tion, but ensured variety, which is as important as talent to the success of a periodical work. And by the second rule, of rendering the articles which he wrote as clear as possible both in principle and in expression, he gained the attention of numbers who had never been accustomed to analyze or examine their own opinions before, and who became favourably inclined towards a work which opened, as it were, a new sense; and taught them to give a reason for their former instincts or prejudices and placed even the abstruser sciences in a popular point of view. All those who have had much experience in writing for the public have felt the importance of attending to both these things; and more especially the latter, of tracing things back to their elementary principles. For every individual, whether writer or reader, has some idiosyncrasy-something peculiar to himself in his mental character as well as in bodily organization and each has his own prejudices or principles, which impart a certain portion of their own colour to whatever he writes or reads. These prepossessions are often hereditary or habitual, often the result of education, and often spring up we know not how. Every author should bear this in mind, and should first endeavour to overcome his own individual partialities by submitting all his opinions to the test of broad general principles or elementary and fundamental truths; and should also endeavour to indoctrinate his readers with the same elementary principles, that they also may be delivered from any such prepossessions as might cause a misapprehension of his meaning or prevent the reception of those truths which he is desirous of inculcating.

Opposed as we are, in all respects, to the principles and politics of the Edinburgh Review, we desire to do justice to the sagacity and tact with which it was conducted, and to acknowledge how largely it contributed towards the raising our periodical literature to the influential position which it occupies at the present time. Those alone will fully estimate these obligations who, like ourselves, are old enough to remember what dull and spiritless things the magazines were before the Edinburgh Review began its course, and how rapidly they improved after that time.

Jeffrey's public character is summed up in his duty as editor of the Review; for, though he was made Lord-Advocate when the Whigs came into power, he never much distinguished himself either in Parliament or on the Bench. This was chiefly owing to a mistake which he made early in life through a vain endeavour to speak English like an Englishman. The result was that he ceased to speak as a Scotchman without being any the nearer passing for an Englishman; and only acquired a sort of false

mode of utterance, which is one of the very worst defects that a public speaker can fall into: for, let his arguments be ever so cogent, this false manner of delivery will give an impression of insincerity which steels the heart of the hearer against their power. He wrote from Oxford-" My opinions, ideas, prejudices, and systems are all Scotch. The only part of a Scotchman I mean to abandon is the language; and language is all I expect to learn in England" (i. 46). On which Lord Cockburn remarks:

"He certainly succeeded in the abandonment of his habitual Scotch. He returned, in this respect, a conspicuously altered lad. The change was so sudden and so complete that it excited the surprise of his friends, and furnished others with ridicule for many years. But he was by no means so successful in acquiring an English voice. With an ear which, though not alert in musical perception, was delicate enough to feel every variation of speech, what he picked up was a high-keyed accent and a sharp pronunciation. Then the extreme rapidity of his utterance, and the smartness of some of his notes, gave his delivery an air of affectation to which some were only reconciled by habit and respect. The result, on the whole, was exactly as described by his friend, the late Lord Holland, who said, that, though Jeffrey had lost the broad Scotch at Oxford, he had only gained the narrow English. Still, as the acquisition of a pure English accent by a full-grown Scotchman, which implies the total loss of his Scotch, is fortunately impossible, it would have been better if he had merely got some of the grosser matter rubbed off his vernacular tongue, and left himself unencumbered both by it and by unattainable English to his own respectable Scotch, refined by literature and good society, and used plainly and naturally without shame and without affected exaggeration."

In private life Jeffrey seems to have been very amiable and attractive. Warm and steadfast in his friendships, he attached others as strongly to himself: and several who, like Byron and Moore, had been first brought in contact with him as editor of the Review and by the severity of his strictures, becoming acquainted with the man, were won by his amiability and continued his friends till death. He was generous, too; for, on hearing that Moore was in straitened circumstances in the decline of life, and that a subscription was in contemplation, he wrote to one of the parties offering £200 or even £500, if it was needed, to supply Moore with the requisites of life.

Jeffrey was fond of society, and was at the same time a very domestic man, delighting in the prattle of children, and as ready to sport with them as to join in the animated intellectual discussions at the weekly club of Edinburgh which consisted of some of the most distinguished men of the day. He was twice married and in both instances very happily. The first Mrs,

Jeffrey was Miss Wilson, a cousin; the second, Miss Wilkes, an American by birth, but connected by marriage with Jeffrey's family. The second Mrs. Jeffrey only survived him a few months. He died on the 26th of January, 1850, in his seventyseventh year. "Mrs. Jeffrey never recovered the shock of her husband's death. She died at Haileybury on the 18th of May, and on the 29th her remains were laid beside his" (i. 410).

66

ART. VI.—The Brand of Dominic; or, Inquisition at Rome Supreme and Universal." By the Rev. W. H. RULE, Author of "Martyrs of the Reformation," &c. London: Mason. 1852.

THIS small volume should be in the hands of every one who takes an interest in the Papal question; for it furnishes, from authentic sources, accurate information concerning that dread tribunal in which the spirit and the operations of the Papacy are more fully and unmistakeably expressed than in any other of its institutions, and where its cruelty as well as its hypocrisy are unmasked; since the sufferers were almost all of them the victims of private revenge or of political enmity, yet were tortured in order to extort some avowal which might be perverted into a charge of heresy, that the cruelties might seem to be perpetrated with the view of saving the souls of men.

