woods rang again. He took a peculiar delig echoes of the old villages, and the ears of Each report was like that of a twelve-poun nual thunder, kept up above their heads, di affright the horses: they rather seemed proud could handle his whip in so workmanlike could so time the strokes as to make not mu than that of some music-bells I have heard. a tune on his whip.

We passed, as the evening thickened its ancient borgos. Gray they were, and drowsy of a century weighed them down. They s quiet, dying light of eve; and as they dre around them, they appeared most willing t which had forgotten them. They had not al a life. Their youth had been passed amid th merce; their manhood amid the alarms and war; and now, in their old age, they bore of the many shrewd brushes they had had young. The houses were tall and roomy, a ture of a most substantial kind; but they h strange tenants, that is, those of them that ha a few seemed empty. At the doors of othe faces looked out, as if wondering at the un as if it were cruel to rouse these quiet slum by dragging through their streets so noisy a gence.

We passed Caravaggio, famous as the birt great painters who have both taken their nam -the Caravacchi. We passed, too, the that is, all of it which the calamities of the left. Darkness then fell upon us,—if a firm

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 quiries I was told that I was in Brescia, but I should have preferred to visit it at a hour. "The best feelings," says the poet, "m and the most classic towns must have sleep getful that famous geographers who lived we sand years ago had mentioned its name, and had sung its streams, and that it still conta relics of its high antiquity, slept on much as would have done at the same hour.

Time is of no value on the south of the A halt at this unseasonable hour was simply honest woman who had come with us from M as big well-nigh as the diligence itself; but wh trouble was, not herself, but her trunk. It la of an immense pile of baggage, which rose on vehicle; and before it could be got at, every a taken down, and put on the pavement. Of cou had to be put back, and the operation was gon deliberately and leisurely. A full hour and a sumed in the process; and the passengers, havi retire to, did their best to withstand the chill quick march on the street.

So, these silent midnight streets I was tread of Brescia,-Brescia, within whose walls had of the mountains and the arts of the plain. I ing where pagan temples had once stood, wh sanctuaries had next arisen, and where there had not a few when the light of the Reformation br ern Italy. I remembered, too, that this was the nold of Brescia," one of the reformers before the Arnold was a man of great learning, an intrepid

er to my i

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Brescia, for two the

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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 P

Failure of the Reformation in Italy-Causes of thisTheir great Numbers-Consequences of rejecting t The Present the Avenger of the Past-Extract from Effect-An " Accepted Time" for Nations-Alterna several European Nations in the Sixteenth Centu their Choice then, so is their Position now-Protestan tions contrasted.

Or the singular interest that attaches to Italy d days of the Reformation I need not speak. The Italians to throw off the papal yoke were grea cessful. Why these efforts came to nought wou ficult but instructive subject of inquiry. They fa partly from being made so near the centre of power, partly from the want of union and com the plans of the Italian reformers,-partly by dependence of the petty princes of the count Pope, and partly because the great sovereigns of though not unwilling that the Papacy should be their own country, by no means wished its extinct But though Italy did not reach the goal of religio