perhaps he bore his faculties as meekly as any mortal mixture of earth's mould could have done, endowed with them so highly. They are of an unbending class, and may sometimes put the mind out of a proper sympathy for human weakness. But the secret of that intolerance which sometimes darkened the progress of the Reformation, and which has been permitted to throw so deep a shade over the character of Calvin, has been better told by Coleridge than by any other writer.

"At the Reformation,” said he, “the first Reformers were beset with an almost morbid anxiety not to be considered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext could be found; and I have no doubt it was the excess of this fear which at once led to the burning of Servetus, and also to the thanks offered by all the Protestant Churches, to Calvin and the Church of Geneva, for burning him."

Poor human nature! A wiser and still more loving John than Calvin would once have burned all Samaria, if our Blessed Lord would have permitted it. But Grace shall one day take all these wrinkles from the Church of Christ, and present it without spot, fair as the Moon, clear as the Sun, and terrible as an army with banners.

Mark the perverted and fanatical use which James and John would have made of the example of Elias! "Lord! wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?" But what a sweet rebuke was that which restrained and corrected a zeal so mingled with the unrighteous spirit! "The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." Who could have thought, after this, that fire to burn up erring men would have passed into the Church as one of its great sacraments, "Acts of Faith," and most solemn celebrations of worship? But in so doing, it constitutes one of the most glaring, evident seals, not of the Church of Christ, but AntiChrist. Whoever adopts it, adopts a seal of the Great Apostasy.

Mark you, also, that James and John, before they would have used it, consulted their Divine Master-"Lord, wilt thou that we command fire ?" If always, in such a mood, men had so consulted Christ, when thinking of applying fire, they would have

found out its wickedness; they would have received and felt the answer, Ye know not what spirit ye are of.

It is remarkable that death by burning has always been considered as consecrated, if I may so speak, to the crime of a religious faith. It It is the Baptism of Fire, with which the Court of Rome preeminently has chosen to finish and perfect the etherealization of those noble spirits, who in the midst of torture and death, opposed her errors and her despotism. It is the only Sacrament that Romish bigotry and superstition have ever granted to heretics; the sacrament with which a multitude of souls, of the best mould ever shaped, have been dismissed in a chariot of fire to Immortality.

CHAPTER XXI.

Antiquities, calamities and by-laws of Aoste.-Mont Blanc from Ivrogne.

THE old Romans left a more enduring memorial of their residence and conquests in the city of Aoste, than Calvin did of his. There is a triumphal arch erected by Augustus twenty-four years before Christ, a Roman bridge across the river, and a remarkable double Roman gate, or entrance to the city. There are ruins of an amphitheatre, subterranean vaults, and many fragments of antiquity and use unknown. Mine host carried me into one of the long subterranean passages beneath the city, built, it is said, by the ancient native inhabitants before the time of the Romans; now half filled and choked with rubbish, but running in different directions clear across the city, and even, it is said, under the bed of the river. The old city in the time of the Romans was called Cordéle, the chief city of the Salassi.

The city is most beautiful in its position, close to the junction of the rivers Buttier and Doire, in the centre of a luxuriant valley, from many points of which you can see both the Mont Blanc and the snowy ranges of the Grand St. Bernard. Magnificent mountains, girdled with beautiful verdure far up towards their rocky summits, enclose the valley, and rich vineyards cover their beautiful slopes below. In the eleventh century Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in this city, and St. Bernard in his day was Archdeacon of Aoste, so that it is a city of great names and memories in other triumphs than the flight of Calvin.

The inhabitants speak French, and are horribly disfigured with cretinism and goitre, enormous bag necks, and idiots, or cretins, meeting you, in both men and women, in almost every street. What a calamity is this! and amidst such fertility and beauty, such softness, sweetness, purity and luxuriance of nature! While nature smiles (Foster sadly remarks), there are many pale coun

tenances that do not. But sadder is the sight of a living face, from which the last gleam of intellect has departed, than of many dreadful forms of pain and misery. This fearful disease of cretinism excludes its victims from society, and reduces them to the level of brutes. Men of science have endeavored without success to discover its cause and arrest its progress. Saussure supposed that it is occasioned by a vicious atmosphere, not changed and renewed, and wanting in certain elements necessary But if this were the case, to the healthful development of man. why should not all the inhabitants of the village feel it? Why should it decimate them? Why should any escape? Strange, indeed, and dreadfully subtle and penetrating, must that peculiarity in the atmosphere be, which passes through the frame to attack the intellect.

Mine host told me that the goitre was to be attributed to the filthy habits of the people, who live in the stables with the cattle, in winter, for the sake of warmth: this is not improbable, but again, on the other hand, there are communities quite as filthy in various parts of the world, where this goitre never yet made its appearance. The streets of the city are clean, and indeed, in the midst of most of them a clear running stream from the mounFruits are abundant and delitains pours over the pavements. cious; moreover, it was the season of strawberries, with plenty

of cream.

I was amused with looking over the exposition of the articles of law relative to the government of the city. No loud singing is allowed in the streets after ten o'clock in the evening, nor any noises capable of disturbing good people who wish to sleep. Vagabonds are to be carried to watch-houses, and nothing but honest callings are to be permitted, and decent moral amusements for recreation. All persons are forbidden to expose for show any images in wood or wax, of Venus, or any great notable assassins, or men famous for their crimes in any way. All the world knows that Venus is a great assassin, well deserving of capital punishment; and if the priests had stated that this was one of the laws which Calvin caused to be framed while residing in the city, it might be easier believed, than their tale of Calvin raising the dead. In these laws the utmost vigilance is enjoined against the

introduction into the city of books or tracts of any kind tending injuriously towards the Holy Catholic Roman Apostolic Church, religion or government. The cleanness of the streets may possibly be accounted for by a law that every person shall be held to keep the street clean before his own door, carefully removing all the dirt, and preventing its accumulation. This is somewhat different from our laws in New York, where the swine have a premium as city scavengers.

There is a most curious propensity in the lower orders to associate a foreign language, or the supposed ignorance of their own, with deafness. Most persons have probably met with instances of this, but I never knew a more singular example than that of a peasant in Äoste, who, seeing that I was a foreigner, stepped up to me, and answered a question I had asked him, with a shout

such as you would pour into the ear of a person incurably

deaf. He evidently supposed, that being a foreigner, I had lost my hearing, or rather that I possessed the sense of hearing only for my own language, and could understand his only when it thundered. On this principle, all a man needs in travelling through foreign countries would be an ear-trumpet, instead of the grammar and dictionary.

From the Cité d'Aoste to Courmayeur, at the end of the valley near Mont Blanc, it is about twenty-seven miles. I had a return char-à-banc entirely to myself, for the very small sum of five francs. The ride and the views of Mont Blanc enjoyed in it were worth five hundred. For twelve miles the road winds along the bottom of the valley, sometimes at the edge of a torrent, sometimes crossing it, through scenes of the richest vegetation. The openings of rich valleys here and there lead off the eye as in a perspective wilderness of wildness and beauty; and the grandeur of the mountains, snow-topped even in August, increases as the valley narrows towards Mont Blanc.

About half way up the valley from Aoste to Courmayeur is a little vagabond village named Ivrogne, I know not on what principle or for what reason so baptized, unless it were from the fact that you pass immediately to a point where, in the language of Lord Byron, the scene is of such effulgence, that you are well nigh "dazzled and drunk with beauty." For, a little beyond