mentary instruction, under a combination of favourable circum stances, may, in the course of ages, raise the standard of intellect in the great bulk of a nation; but the discipline of learning, however useful in the formation of regular and subordinate habits, cannot, by any direct operation, produce that sudden and general change in the intellectual energies, which the liberty of discussing religious questions gave, in a short time, to whole nations, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If, as we may judge from events, the object of Providence was suddenly to rouse a certain. portion of mankind into mental activity, nothing could so effectu-; ally produce a general impulse as placing before them a subject of... the highest interest, seemingly within the reach of every individual, where every man might flatter himself to become a proficient with out submitting to the authority of a worldly master. It is impos sible to conceive a higher degree of self-complacency than that. which appears to have been enjoyed by the puritans, especially of the lower classes. They boasted an internal change; and surely none could be greater than that of their consciousness with regard,, to their own dignity and importance. Were it possible for a man, of moderate accomplishments to find himself, suddenly and miraculously, possessed of Newton's whole science and powers, he couldnot feel more elated by such an influx of knowledge, than the pear/ sant or mechanic, who, in the space of a few days, found himself transformed into a judge of religious truth, and felt confident of his personal right to assert and maintain his decisions. The power which upset the throne of these kingdoms was only the result of this mental stimulus, which, in that, instance, showed the formidable extent of its activity. But it is the nature of all moral as well as physical energies to be liable to exceed the limits beyond which they are destructive to man; yet it is to them that man is indebted for happiness, for life itself.

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The salutary change once effected, its consequences were visible in the whole frame of society; a new spirit, a new energy pervaded the mass of the people. The instrument which Providence had allowed to act with the fearful violence which appears at times, in some of its physical agents, lost, in the course of two generations, the stormy activity which was scarcely more than adequate to the enormous resistance opposed to its operation; while the inheritance, of those blessings which are inseparable from the unfettered exertion of the mental powers, and the absence of intellectual servility, will be transmitted to the descendants of the first protestants so long as they shall exist collected into independent nations,

The blind policy of a despotic government might triumph in the idea that, by smothering the seeds of religious controversy, Spain had been made quietly to surrender her civil and religious

rights at the discretion of her monarchs. But the heirs of the Spanish crown would have cursed the narrow views of their ances tors had they been sufficiently enlightened to trace up to that measure the rapid decay of their once noble inheritance. The aspiring and bold genius which had directed Spain during her political growth was deprived of its wings in the act of springing up after mental improvement. From that time it pined and sickened. Even the laurels it had gained in the field, the crown of valour which none had ever plucked from its brows, began to fade away. When Spain had become the champion of bigotry and ignorance, heaven, in mercy, palsied her sword-hand her courage, strained to the last, and desperately exerted in a bad cause, degenerated into fierceness; and she retired from the contest covered alike with her enemies' blood and with shame. Thus degraded and exhausted, she became the inheritance of Charles II., the last of her Austrian monarchs, a feeble prince, who, having lost all hope of an heir of his body, allowed the agents of the families which claimed the succession to divide the Spaniards by their intrigues, and debauch the remnants of national honour by corruption and bribery.

The accession of Philip D'Anjou, it must be confessed, raised Spain somewhat above the state into which she had sunk under the Austrian kings. The taste and splendour of the court of Lewis XIV. was not without its influence on Spanish literature. Something was done to dispel the thick mist which had settled upon the minds of the natives; and the Inquisition itself, though preserved in the fulness of its appalling powers, as a reward for services done during the War of Succession, was alarmed to find that the king declined an invitation to an Auto da Fé, which had been prepared at Madrid to welcome his arrival.

It was on the accession of the House of Bourbon to the throne of Spain that the elements of such opinions and views as characterize the liberals of the present day were first introduced into that country. Few, if any, traces either of the classical learning or of the Italian taste which existed among the Spaniards in the reigns of Charles V. and Philip II. could be found among the degraded subjects of the last Austrian monarch. Even the beautiful language which had luxuriated in the national drama under Philip IV. was now defaced by the absurd and perverted taste of the few who employed it in writing, and the many who gained the applause of an ignorant public by the ludicrous extravagance of their ser

mons.

