THE INQUISITION IN ROME. chapter of his epistle to the Romans? Read it and see; and then thank God that England is not yet, and pray it never may be, under the power of popish priests. Farewell to our bibles, our schools, our books, our free worship of God, if ever Roman Catholics get into power in England again! Well: years rolled on, and for many guilty ages deeds as unnatural and shocking no doubt were done, though we may not have heard of them; for only now and then did one of these tales of horror find its way into the world. At length came the invasion of Spain by Napoleon Buonaparte, and you have read an account of the destruction of an Office of the Inquisition near Madrid by a Polish officer. But what is the state of the Inquisition in Rome now? Let an eye witness who saw it when opened at the late revolution describe it. A correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce, writing from Italy, gives the following thrilling description of a few of the horrors of the Inquisition :-"In Turin I met the American consul of Rome, who had passed through the entire revolution in the Eternal City, and who was present when the doors and dungeons of the Inquisition were opened by the decree of the Triumvirs, its prisoners released, and the building converted into an asylum for the poor. It was interesting to hear, from the lips of an intelligent eye-witness, the most ample confirmation of the published statements relative to the condition and appearance of this iniquitous establishment. The Holy Inquisition of Rome is situated near the Porta Cavalligeri, and under the very shadow of the sublime dome of Saint Peter's Cathedral, and capable, in case of emergency, of accommodating three thousand prisoners. The consul was particularly struck with the imposing dimensions of the Chamber of Archives,' filled with voluminous documents, records, and papers. Here were piled all the proceedings and decisions of the holy office from the very birth of the Inquisition, including the correspondence with its collateral branches in both hemispheres. Upon the third floor, over a certain door, was an inscription to this effect-Speak to the first Inquisitor.' Over another-'Nobody enters this chamber except on pain of excommunication.' They might as well have placed over that door the well remembered inscription of Dante over the gates of Tartarus-' Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.' That chamber was the solemn Hall of Judgment, or Doom-room, where the fates of thousands have been sealed in death. Over a door directly opposite, 1 THE INQUISITION IN ROME. another inscription read-Speak to the second Inquisitor.' Upon opening the door of that department, a trap door was exposed, from which the condemned after they left the Hall of Judgment, stepped from time into eternity. The well or pit beneath had been built in the ordinary cylindrical form, and was at least eighty-feet deep, and so ingeniously provided with projecting knives and cutlasses that the bodies of the victims must have been dreadfully mangled in the descent. At the bottom of this abyss, quantities of hair and beds of mouldering bones remained. Not only at the bottom of the pit, but also in several of the lower chambers of the building, were found human bones. In some places they appear to have been mortared into the walls. The usual instruments of torture in such establishments were likewise manifest. The consul presented me with a bone which he brought with him as a memorial of his visit.-The pope fled from Rome on the 24th of November, 1848. The Roman Republic was proclaimed on the 11th of February, 1849, and immediately after its installation the Assembly solemnly declared the abolishment of the Holy Inquisition, and by a special decree charged the Triumvirate with the duty of erecting a lofty column to commemorate the overthrow of one of the greatest evils that ever darkened the face of the earth. But the scenes of this world change. On the 1st of July, 1849, the Roman Republic, after a brief existence of five months, capitulated to the French, and in May, 1850, Pius IX., after being an exile of one year and six months, returned to his capital, proscribed the Triumvirate, and reestablished the Inquisition in all its former power." Now who would have wondered if the indignant Romans, on discovering that horrid pit, had filled it with gunpowder, and blown the whole place to atoms; and providing no human being had suffered by it, would they not have rendered good service to humanity ? for such dens of hellish cruelty ought not to be allowed on earth. Yes: and if in the terrible concussion it had shivered the great curiosity-shop itself, the Vatican, with all its splendid spoils, that would not have been too great a price to pay for the destruction of a place which they would not have dared to rebuild. The French Bastile was never rebuilt. Gavazzi, the eloquent Italian Monk, in his orations, 1851, says: "How did this infamous institution originate? I'll tell you. Ages had rolled over the church since the disappearance of its primitive holiness. Decked out and bedizened with borrowed THE INQUISITION IN ROME. pagan trumpery, with incoherent and repulsive finery, once belonging to the idolatry of Rome, the papacy in the thirteenth century must needs also adopt Mahometan establishments; the wrinkled harridan received them at the hands of a Spanish coiffeur, Don Domenico Guzman. Not content with appropriating the Moorish rosary (an innocent adaptation of Saracenic devotion,) she must learn from the camel-driver of Mecca the use of the sword in promulgating the doctrines of our Redeemer. On the heads of the Albigenses fell the edge of her new plaything, and as the tiger grows tenfold more sanguinary after the first blood, the Romish priesthood and its head Mufti quickly acquired