Middleton. At least I know that the one was accepted; I am ignorant that the other was. Magliabechi. This indeed is even worse than what you most abominate, idolatry. Middleton. I am not one of those who consider idolatry as the most heinous of sins. In the commission of idolatry for a lifetime, there is less wickedness than in one malignant action or one injurious and blighting word.

Magliabechi. O Mr. Middleton! Idolatry is denounced for God's especial vengeance: yet in the blindness of your hearts you Protestants accuse us of this tremendous sin. A thousand times have you been told that we do not venerate what represents, but what is represented.

Middleton. You tell us that you do not worship images, but that you worship in them what they express be it so: the Pagans did the same, neither better nor worse. What will you answer to the accusation of worshipping a living man? Adoration is offered undisguisedly and openly to priests and monks, however profligate and infamous their lives may have been and be. Every Pope is adored by the Holy College on his elevation.*

Magliabechi. We suppose him to be the representative of Jesus Christ.

Middleton. His legate is also his representative, and a valet de chambre the legate's. We may obey one man in place of another, but not adore him. The Emperor of Austria had a difference with the Holy Ghost on the election of Cardinal Della Somaglia to the Popedom. The Holy Ghost had inspired the Holy College to prefer him: the Emperor of Austria disapproved of this inspiration, and set it aside by his veto.

He

knew that there was enough virtue in Italy already, and

declared that he wanted no more learning. In proof of the adoration of his present Holiness, the left hand elect of the Holy Ghost, I shall transcribe the very words of the

official gazette.

"Si recò alla Basilica Vaticana per ricevere colà dall' altare della Tribuna l' adorazione ed ubbedienza del Sacro Collegio coi solenni riti completi."

try: in others, those who have enough for one side of the character, have not enough for the opposite: you in general are sufficiently wellstored to squander much of your intellectual property, to neglect much, and to retain much.

Mutual civilities had passed between the two ecclesiastics, and Father Onesimo had received from Mr. Harbottle many invitations to dinner. After the first, he had declined them, deeming the songs and disputations in a slight degree indecorous. The party at this was clerical and although he represented it as more turbulent in its conclusion than ours are, and although there were many warm disputants, chiefly on jockies or leaders in Parliament, he assured me he was much edified and pleased, when, at the removal of the dishes, each drank devoutly to his old friend. "I thought of you," said he, "my dear Magliabechi, for every one had then before his eyes the complacent guide of his youth. Mine shed a few tears; at which my friends glanced one upon another and smiled; for from an Englishman not even the crucifix can extort a tear.”

Onesimo was at breakfast with Mr. Harbottle, when an Italian ran breathless into the room, kissed the father's hand, and begged him to come instantly and attend a dying man. "We will go together," said Mr. Harbottle. Following their informant, they passed through several lanes and alleys, and at last mounted the stairs of a garret, in which was lying a youth, stabbed the night before by a Livornese, about one of those women who excite the most quarrels and deserve the fewest. Leave me for a moment," said Father Sozzifante, "I must hear his confession."

66

Hardly had he spoken, when out came all whom kindness or piety or curiosity had collected, and "He is in Paradise!" was the exclamation. Mr. Harbottle then entered, and was surprised to hear the worthy confessor ask of the dead man whether he forgave his enemy, and answer in another tone, Yes, father, from my heart I pardon him."

On returning, he remarked that it appeared strange to him. "Sir," answered Onesimo, "the Catholic church enjoins forgiveness of injuries." "All churches enjoin the same," replied Mr. Harbottle. "He was unable to speak for himself," said the father, "and therefore I answered for him

like a christian."

Mr. Harbottle, as became him, was silent. On their return homeward they passed by a place

which, if I remember, is called New-gate, a gate above which, it appears, criminals are hanged. At that very hour the cord was round the neck of a wretch who was repeating the Lord's prayer: the first words they heard were, "Give us this day our daily bread." The father looked at his companion with awe, spreading his fingers on his sleeve, and pressing it until he turned his face toward him. They both pushed on; but, such was the crowd, they could not pass the suppliant before he had uttered, "And lead us not into temptation." The good father stepped before Mr. Harbottle, and, lifting his hands above his ears, would have said something; but his companion cried smartly, "I have seals to my watch, Signor Sozzifante, and there is never a fellow hanged but he makes twenty fit for it: pray walk on."

Fairly out of the crowd, "Poor sinful soul !" said the father, "ere this time thou art in purgatory! Thy daily bread! alas, thou hast eaten the last mouthful! Thy temptation! thou wilt find but few temptations there, I warrant thee, my son! Even these divine words, Mr. Harbottle, may come a little out of season, you perceive."

