his imputed treason, was condemned upon the production of a manuscript found amongst his papers; and though it had been written years before, and its authorship was not proved, it was upon such evidence as this that he was beheaded like the obscure Piccinardi: the only dif ference, in Sidney's case, was that the sentence had not even the letter of the law to justify it.

Freedom and good government are plants of slow growth, and of expensive culture; as we are constantly reminded by the payment of our

taxes.

We must return, however, to Venice, and to the incident which forms the main subject of the volume. The bad feeling, arising from differences on matters civil as well as ecclesiastical, which had long existed between the republic and the court of Rome, at last exploded.

There was, within the Venetian territory, an abbot of Nervesa, whose. catalogue of crimes "seems almost to pass the bounds of credibility." They are said to have been of too horrible an atrocity to be spoken of. "Parricide, fratricide, incest, and wholesale poisoning, are named as the more mentionable of his abominations."

There was also a meaner villain, but of patrician descent, a canon Saraceni, who, in addition to having tampered with some papers under the seal of the State, had vainly tried to seduce his own cousin, a young widow of remarkable beauty, and had revenged his disappointed lusts by gross and cowardly insults injurious to her character.

These wretched beings had both been arrested by order of the Council of Ten, and were now in the prisons below the ducal palace awaiting the punishment of their offences.

A Nuncio at Venice, who merely echoed the opinions of the Pope, had pronounced the dogma that "true Christian perfection consisted not in charity and devotion, but in exaltation of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction." It may be supposed, then, with what indignation Paul V. heard of these arrests. He considered them an outrage upon his authority, and another attack upon "the liberties of the Church." He demanded the prisoners. The Senate refused to give them up. Then came a long game of diplomacy, in which both parties occasionally made false moves, and it ended in Briefs from the Pontiff threatening, without further citation, to place the republic under Interdict in case of any further resistance to his Holiness's demands.

Upon the receipt of these amiable missives, which as usual brought. before the Senators the probable ruin of their own souls, and required them to rescind all the laws of Venice which affected ecclesiastics and their property, the Senate determined that, in addition to their appointed advisers, they would take the opinion of the Servite friar.

Frà Paolo saw very clearly the position in which this would place him. "He knew well that the only crime never forgiven at Rome is complicity in any attempt to circumscribe priestly authority and supremacy. He remembered his own defenceless position as a simple friar," and "he confined his reply to vague generalities, couched in the usual formal language of profound reverence for the Holy See."

But upon being assured by a resolution of the Senate that he should formally be taken under the protection of the Republic, and that it would Feb.-VOL. CXXI. NO. CCCCLXXXII.

Q

defend him against any persecution whatever, forgetting his obligations to the Church, he threw himself boldly into the quarrel; and "thenceforth devoted himself with unflinching courage, untiring industry, and rare learning, to the defence of Venice."

In answer to the question submitted to him as to "What remedies were open to the State against the thunders of Rome?" he briefly advised them to prevent the execution of the censures and "resist illegitimate force, by force that was clearly legitimate as long as it did not overpass the bounds of the natural right of defence."

We regret that we cannot follow our able guide through the whole of the contest, or at present take advantage of the light thrown by many of its incidents upon the character of the age. Frà Paolo-who was subsequently honoured by being appointed "not only Consultor to the Republic in theology, but also in jurisprudence," and was allowed the unusual privilege of free access to the secret archives of the State-had counselled peaceful resistance to the censures of the Pontiff; and when the Interdict of Excommunication was fulminated, such careful measures had been adopted as baffled its introduction into any part of the Venetian territory.

By the greater part of the educated classes it would have been as little regarded as at present; its power and danger lay in the ignorance of the people. They had been taught to believe that the religious functions now withheld from them were essential to the salvation of their families, and to their own escape from eternal torment hereafter, and they might be easily excited to rebellion against the power by whose apparent misrule such evils had been produced. "The ignorance of the great bulk of the social body" thus became, as it ought, "a retributive force" against those who from selfish fears had always kept the means of knowledge to themselves.

It was to avoid this effect that Frà Paolo thought it better to prevent the promulgation of the dangerous instrument, rather than trust to the opinion, maintained by another casuist and held also by himself, "that he who was wrongfully excommunicated by the ecclesiastical power was not bound to pay any heed to the sentence, and might, in fact, consider himself as not excommunicated at all."

