shall enter her house again. I see not therefore what we can do better than to cut her laces and put her decently to bed, slipping out of the door with as little noise as possible.

Casaubon. Rather should we act so in every case, than exchange a pledge with the perfidious, or reason with the unreasonable.

James. Nicodemus asked our Saviour how can these things be? and his divine instructor heard and answered him with complacency: put the same question to his vicar, issuing from some mountain monastery or some suburban lane, and the fellow will illuminate you with a cartload of faggots.

The French displayed long before the English a resolution to defend the prerogatives of royalty against the usurpations of the Popedom. Vigilantius, afore cited, a Frenchman by birth, although a bishop in Spain, condemned the celibacy of priests, the adoration of relics, and the lighting of lamps and candles by day in churches. Pierre Bruis, neither less intelligent nor less holy, took up and maintained his doctrines, which had languished six centuries, and taught them for twenty years at Toulouse. He was burned alive: for the Roman shepherds have not only their shears but their tar-pot. Henri le Moine followed his doctrine, and preached the words of his master with such good effect, that half the nation came back again from Rome to Christ. At the same season flourished Valdo, as you remember, and translated the Bible into French. His followers, called by his name and by that of Albigenses, carried this precious treasure through more than the third and fourth generation, and yielded it up only with their lives to the God who gave it. Indulgences were in vain held forth to this poor and lonely remnant of the apostolic church. Nicolas Oremus, plucking up courage by example, wrote to prove that the Papacy is Antichrist, and translated anew the Holy Scriptures into French, by order of king Charles the Fifth. Under the next of that name the secretary Maitre Alain wrote his Somnium Vicidarium; for which I hope, rather than for any other work, my kinswoman Margaret, wife of the Dauphin, gave him a kiss upon the mouth while (it is said) he lay asleep.

The greatest blow of all was received in 1395, when the Sorbonne decreed that the two contending popes might box it out by themselves, and that the people of France should have nothing to do with either. In pursuance of which resolution the kingdom was exempt from papal jurisdiction three whole years. In soberer times, when the popes were neither in the cockpit nor upon the perch, we have proofs before us that the French knew how to clip their combs, shorten their tails, and cleanse their plumage. To pretermit the vigour and firmness of Philippe le Bel, who burnt the Bull of Bonifacius the Eighth in the streets of Paris by the hands of the hangman, and, having seized his Holiness at Anagni, would have treated him with as little ceremony, had he not been rescued, Giovanni Buonacorsi of Lucca published, under the reign of Louis the Twelfth, a

proposition that the pope was above the king in temporals. The parliament of Paris condemned him to be stripped of his canonical dress, to put on one of green and yellow, to carry a candle of the same colour, to confess before the image of the Virgin Mary that this proposition was contrary to the Roman-catholic religion, and to ask pardon of the king, of justice, and of the people of the people, because he had put their souls in danger: else the parliament of Paris was always most discreet in its consignment of liberty; not leaving any in places where it might do harm, and placing it abundantly in the king's treasury, to be distributed at his royal will and pleasure. The doctors of that country, and none but doctors and princes are fit to handle the subject, are unanimous that law and liberty, like offices and honours, can emanate only from the throne. I throw out this in friendship and generosity, M. Casaubon, feeling that you, born and educated as you were at Geneva, might think erroneously upon a point which the nicest hand can not separate from religion, and loving you with all my heart, and most anxious for your welfare and salvation.

Casaubon. Sire, I will think thereupon. James. Friend Casaubon, do you speak in the royal sense of the word or in the popular? We kings, when we say to parliament or other folk that we will think upon anything, mean always that we will dismiss it from our thoughts.

Casaubon. That would not be easy to do with the words of your Majesty.

James. We have already seen and examined the anarchal doctrines of the popish priesthood, and can never be surprised at any atrocity committed by a sect, the only one since the creation of the world, by which fratricide has been protected. Juan Diaz, in the memory of some now living,* was murdered in Nuremberg at the instigation of his brother Alfonso, for having adopted the doctrine of the apostles in preference to the glosses of the popes. His murderers were imprisoned in the jail of Inspruck: the Emperor Charles V. stopped the proceedings, under the pretext that he himself would take cognisance of them at the approaching diet. I know not whether the facts have been divulgated.

Casaubon. The whole history of the assassination has been published in Latin, under the name of Claudius Senarclæus. I possess one of the few copies that have escaped the searches made in order to suppress them. Medals were coined by order of Gregory XIII. to commemorate Saint Bartholomew's day on one side is the pope, on the other is the slaughter. He commanded it also to be painted in the Vatican, where the painting still exists. In popes no atrocity is marvellous or remarkable; but how painful is it to find a scholar like Muretus exulting in a massacre ! Horatius Tursellinus, another eminent scholar, is another proof among thousands that literature, the tamer and subduer of barbarism, can not pene

* 1545.

iron and labour may be evident. If an Italian of condition spends a lira, he must be seen to spend it his stables, his laundry, his domestics, his peasants, must strike the eye together: his pigsty must have witnesses like his will. Every tree is accursed, as that of which the holy cross was fabricated, and ought to be swept away. You are surely the most hospitable people in the world even that edifice which derives its exist ence and its name from privacy, stands exposed and wide-open to the stranger, wherever it stands at all.