Under the patronage of a truly enlightened sovereign, Spain, awakening from her torpor, might have created a literature of her own, and stamped it with the character of her vigorous genius. But Philip was a bigot of the French school; he loved literature

as an ornament which became a court, and wished, if possible, ta make Madrid a miniature of Paris. The few men of talent who still preserved a taste for real knowledge, and deplored the obstacles which stood in the way of national improvement, were embodied in two academies, one for the cultivation of the Spanish language; the other for the advancement of national history. Facilities were offered for a literary intercourse between the eminent men of letters in France, and these eager votaries of learning. But still that national enemy of mental improvement, the Inquisition, was supported by the king, who mindful, to the last, of the advice which Lewis XIV. had given him, resisted the repeated endeavours of his ministers to suppress, or reform it. The Inquisition, in fact, raged with uncommon fary during the forty-six years that¬ Philip held the crown. The descendants of the baptized Jews! were found to have been secretly attached to the religion of their fathers, which, by the gradual spread of the families, bad multiplied to a surprising degree the secret followers of Moses. The number of general Autos da Fé during the reign of Philip, V. amounted d to seven hundred and eighty-two. The reports of fifty-four of these? Autos, consulted by Llorente, give the following number of suffer- ) ers, Seventy-nine persons committed to the flames; sixty-threejd burnt in effigy; eight hundred and twenty-nine punished Hay fine, imprisonment and infamy. The same historian makes the averageɔz of persons burnt alive, every year, during that period, abbuto twenty-four. This horrid persecution fell almost exclusively uponol Jews and enthusiasts. The race of protestants was utterly extinct.w

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While the blood-hounds of Rome were in pursuit of this smallero game, the sceptical notions which had sprung up together with the philosophical taste of the court of Lewis XV. penetrated intoll Spain with French literature, and became as inseparable from the') knowledge acquired out of the Spanish universities, as it was from that which was called philosophy at Paris. This event was inevi! | table. The almost lifeless trunk of Spanish literature had been engrafted with a shoot from beyond the Pyrenees, which was now! fast draining whatever sap remained in the withered aroots.The. works which appeared in the reign of Ferdinand VI. were written). in a style that could not conceal their source. It was quite different w from the Italianized prose of the sixteenth century, and partook d greatly of the abrupt and pointed phraseology of the neighbouring nation. The establishment of the Spanish academy could only preserve the words of the language in a dictionary; but could not q prevent an absolute change in the style. The works of Feyjoo, f the man who had the greatest influence in the amelioration, as fant as it went, of the popular mind, might be translated almost word for word into pure French, the language through which he had

acquired

acquired the information, she so ably adapted to the state of his country. He ventured to recommend the study of French in preference to the slight knowledge of Latin, which is still common in Spain; and though this was, at first, considered as one of his most startling paradoxes, the advice was not without effectmebron

The reigns of Ferdinand VI. and the early part of that of his brother and successor Charles III comprise the golden age of the Spanish liberal schoolto Philip V their father, had looked upon the Inquisition as one of the main supports of his disputed right to the crown. Ferdinand and Charles began to regard it with jealousy, by reason of the frequent encroachments on the civil authority, which that tribunal was continually attempting. Charles, especially, who, during his reign at Naples, had been too near the Holy See not to fear its ambition, was a decided reformer in points unconnected with faith, and merely dependent on canon law. In order to settle a concordat with the Pope, and limit his authority in the temporal affairs of the church of Spam, Charles surrounded himselfo with the enlightened men who had improved their talents at the court of his predecessors. The Marquis of Roda, the Counts of Aranda, Floridablanica, and Campomanes, the Archbishops of Burgos and Zaragoza, the Bishops of Taragona, Albarracing and Orihueln, the first four well known pupils of the Parisian school, the last five either Jansenists, or (as we strongly suspect of all Spaniards who are described by that name) disguised followers of the same principles, were the king's assistants in the work of expelling the Jesuits from Spain, and establishing a system ofredclesiastical government upon the basis of the Gallican church.