an inveterate taste for human butcheries. The parable of the Good Shepherd, of the Good Samaritan, of the Prodigal Son and his indulgent Father, were at once blotted out of the gospel, and their places supplied by I know not what sanguinary passages of the Koran. Then began a series of blood-thirsty decrees issuing from the Vatican; and, as if to eclipse in ferocity the scimetar of the Caliphs, fire and fagot were introduced as Papal improvements on Turkish inhumanity. A regular slaughter-house was, under the atrocious title of a 'Holy Office,' erected next the shrine of the apostle; and there were enacted in detail, for centuries, perpetrations far outrunning the wholesale carnage of St. Bartholomew, though uncommemorated, like that exploit, by a medal from the Papal mint or a glorifying fresco in the Vatican. Have we not seen this Golgotha Has not the whole population of the city thronged for days its dungeons and caverns of horror, so hideously contrasting with the voluptuous apartments overhead, where the 'holy officials' make merry over the groans of the under-groundlings and the bones of the entombed ? Do I talk of bygone abominations? No; but of what is done at this hour! The orator proceeded to describe, as an eye-witness, the aspect of matters in the head-quarters, or Horse Guards,' of this sanguinary militia, when the Romans broke into its long impenetrable enclosure, and removed the superincumbent tons of rubbish which even the French in 1798 had not disturbed. He detailed the evidences which the demolition of thick walls brought to light; the murderous traps for private executions; the immured skeletons; the deep wells, where quicklime had not entirely calcinated the ossuary remains; the mural inscriptions, still dimly legible in the dungeon cells; and all the sad suggestive appearances which in presence of a body of citizens and a notarypublic, (Caggioti, who has been since rotting in gaol for the POETRY. performance of a simple ministerial office,) have been given to the public, and baffle all attempts at explanation on the part of the hirelings who have lied through thick and thin to palliate these atrocities. The recent book of Achilli, Dealings with the Inquisition,' is equally circumstantial on these points: in Rome, to controvert them would be simply ridiculous. Kindling with the subject, the orator brought before his auditory vivid and striking delineations of the fourteen methods of torture in practical use, and forming the orthodox machinery for extorting avowals. The vigour and fervour of his sketches were powerfully impressive, especially when he conjured up the image of the crucified Saviour, the Lamb of God,' slain once and for ever to redeem and regenerate mankind, presiding over these satanic scenes-and the emblems of God's ineffable love for fallen man, dragged down as monstrous accomplices of these blasphemous doings. The first act of the Gaeta gang of felons, when the burglary of Rome had been accomplished, was to gag the inhabitants, and restore in all its abhorred machinery that instrument of tyranny the Holy Office. Can Wiseman deny this? Can he brazen out the fact of over sixty clergymen being at this hour in its dungeons, from which Monsignor Gazzola and Dr. Achilli have been miraculously rescued? Let this Cardinal connive no longer at his master's handiwork in Rome-let him come into court here with clean hands-let him bring for our inspection a bull suppressing the Holy Office and its ignoble accessories there, and then make his appeal to the feelings of Englishmen.' Until then, how can he expect to be looked on in any other light than as a sneaking interloper, only waiting the fulness of time to cast off appearances and stand revealed in his true character-an agent of the Roman Inquisition ?" Poetry. HOW LONG, LORD! HOW LONG ? WHY is thy arm great God, oh! why withheld?— How long thy enemies thy power disown, And raise their works of darkness 'gainst thy throne ?- Did not their streaming blood for judgment call ?— Did not the smoke from Smithfield fires arise To call thy sleeping vengeance from the skies?— ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. Those dying groans of Piedmont's slaughtered band, The deed from thee, and stamp it with thy name? Nor blast the hell-born monster that restrains Speed! speed your passage to oblivion's goal! Wide thro' the world thy saving conquests spread, Haste! haste the time when earth shall bless thy sway. Rev. J. E. Giles. Anecdotes and Selections. THE POLICY OF ROME.-I once heard the question agitated by a company of very intelligent men, whether the system of caste in India, or the policy of Rome, was the masterpiece of the great adversary. And, very properly as it seemed to me, the question was decided in favour of Rome. The designs of Rome are not limited to a single empire, but include the race under every parallel of latitude, and every form of government. Her stake is deep. Her game is high; and she is playing for nations. She spreads her great drag-net over the marshes and miry places of the earth, and gathers all manner of creeping things; and then she throws it over crowns and thrones. She aims chiefly at controlling human governments. She has her spies at every court and every university in Europe; nor is there a treaty, nor any measure of universal interest, but she watches it with a jealous eye, and therefore we ought to watch her, and well too! Dr. Sharp. CONSCIENCE.-There be five kinds of consciences on foot in the world; first, ignorant conscience, which neither sees nor saith any thing, neither beholds sin in a soul, nor reproves it. Secondly, the flattering conscience, whose speech is worse than silence itself, which, though seeing sin, soothes men in the committing thereof. Thirdly, the scared conscience, which hath neither sight, speech, |