Mr. Harbottle went home dissatisfied. In about an hour a friend of his from Oxford called on him as the weather was warm, the door standing ajar, Sozzifante heard him repeat the history of their adventure, and add: "I will be damned if in my firm persuasion the fellow is not a Jesuit: I never should have thought it: he humbugged me about the dead man, and perhaps got another hanged to quiz me. Would you believe it? He has been three good years in getting up this farce; the first I have ever caught him, and the last he shall ever catch me at."

Father Onesimo related to me these occurrences, without a word of reproach or an accent of ill-humour. "The English is a strong language," said he placidly, "and the people, the least deceivers in the world, are naturally the most indignant at a suspicion of deceit. Mr. Harbottle, who, I dare to say, is ripened ere this time into an exemplary and holy man, was then rather fitter for society than for the church. Do you know," said he in my ear, although we were alone, "I have seen him pay his laundress (and there was nothing between them) five shillings for one week only a sum that serves any cardinal the whole winter-quarter in April and May indeed, from one thing or other, linen wants washing oftener." Mr. Middleton, I have proved my candour, I trust, and my freedom from superstition: but he who seeks will find: and perhaps he who in obstinacy closeth his eyes long together, will open them just at the moment when he shall meet what he avoided. I will inform you of some facts I know, proving the efficacy of prayer to saints.

Giacomo Pastrani of Genoa, a citizen not abundant in the gifts of fortune, had however in his possession two most valuable and extremely rare things, a virtuous wife and a picture of his patron Saint Giacomo by Leonardo. The wife had long been ill her malady was expensive: their sub

stance was diminishing: still no offers had tempted him, although many had been made, to sell the picture. At last he refused to alienate it otherwise than in favour of a worthy priest, and only as the price of supplications to the Virgin. "Who knows how many it may require ?" said the holy man; " and it is difficult to make a prayer which the Virgin has not heard before; perhaps fifty will hardly do. Now fifty crowns would be little for such protection." The invalid, who heard the conversation, wept aloud. "Take it, take it," said the husband, and wept too, lifting it from the nail, and kissing for the last time the glass that covered it. The priest made a genuflexion, and did the same. His supplications prevailed; the wife recovered. The priest, hearing that the picture was very valuable, although the master was yet uncertain, and that in Genoa there was no artist who could clean it, waited for that operation until he went to Milan. Here it was ascertained to be the work of Leonardo, and a dealer gave him four thousand crowns for it. He returned in high glee at what had happened, and communicated it to all his acquaintance. The recovered woman, on hearing it, fell sick again immediately, and died. Wishing to forget the sacrifice of her picture, she had prayed no more to Saint Giacomo; and the Virgin, we may presume, on that powerful saint's intercession, had abandoned her.

Awful fact! Mr. Middleton. Now mark another perhaps more so. I could overwhelm you with a crowd of witnesses. Middleton. My dear sir, I do perceive you could. Magliabechi. The saints in general are more vindictive than our Lady; of whose forbearance, not unaccompanied at last by chastisement, I will relate to you a memorable example. I have indeed no positive proof that he of whom I am about to speak had neglected his prayers to the Virgin; but, from what he certainly did, it is by no means uncharitable to suppose it. He moreover, by this action, as you will remark, was the cause why others were constrained to omit the salutary act of supplication as they went along.

Middleton. I am in suspense.

Magliabechi. Contiguous to my own villa there is one belonging to Signor Anco-Marzio Natale del Poggio. At the corner of the road was inserted in the garden-wall an image of the blessed Virgin, with the bambino in her arms. Anco-Marzio had been heard to call it, somewhat hastily, an ugly one, and to declare that he would take it down. The threat however, for several years, was not carried into execution: at last it was accomplished. Behold the consequence! Robbers climbed over the wall (would you believe it?) in the very place whence the effigy had been removed, and upon the very night too of its removal: and AncoMarzio lost not only the whole crop of his lemons, none of which had ever been stolen in former years, but also a pair of knee-buckles, which his maid servant had taken that occasion of polishing with quick lime, and of which he deeply lamented

the loss, not because a crown could scarcely have replaced them, but because they were his father's, and he had bequeathed them by his last will and testament to a very dear old friend.