But it may be asked does the Inquisition still exist? Has it not been abolished in all the countries of Europe? And what likelihood is there of its ever finding its way into England? The advocates of Rome would fain persuade us to think thus in order to lull us into false security, while they are laying their toils around us. We must remember that Rome never abandons such an instrument of power as the Inquisition-in this respect she is unchangeable; and, though she may change the mode of operation according as times are changed, the machinery exists still, and is ready to be brought into activity wherever the Jesuits obtain the ascendancy and ultramontane principles are allowed to develop themselves. There is a court of "THE SUPREME AND UNIVERSAL INQUISITION" which meets at Rome three days in every week where the Pope usually presides, and which receives reports from its agents in all quarters of the world, and which has its number filled up by other cardinals whensoever vacancies occur. In a bull dated August 22, 1851, Pius IX., in condemning the works of one of the professors at Turin, says " After having taken the ad

vice of the doctors in theology and canon law-after having collected the suffrages of our venerable brothers, the cardinals of the congregation of the supreme and universal Inquisition," &c. And on March 18, 1852, the Pope filled up four vacancies by appointing four cardinals to be "members of the sacred congregation of the holy Roman and universal Inquisition." So that the tribunal still continues in force.

And Gavazzi, as having examined the dungeons of the Inquisition, when the Pope fled from Rome in 1849, has furnished Mr. Rule with an account of what he then saw, concluding thus

"You may make any use of these notes of mine in your publication that you please, since I can warrant their truth. I wish that writers, speaking of this infamous tribunal of the Inquisition, would derive their information from pure history, unmingled with romance; for so many and so great are the historical atrocities of the Inquisition that they would more than suffice to arouse the detestation of a thousand worlds.........The palace of the Inquisition at Rome is under the shadow of the palace of the Vatican: the keepers of the Inquisition at Rome are to this day Dominican friars; and the prefect of the Inquisition at Rome is the Pope in person"—(March 20, 1852).

"To impart correct information, and to assist the general reader in forming his judgment of the Inquisition as it was and as it is, is the object proposed to himself by the author. He has not attempted to give anything more than a well authenticated statement of its establishment and progress. Much more might have been related under the title of this little volume; but those countries where the system of the Inquisition was never established, although they were theatres of persecution, are not included; neither would the author have been justified in including all persecuting courts or authorities under the single name of Inquisition. He has laboured to be technically exact, and preferred passing over doubtful anecdotes to setting forth as history what is no better than romance; and has also thought it more important to disclose the policy and the power of this member of the Romish Church than to multiply recitals of the same class beyond what is really necessary to complete a truthful picture......... Neither can he speak of the Inquisition as an obsolete barbarism or as of a something that cannot any longer exist: it is a permanent, active, and vigorous institution of the Church of Rome. While the Papacy survives, the Inquisition must live; for the spirit of it is not that of the middle ages, but of the Church itself.........While seeming to have been beaten away from the wide field of the Popedom, and forced to retreat within the frontiers of the Papal State, even there the congregation of the faith plies its agencies with an impalpable, noiseless, and all pervading energy, that mocks our jealousy by eluding our vigilance. The Inquisitors are actually conducting a crusade, in union with the Jesuits, against the civil and religious liberties of the world,

VOL. XXXI.-H

and are causing that intensely ecclesiastical but worldly spirit, which is erroneously called Ultramontanism, to prevail in countries which very lately seemed to be open for a religious reformation" (Preface iv).

Domingo de Guzman (or St. Dominic), the founder of the Inquisition, was a Spaniard; and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was also a Spaniard; and thus Spain is entitled to the ambiguous notoriety of originating two of the most cruel and reckless of the institutions that have disgraced the name of Christianity, but which have also been the Societies held in highest esteem by the Papacy as its chief supporters and the arms of its power. The Spaniards are unquestionably a ferocious and bloodthirsty people: of this their delight in bullfights, whether regarded as cause or consequence of their ferocity, is an unquestionable evidence. It is reported of Dominic's mother that she dreamed she was about to be delivered of a dog, carrying a torch in his mouth, by which the world would be set on fire; and this was a true emblem of what the Inquisition has been literally as well as figuratively, for its wholesale burnings exceeded everything that had been known before, even in the persecutions of the heathen emperors.

Honorius III. in 1217 granted two bulls to Dominic: the one declaring that he and his brethren were champions of the faith and true lights of the world; the other empowering them to possess property and perform their intended functions of extirpating heresy. Dominic on the same day told his friends that the Pope had conferred on him a new office-that he was determined to defend the faith manfully-and that, if the spiritual and ecclesiastical weapons should be found insufficient, he had made up his mind to call the secular power to his aid, and to excite or impel Catholic princes to take up arms against heretics that their memory might be utterly blotted out.

The "holy office" was first called into operation at Toulouse, where a council had assembled in 1229 in order to take measures for exterminating the Waldenses and Albigenses, who were still numerous although several crusades had been directed against them. They were called the worst of heretics and were classed with the Jews and Moors of Spain; but no crime was alleged against them, and the only accusations were that they were accustomed to read the Scriptures and to meet together for prayer and mutual exhortation. The priests, however, felt that if these things were allowed their power was gone, for they would not be regarded as the sole depositaries of divine truth; and the principal part of their devotion was gone if men learned to pray to God for themselves, and through Christ alone, instead of solely trusting to the prayers of the priest and seeking