with large lustrous stars could be called dark. The night wore on, varied only by two events of moment. The first was supper, for which we halted at about eleven o'clock, in the town of Chiari. At eleven at night people should think of sleeping, not of eating Not so in Italy, where supper is still the meal of the day. An Italian diligence never breakfasts, unless a small cup of coffee, hurriedly snatched while the horses are being put to, can be called such. Sometimes it does not even dine; but it never omits to sup. The supper chamber in Chiari was most sumptuously laid out,-vermicelli soup, flesh, fowls, cheese, pastry, wine,-every viand, in short, that could tempt the appetite. But at midnight I refused to be tempted, though most of the other guests partook abundantly. I was much struck, on leaving the town, with the massive architecture of the houses, the strength of the gates, and other monuments of former greatness. Imagine Edinburgh grown old and half-ruined, and you have a picture of the towns of Italy, which was a land of elegant stone-built cities at a time when the capitals of northern Europe were little better than collections of wooden sheds half-buried in mire.

There followed a long ride. Sleep, benignant goddess, looked in upon us, and helped to shorten the way. What surprised me not a little was, how soundly my companions snoozed, considering how they had supped. The stages passed slowly and wearily. At length there came a long, a very long halt. I roused myself, and stepped out. I was in a spacious street, with the cold biting wind blowing through it. The horses were away; the postilions had disappeared; some of the passengers were perambulating the pavement, and the rest were fast asleep in the diligence, which stood on the causeway, like a stranded vessel on the beach. On consulting my watch, I

found it was three in the morning, and in answer to my inquiries I was told that I was in Brescia,-a famous city; but I should have preferred to visit it at a more seasonable hour. "The best feelings," says the poet, "must have victual,” and the most classic towns must have sleep; so Brescia, forgetful that famous geographers who lived well-nigh two thousand years ago had mentioned its name, and that famous poets had sung its streams, and that it still contains innumerable relics of its high antiquity, slept on much as a Scotch village would have done at the same hour.

Time is of no value on the south of the Alps. This long halt at this unseasonable hour was simply to set down an honest woman who had come with us from Milan. She was as big well-nigh as the diligence itself; but what caused all our trouble was, not herself, but her trunk. It lay at the bottom of an immense pile of baggage, which rose on the top of the vehicle; and before it could be got at, every article had to be taken down, and put on the pavement. Of course, the baggage had to be put back, and the operation was gone through most deliberately and leisurely. A full hour and a half was consumed in the process; and the passengers, having no place to retire to, did their best to withstand the chill night air by a quick march on the street.

So, these silent midnight streets I was treading were those of Brescia,-Brescia, within whose walls had met the valour of the mountains and the arts of the plain. I was now treading where pagan temples had once stood, where Christian sanctuaries had next arisen, and where there had been disciples not a few when the light of the Reformation broke on northern Italy. I remembered, too, that this was the city of " Arnold of Brescia," one of the reformers before the Reformation. Arnold was a man of great learning, an intrepid champion of

the Church's purity, and the founder of the " Arnoldists," who inherited the zeal and intrepidity of their master.

On the death of Innocent II., in the middle of the twelfth century, Arnold, finding Rome much agitated from the contests between the Pope and the Emperor, urged the Romans to throw off the yoke of a priest, and strike for their independence. The Romans lacked spirit to do so; and when, seven centuries afterwards, they came to make the attempt under Pius IX., they failed. Arnold was taken and crucified, his body reduced to ashes, and it was left to time, with its tragedies, to vindicate the wisdom of his advice, and avenge his blood; but to this hour no such opportunity of freeing themselves from thraldom as that which the Brescians then missed has presented itself.

"Time flows,- -nor winds,

Nor stagnates, nor precipitates his course;
But many a benefit borne upon his breast
For human-kind sinks out of sight, is gone,
No one knows how; nor seldom is put forth
An angry arm that snatches good away,
Never perhaps to re-appear."

CHAPTER XII.

THE PRESENT THE IMAGE OF THE PAST.

Failure of the Reformation in Italy-Causes of this-Italian MartyrsTheir great Numbers-Consequences of rejecting the Reformation— The Present the Avenger of the Past-Extract from the Siècle to this Effect-An 66 Accepted Time" for Nations-Alternative offered to the several European Nations in the Sixteenth Century-According to their Choice then, so is their Position now-Protestant and Popish Nations contrasted.

Or the singular interest that attaches to Italy during the first days of the Reformation I need not speak. The efforts of the Italians to throw off the papal yoke were great, but unsuccessful. Why these efforts came to nought would form a difficult but instructive subject of inquiry. They failed, perhaps, partly from being made so near the centre of the Roman power, partly from the want of union and comprehension in the plans of the Italian reformers,-partly by reason of the dependence of the petty princes of the country upon the Pope, and partly because the great sovereigns of Europe, although not unwilling that the Papacy should be weakened in their own country, by no means wished its extinction in Italy. But though Italy did not reach the goal of religious freedom,

of

the roll of her martyrs includes the names of statesmen, scholars, nobles, priests, and citizens of all ranks. From the Alps to Sicily there was not a province in which there were not adherents of the doctrines of the Reformation, nor a city any note in which there was not a little church, nor a man of genius or learning who was not friendly to the movement. There was scarce a prison whose walls did not immure some disciple of the Lord Jesus; and scarce a public square which did not reflect the gloomy light of the martyr's pile. Much has been done, by mutilating the public records, to consign these events to oblivion, and the names of many of the martyrs have been irretrievably lost; still enough remains to show that the doctrines of the Reformation were then widely spread, and that the numbers who suffered for them in Italy were great. Need I mention the names of Milan, of Vicenza, of Verona, of Venice, of Padua, of Ferrara,-one of the brightest in this constellation,—of Bologna, of Florence, of Sienna, of Rome ? Most of these cities are renowned in the classic annals; all of them shared in the wealth and independence which the commerce of the middle ages conferred on the Italian republics; all of them figure in the revival of letters in the fifteenth century; but they are encompassed by a holier and yet more unfading halo, as the spots where the Italian reformers lived,where they preached the blessed truths of the Bible to their countrymen, and where they sealed their testimony with their blood. 66 During the whole of this century," that is, the sixteenth, says Dr M'Crie, in his "Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy," "the prisons of the Inquisition in Italy, and particularly at Rome, were filled with victims, including persons of noble birth, male and female, men of letters, and mechanics. Multitudes were condemned to penance, to the galleys, or other arbitrary punishments; and from time to