A quarrel like this, of course attracted the attention of the other powers of Europe; and it was at one time likely to have come to the arbitrament of arms. Sir Henry Wotton, who was then our Ambassador at Venice, frankly and boldly counselled resistance; reminding his hearers "that he came from a country which knew what the value of an excommunication was to a farthing;" and England, both in her advice and offers of aid, preserved an honest and straightforward course throughout. The Emperor was for concession. France and-with less sincerity-Spain tendered their friendly offices as mediators; and the French Cardinal Joyeuse laboured hard to accomplish a reconciliation.

It was at last effected. The open quarrel was at an end, but the bitter feelings remained. Scarcely making any other concession, Venice, as an especial favour to France, and without prejudice" (as contending lawyers say) to its jurisdiction over ecclesiastics, gave up the two prisoners to the Papal authorities;-but not till the Interdict had been

recalled. We may easily suppose the inward groanings with which Paul V. submitted to the conditions imposed upon him. The struggle had ended in a shock given to the power of the Church; and given, too, in the person of the most zealous and unyielding assertor of her assumed rights. It was the engineer hoist with his own petar. He had put out his arm in rage, and it had fallen back paralysed and withered. "Never again," says Mr. Trollope, "could the great weapon of the Interdict be brought out for the coercion of disobedient nations. The most powerful engine in Rome's arsenal was broken and ruined irreparably." The last attempt to use it had only given advantages to the cause of Protestantism.

To use our author's occasional quaintness of expression, "the litigation of Rome v. Venice was decided; but that of Rome v. Sarpi remained."

In the violence of his anger the Pope had recourse both to the brutum fulmen of the anathema and to the red arm of the assassin; and his undoubted complicity in the savage attempt upon the friar's life was not calculated to restore a reverence for the Papacy.

With a gratitude which is not regarded as the common virtue of republics, Venice did everything to protect and reward the man who had served her so steadfastly and well, and "who had accomplished" so much "towards the emancipation of civil society from priestly thraldom." Fresh honours and emoluments were offered to him. Even the physician who had cured his wounds and saved so valuable a life, was made a Cavalier, and received from the Senate a silver cup of thirty ounces. And rewards of unusual amount—2000 and 4000 ducats-were offered for killing or apprehending any one, whatever might be his grade or condition, who should again attack him. So, in spite of pontifical revenge, the Historian of the Council of Trent, and of the Inquisition, lived on, to the age of seventy, and survived the Pope himself by about twelve months. We reluctantly close the volume.

Unless Mr. Trollope should occupy himself as we think not improbable-upon a new History of Venice, we should be glad to have from his pen an account of the social position-which we suspect was a peculiar one-of illegitimate offspring in Italy during the ages with which he is so familiar. Not merely those of noble and princely houses, but of what we now call the middle classes; or at any rate of members of the professions. They were certainly very differently regarded from what they are in other countries and in later times.

We do not know any one who would make the subject so interesting as the author of "Filippo Strozzi."

A SUMMER IN SYLT.

DR. JULIUS RODENBERG, who recently published an amusing account of his travels in Ireland, has just produced another quaint volume, under the title of "Verschollene Inselu," to explain which to our readers would require a considerable paraphrasis. We will, however, briefly state that our author has visited in turn, and here describes, all those islands on which the sea is regularly encroaching, and which threaten to disappear from the face of the waters in the end. As space precludes us from following Dr. Rodenberg through his agreeable rambles, we will confine our attention to Sylt, as being the least known to nautical Englishmen.

Sylt is the most advanced post of Germany: the wild sea, nowhere wilder than on this coast, tore it away ages ago from the continent, and it stands amid the waves, exposed to the destructive attacks of Ocean. But this peninsula, constantly menaced by water and by the Danes, was once the abode of the most powerful of the Germanic races, the North Friezes, who conquered England, and laid the foundation of our might. Sylt is the northernmost of the group of islands into which the encroaching sea has broken up what was once dug land: it contains but little soil fit for cultivation, for the greater portion is heath and piled-up sand, where only sheep can find scanty provender. The inhabitants of the island are daring, hospitable, true-hearted beings, not remarkable for beauty, though the men are strongly built, and the women have a graceful form and speaking eyes. They all regard the sea with longing and yet sad glances, for it has robbed everybody on the island of some one dear to them, and many of their all. But the men do not cease to navigate it: the courage and skill of the Sylt captains is known in every sea of the world, and there are few lads on the island who do not go to sea so soon as they leave school. Many never return, but none ere they have saved so much on their voyages as to be able to live at home at ease. The women of Sylt, on the other hand, rarely leave their houses. They fear the sea which has robbed them of fathers and brothers, husbands and betrothed; and the nearest town on the continent is the farthest extent of their wanderings. To see Hamburg is a desire not accorded to all, and only two or three have been in England. Hence it happens that on this island so few young men, so many widows and old maids, may be found. They, too, attend to all the farm duties, for the few persons called "landsmen" are regarded as an inferior race of beings. A long descent, full of seafaring fathers and forefathers, imparts to families on the island a patrician character, for each has here its family tree. And the girl who, with tucked-up skirts, drives the kine over the heath, can tell the history of her ancestry, and feels proud of it. Strange histories are they at times, like those told of the birth of the Roman twins, or the heroes and demigods of the Northern myth.