No reply, no reasoning, can affect this. I know the fact I visited the spot the next morning: I saw the broken wall: I saw the leaves of the lemon-trees under the vases, without a lemon the size of a filbert on the plants. Who delayed the mad project so long? who permitted it at last? who punished it? and for what end? Never afterward did Anco-Marzio pass an effigy of the blessed Virgin, but he kissed it again and again with due reverence, although it were wet with whitewash or paint. Every day did he renew the flowers before the one whose tabernacle he had violated, placing them where he could bend his head over them in humble adoration as he returned at night from his business in the city. It has indeed been suspected that he once omitted this duty; certain it is, that he once was negligent in it. He acknowledged to me that, coming home later than usual, and desirous of turning the corner and reaching the villa as soon as might be, it being dusk, he was inclined to execute his duty too perfunctoriously, and encountered, instead of the flowers, a bunch of butchers-broom. None grows thereabout. I do not insist on this: but the lemons, Mr. Middleton! the thieves, Mr. Middleton! the breach in the garden-wall, made for an irreligious purpose, and serving to punish irreligion. Well may you ponder. These things can not occur among you Englishmen.

Middleton. Excuse me, I pray you, my dear sir! Knowing the people of this country, my wonder was (for indeed I did wonder) that the lemons had never been stolen until that year.

Magliabechi. They never were, I do assure you from my own knowledge, for the last thirty. Middleton. The greater of the two miracles lies here.

Magliabechi. Of the two miracles? Astonishment and sudden terror make us oftentimes see things doubly for my part, I declare upon my conscience I can see but one.

:

Middleton. Nor I neither; to speak ingenuously.

Magliabechi. Ha ha! I comprehend you, and perhaps have to blame my deficiency of judgment in going a single step aside from the main subject of prayer. Now then for it: arm yourself with infidelity: chew the base metal, as boys do while they are whipped, lest they cry out.

Middleton. I am confident, from your present good-humour, that the castigation you meditate to inflict on me will be lenient. He is not commended who casts new opinions for men, but he who chimes in with old.

Magliabechi. The wisest of us, Mr. Middleton, can not separate the true from the untrue in everything.

Middleton. It required the hand of God himself, as we are informed, to divide the light from the darkness: we can not do it, but we can profit by

it. What is light we may call so; and why not what is dark?

Magliabechi. Would it fail to excite a discontent in England, if your Parliament should order Christmas to be celebrated in April? Yet Joseph Scaliger, the most learned man that ever existed, and among the least likely to be led astray by theory, has proved to the satisfaction of many not unlearned, that the nativity of our Lord happened in that month.

Middleton. As the matter is indifferent both in fact and consequences, I would let it stand. Νο direct or indirect gain, no unworthy end of any kind, can be obtained by its continuance: it renders men neither the more immoral nor the more dastardly: it keeps them neither the more ignorant of their duties nor the more subservient to any kind of usurpation.

Magliabechi. There may be inconveniences in an opposite direction. Pride and arrogance are not the more amiable for the coarseness of their garb. It is better to wrap up religion in a wafer, and swallow it quietly and contentedly, than to extract from it all its bitterness, make wry faces over it, and quarrel with those who decline the delicacy and doubt the utility of the preparation. Our religion, like the vast edifices in which we celebrate it, seems dark when first entered from without. The vision accommodates itself gradually to the place; and we are soon persuaded that we see just as much as we should see.

Middleton. Be it so: but why admit things for which we have no authority, and which we can not prove? I have left unsaid a great deal of what I might have said. Not being addicted to ridicule, nor capable of sustaining a comic part, I never have spoken a word about the bread of the angels.

Magliabechi. God forbid you should!

Middleton. Even your own church, I imagine, will hardly insist that the bread taken by Christians here on earth, in the sacrament of the eucharist, is the ordinary or extraordinary sustinence of angels. For whatever our faith may be, whatever supports it may require, theirs is perfect and has received its fruit.

Magliabechi. This is specious; so are many of your thoughts; but as I cannot prove the fact, neither can you prove the contrary; and we both perhaps shall act wisely in considering it as a phrase of devotion.

Middleton. I should think so, if the latitude of such phrases had not offered too many fields of battle. But let me hear the miracle with which you threatened me.

Magliabechi. My dear friend, I am now about to lay before you a fact universally known in our city, and which evinces at once the efficacy of prayer, even where it was irrational, and the consequence of neglecting it afterward.

