63d and 64th degrees of south latitude, whereas my predecessors had advanced much farther;