When I resided on the Lake of Como, I visited the palace of Marchese Odeschalchi. Before it swelled in majesty that sovran of inland waters; behind it was a pond surrounded with brickwork, in which about twenty young goldfish jostled and gasped for room. The Larius had sapped the foundation of his palace, and the Marchese had exerted all his genius to avenge himself: he composed this bitter parody. I inquired of his cousin Don Pepino who conducted me, when the roof would be put on: he looked at me, doubting if he understood me, and answered in a gentle tone, "It was finished last summer." My error originated from observing red pantiles, kept in their places by heavy stones, loose, and laid upon them irregularly.

"What a beautiful swell, Don Pepino, is this upon the right," exclaimed I: "the little hill seems sensible of pleasure as he dips his foot into the Larius."

"There will be the offices."

"What! and hide Grumello? Let me enjoy the sight while I can. He appears instinct with life, nodding the network of vines upon his head, and beckoning and inviting us, while the figtrees and mulberries and chesnuts and walnuts, and those lofty and eternal cypresses, stand motionless around. His joyous mates, all different in form and features, push forward; and, if there is not something in the air, or something in my eyesight, illusory, they are running a race along the borders. Stop a moment: how shall we climb over these two enormous pines? Ah, Don Pepino! old trees in their living state are the only things that money cannot command. Rivers leave their beds, run into cities, and traverse mountains for it; obelisks and arches, palaces and temples, amphitheatres and pyramids, rise up like exhalations at its bidding; even the free spirit of Man, the only thing great on earth, crouches and cowers in its presence. It passes away and vanishes before venerable trees. What a sweet odour is here! whence comes it? sweeter it appears to me and stronger than of the pine itself." "I imagine," said he, "from the linden; yes, certainly."

"Is that a linden? It is the largest, and, I should imagine, the oldest upon earth, if I could perceive that it had lost any of its branches."

"Pity that it hides half the row of yon houses from the palace! It will be carried off with the two pines in the autumn."

"O Don Pepino!" cried I; "the French, who abhor whatever is old and whatever is great, have spared it; the Austrians, who sell their fortresses and their armies, nay, sometimes their daughters, have not sold it: must it fall! Shall the cypress of Soma be without a rival? I hope to have left Lombardy before it happens; for, events which you will tell me ought never to interest me at all, not only do interest me, but make me (I confess it) sorrowful.”

Who in the world could ever cut down a linden, or dare in his senses to break a twig from off one? To a linden was fastened the son of William Tell, when the apple was cloven on his head. Years afterward, often did the father look higher and lower, and search laboriously, to descry if any mark were remaining of the cord upon its bark! often must he have inhaled this very odour! what a refreshment was it to a father's breast! The flowers of the linden should be the only incense offered up in the churches to God. Happy the man whose aspirations are pure enough to mingle with it!

How many fond and how many lively thoughts have been nurtured under this tree! how many kind hearts have beaten here! Its branches are not so numerous as the couples they have invited to sit beside it, nor its blossoms and leaves as the expressions of tenderness it has witnessed. What appeals to the pure all-seeing heavens! what similitudes to the everlasting mountains! what protestations of eternal truth and constancy! from those who now are earth; they, and their shrouds, and their coffins! The caper and figtree have split the monument. Emblems of past loves and future hopes, severed names which the holiest rites united, broken letters of brief happiness, bestrew the road, and speak to the passer-by in vain.

To see this linden was worth a journey of 500 miles. It looked directly up the lake, in the centre of its extremity, and facing the boundary mountains of the Val-Tellina.

The cypress of Soma, where the first battle was fought between Hannibal and Scipio, is, in my opinion, the object most worth seeing in Italy, unless it be the statue at the base of which fell Cæsar.

Pallavicini. One would imagine it must surely be the patriarch of the vegetable world.