My friend the sea captain, Derksen Meinertz Hahn, who has kept the genealogical tree of his family with especial accuracy, begins his history with a lovely girl from Holland, who was beloved by the son of a rich and haughty trader in Amsterdam. The latter, who desired another marriage for his son, managed so that Jens Grete (that was the maiden's name) should be carried on

board one of his vessels, bound for Riga, with the evidence of her love. The ship was wrecked, on a dark November night, upon the Hörnean banks. The crew perished, as did Jens Grete, the beloved of the Amsterdam merchant's son ; but a cradle floated to land, and in that cradle lay a boy, and the boy grew and went to sea, and gained renown and riches, and became the ancestor of the Hahn family, in which the eldest daughter is always called Grete. And what a pretty Grete, with such dark eyes and pleasant glances, is she who in our times keeps up the memory of the unhappy original.

Often, as you walk along the strand, your foot is caught in black thick peat-like masses, half buried in the sand: they are the remains of the Sylt forests. Where we now walk on sand by the sea-side, tall, noble trees once stood; farther out, where the sea is breaking in foam, once was a great city, in which rich merchants dwelt. But the sea has swallowed this city and this forest, and we find ourselves on a desert unwooded island, on which are three or four wretched villages, and before and behind, and right and left, is the sea. The eastern sea is quiet and narrow: we see opposite to us the coasts of Jutland and North Schleswig. At ebb tide it is half dry: the Watts, or flat sand-banks, emerge and shimmer like silver sand in the dust, little fishing-boats sail backwards and forwards, or a pillar of smoke rises as the steamer arrives from Husum. Willow bushes, with brushes fastened to their tops, indicate its course; they are fastened into the Watts on either side, and the flat-bottomed vessel steers cautiously between them. Land is never entirely lost out of sight; when the continent disappears on the right the Halligen rise on the left, widely-stretching sand-flats, on which stand three or four cabins, with three stalls and barns. The hill slopes produce rich pasturage, and the Hallig peasants have the finest cattle. In winter, when the wind comes and the sea rises, they sit at times for months confined on their mounds, seeing the mainland, but unable to cross. Once or twice, when the tide is very low, active lads, well acquainted with the ground, will venture across the Watts to land, and back again with the next ebb tide. These are what are called the "Schlick-läufer," whose fall is the one adventurous trait in the monotony of the sand-bank dangers.

There was once an old Hallig peasant who had broken his foot, and was carried ashore to Husum to be attended by the surgeon. It was in winter, and the patient hoped to get home ere the high tides set in, but his illness was obstinate, and one day the water rose and covered the Watts as far as could be seen. The poor peasant sat for days with his eye turned towards the sadly-heaving surface, and at night, forgetting his sufferings, he listened to the murmur of the breaking waves. His nostalgia grew apace, and oft, by bright sunsets, he would sit on the beach, looking at the bluish-black outlines of gable roof and wall; it was his house on the Hallig, to the foundations of which the water had risen. Thus he sat day after day, his heart growing immoderately sad, till late one afternoon he noticed a man he knew on the road leading from Husum. He lived on his own Hallig, had come across that morning, and was now returning. The old peasant called him to him, told him he could not endure his absence from home longer, and meant to go back with him. In vain did the runner try to dissuade him, and said, "Remember what the end will be if your foot refuse to carry you." The old man insisted, and at nightfall he crept down to the sea and found his companion. "Now follow me," the runner said, "and for Heaven's sake do not lag behind. If the tide sets in we are lost, and I cannot save you. So come." They started, and the new moon shone sickly down on their road, which ran narrow and dangerous through the water. For an hour the runner heard his