Angiolina Cecci on the day before her nuptials took the sacrament most devoutly, and implored of our Florentine saint, Maria Bagnesi, to whose family she was related, her intervention for three

:

blessings that she might have one child only; that the cacaliere serciente, agreed on equally by her father and her husband, might be faithful to her; and lastly that, having beautiful hair, it never might turn grey. Now mark me. Assured of success to her suit by a smile on the countenance of the saint, she neglected her prayers and diminished her alms thenceforward. The money-box, which is shaken during the celebration of mass to recompense the priest for the performance of that holy ceremony, was shaken aloud before her day after day, and never drew a crazia from her pocket. She turned away her face from it, even when the collection was made to defray the arrears for the beatification of Bagnesi. Nine months after her marriage she was delivered of a female infant. I am afraid she expressed some discontent at the dispensations of Providence; for within an hour afterward she brought forth another of the same sex. She became furious, intractable, desperate; sent the babes without seeing them, into the country, as indeed our ladies usually do; and spake slightingly and maliciously of Saint Maria Bagnesi. The consequence was a puerperal fever, which continued several weeks, and was removed at great expense to her family, in masses, wax-candles, and processions. Pictures of the Virgin, wherever they were found by experience to be of more peculiar and more speedy efficacy, were hired at heavy charges from the convents: the cordeliers, to punish her pride and obstinacy, would not carry theirs to the house for less than forty scudi.

She recovered, admitted her friends to converse with her, raised herself upon her pillow, and accepted some consolation. At last it was agreed by her physicians that she might dress herself and eat brains and liver. Probably she was un

grateful for a benefit so signal and unexpected; since no sooner did her cameriera comb her hair, than off it came by the handful. She then per

ceived her error, but, instead of repairing it, abandoned herself to anguish and lamentation. Her cavaliere serviente, finding her bald, meagre, and eyesore, renewed his addresses to the mother. The husband, with two daughters to provide for, the only two ever reared out of the many entrusted to the same peasants, counted over again and again the dowry, shook his head, sighed piteously, and, hanging on the image of Maria Bagnesi a silver heart of five ounces, which, knowing it to have been stolen, he bought at a cheap rate of a Jew on Ponte Vecchio, calculated that the least of impending evils was, to purchase an additional bed just large enough for one.

You ponder, Mr. Middleton: you appear astonished at these visitations: you know my sincerity: you fully credit me: I can not doubt a moment of your conviction: I perceive it marked strongly on your countenance.

Middleton. Indeed, M. Magliabechi, I now discover the validity of prayer to saints, and the danger of neglecting them recommend me in yours to Saint Maria Bagnesi.*

* Saints in general make a great quantity of oil disapgood deal of it come suddenly out of nothing; as will be pear; but Saint Maria Bagnesi on the contrary made a evident to whoever reads Breve Ragguaglio della produ zione d'oglio sequita o scoperta il di 30 Maggio 1806, nel venerabile monastero degli Angele e S. Maria-Maddalena de' Pazzi, ad intercessione della B. M. Bartolommea Bagnesi, Virg. Fior. del Terz. Ordine di S. Domenico. Verificata autenticamente per sentenza della Curia Arci

vescovite Fiorentina del di 10 Decembre 1806. The quantity was not stinted to a flask or two, but filled up to the brim an earthen vessel containing six or seven barrels, which, by order of the Queen of Etruria, sister of Ferdinand VII. of Spain, was granted in small quantities to the faithful. The minutest portion of it rubbed on the body, as the book attests, with the simple invocation of Saint Maria Bagnesi, produced its own miracle. The courtiers were deeply religious orders; to others it only gave (as oil of old) a impressed with this awful verity; so were some in the cheerful countenance; for Saint Maria Bagnesi did not belong to them.

Milton. Friend Andrew, I am glad to hear that you amuse yourself in these bad times by the composition of a comedy, and that you have several plans in readiness for others. Now let me advise you to copy the better part of what the Grecks and Romans called the old, and to introduce songs and music, which, suitable as they are to Tragedy, are more so to the sister Muse. Furthermore, I could desire to see a piece modelled in every part on the Athenian scheme, with the names and characters and manners of times past. For surely you would not add to the immorality of the age, by representing anything of the present mode upon the theatre. Although we are more abundant in follies, which rather than vices are the groundwork of Comedy, we experience less *Milton had given his opinion in full on government and religion, and on many kinds of poetry; what he may be supposed to have thought on comedy was wanting.

disgust in touching those of other times than of our own; and in a drama the most ancient would have the most novelty. I know that all the periods and all the nations of the world united, have less variety of character than we find in this one city: yet, as you write to amuse yourself and a few learned friends, I am persuaded you would gladly walk out of it for once, and sit down to delineate a Momus or a Satyr, with at least as much complacency as a vulgar fopling or a partycoloured buffoon.

O, Andrew! albeit our learning raiseth up against us many enemies among the low, and more among the powerful, yet doth it invest us with grand and glorious privileges, and confer on us a largeness of beatitude. We enter our studies and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together: we raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another: we give no offence