Landor. Lest, Signor Marchese, you should remain in doubt whether any other tree may be older, I shall refer you to Pietro della Valle, a lively, sensible, and veracious traveller, and credulous only where credulity is necessary to salvation. He mentions a terebinthus with three trunks growing from one root and St. Jerom writes that it was there in his time, and that it was holden in great veneration by the people round. I do not believe the terebinthus to be so durable as the cypress; not being so slow in growth, and the branches more easily broken by the wind, whence the rain is admitted, cracks and crevices are made, and insects lodge in them and

enlarge them. The antiquity of this terebinthus must have been extraordinary in the time of St. Jerom, to be so distinguished from other trees, and held even then in veneration; and its appearance could have become but little changed in the twelve centuries between his visit and that of Pietro della Valle. Not many years ago, a tree even of higher antiquity was living and flourishing at Patras. It was a cypress, mentioned by Pliny, and seen by Spon, who visited the country in the year 1676. He represents it as of that species which here in Italy you call the female; a more beautiful tree than the other, but generally thought to be of shorter duration, from its horizontal branches (when extremely long) being subject to be broken by the weight of snow. The trunk, in the time of Spon, was eighteen French feet in diameter.

Pallavicini. You passed by Soma in going to Milan on your way to Como. I would gladly see that lake, which detained you three whole years among a people so rude and barbarous.

Landor. Barbarous do not call it, though indeed it may be too much so. It was in Como I received and visited the brave descendants of the Jovii: it was in Como I daily conversed with the calm philosophical Sironi: and I must love the little turreted city for other less intrinsic recollections. Thither came to see me the learned and modest Bekker, and it was there, after several delightful rambles, I said farewell to Southey.

Pallavicini. If ever I should again have business at Milan, I might almost be tempted to visit the Lario, greatly as I should be ridiculed at Genoa for a journey of curiosity. We Italians study more the works of art than of nature; you Englishmen the contrary.

Our towns, to continue the subject on which we began, are in much better style than our villas.

Landor. They indeed are magnificent, and appear the more so after the wretched streets of France. In that country almost everything animated is noisy, and almost everything inanimate is mis-shapen. All seems reversed: the inhabitants of the north are darker than those of the south indeed the women of Calais are much browner than any I have seen in Italy: the children, the dogs, the frogs, are more clamorous than ours; the cocks are shriller. But at worst we are shocked by no contrast; the very language seeming to be constructed upon stinks; and dirt and ugliness going together. While in Italy we cannot walk ten paces without observing the union of stateliness and filth, of gorgeous finery and squalid meanness; and the expressions of vice and slavery are uttered in the accents of angels. The churches are fairly divided between piety and prostitution, leaving the entrance and a few broken chairs to beggary and vermin. Here always is something of misapplied paint and importunate gilding. A couple of pepper-boxes are mounted on St. Peter's, which also exhibits the incredible absurdity of two clocks in its front: a dozen of mass-boxes range the Colosseo: the Pantheon is the tomb of a fiddler.

Pallavicini. I have been in London, and was much surprised at the defects of architecture in your capital. Not only Rome, Genoa, Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Milano, but Paris itself, excels it: and how incomparably more magnificent must have been the public works of Athens!

Landor. Those both of Paris and London would not constitute a third of the Piræus alone, of which the length exceeded six miles; the height was sixty feet, not reckoning the foundation, and the breadth at top about twelve. It was of square stones, fastened together by cramps of iron and by molten lead.

Pallavicini. Being begun and carried on in the greatest haste, I wonder how the Athenians had leisure for the squaring of stones, each of which weighed several tons.

Landor. This question has never been discussed. In my opinion, those of the greatest bulk were taken from the ancient walls of the city, which not only were useless now its boundaries were quadrupled in extent, but which obstructed the communications and deformed the beauty of the place. These originally were erected by one of those societies of itinerant masons, which, like many colonies, are called Pelasgian. I suspect they were Etrurians; a people more early on the road to civilisation than the inhabitants of Hellas, although they never carried it to the same extent. They indeed were the Chinese of Europe. Pallavicini. Surely you undervalue them.

Landor. Far from it: I was speaking of the ancient Greece alone, of all the nations on the globe, rivals the modern. But there is no evidence or probability that the arts in old Etruria ever equalled the same in China; where moreover the powers of imagination and reflection raise our wonder in their earlier writers. The great wall of China quite obscures the Piræus by its magnitude, unequal as it is in its utility and its beauty; which may be imagined, although faintly, if we recollect that to the main walls of the Piræus were added two others; one four miles long, the other somewhat shorter, each adorned with statues.

Pallavicini. This work then exceeded any the Romans themselves have built.

Landor. The Romans did less in their city than in the conquered territories. The greatest of their labours was the wall against the Caledonians: the most solid and majestic was the bridge across the Danube. In theatres they excelled the Athenians: those at Athens were worthy of Pollio and Seneca; those at Rome, of Eschylus and Sophocles. The Romans, in ancient times as in modern, found plenty of materials among the ruins. A band of robbers and outcasts saw on the banks of the Tiber a city so little dilapidated that it served them to inhabit. They repaired the roofs with sedge and rushes, deposited their plunder within the two fortresses dedicated to Saturn and to Janus, grew thrifty and religious, with no abatement of enterprise or stint of spoliation, found order more and more necessary, and consented to elect with more