It has been wittily observed, that whoever wishes to form a good library should choose his books exclusively out of the Prohibitory Catalogue; and it seems as if Charles III had, by the same analogy, picked all his ministers from the Black Book of the Inquisition. The danger, however, of this secret enrolment was now greatly diminished, both from the characters of the reigning monarch and his predecessor, and the peculiar nature of the philosophicals or sceptical tenets. Had philosophy obliged her followers to a con scientious avowal of their opinions, neither Ferdinand nor Charles was enlightened enough to save them; indeed, four persons were burnt during these two reigns, and fifty-six condemned to the usual correctional punishments. But the inquisitors, though eager in the pursuit of philosophical infidels, were extremely surprised and provoked when, in the news heresy, they found a kind of optical delusion a huge monster in view when unpursued, and a mere shadow when approached. The hands of the holy judges seemed now to have obtained the fatal gift of Midas: let them but touch a pupil of Voltaire or Rousseau, and the offensive mass of heterodoxy

heterodoxy was suddenly converted into the standard gold of the purest Roman Catholic faith. Such unreal, vanishing enemies were not made to strengthen the orthodoxy of the Spaniards, by affording exhibitions at the stake. Their cautiousness and circumspection was extreme; and, though a taste for studies which were neglected at the universities, a certain generalizing and analytical tone of reasoning was soon construed by the inquisitors and their friends into a strong indication of philosophism, we know but one instance, in which the new sect presented an opportunity to inflict punishment by the mark of infamy; and none where the life of the accused was in danger.*:**

The accession of Charles IV seemed most favourable to the propagation of the French taste and principles. His unconquerable aversion to the cares of government, his passionate fondness for the chase, which employed his whole existence, and the unprincipled dissipation of his wife, into whose hands the whole power of the crown had devolved, promised but little encourage ment to the bigots. But they were still too strong in the prejudices and inherited feelings of the nation. The liberal ministers of Charles III. had continued in place under his son', and Floridablanca, now raised to the rank of premier, was not umwilling to support some cautious attempts at a change in the public opinion, which, without shaking the foundations, should diminish the exorbitant influence of the church. "The first peri- ́ ́ odical work in Spanish had been published in the reign of Philip V.it seems, with little success. It was entitled Diario de los Literatos, and confined, accordingly, to literary subjects: One of a more popular nature, El Censor, was now established with a view to attack popular prejudices with the weapons of

Don Pablo de Olavide, a knight of the Order of Saint James, one of the most enlightened Spaniards of our days, was made civil governor of Andalusia in 1767, During his administration, he conceived and executed the plan of establishing colonies of Germans in the portion of Sierra Morena which separates Andalusia from La Mancha, on the road to Madrid. By his activity the bands of robbers which infested the mountains were destroyed, several towns built, and the colonists settled under the most liberal arrangements of temporal exemption from taxes, grants of land, and a gratuitous supply of agricultural stock. Olavide was imprudent enough to have some theological disputes with a German friar, who had the spiritual charge of the colonies, and to dis close his opinions to a favourite niece, who betrayed him on her death bed. The evidence against him was too clear to be evaded by the usual professions of Catholic faith. In 1778, after two years imprisonment, he was exhibited in a private duto dà fé wearing the coat of infamy. The principal inhabitants of the town were invited, to see their former governor in that degraded condition. The power and inveteracy of the prejudices, which associate every thing base and odious with the idea of heresy, were strongly exhibited in Olavide. The unprejudiced philosopher had endured the whole act of degradation with perfect composure. But, when the abstract of the trial and sentence was read and the secretary came to the charge of heresy, of which the judges had declared him strongly suspected, he exclaimed in a loud voice, God forbid and burst into a flood of tears.

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