ther's answer was "he could not permit the dungeons and engines of torture to be viewed."-The holy father was also asked, "how many prisoners there might be confined in the prison ?" the holy father said "he was not permitted, by the laws of the Inquisition, to reveal any of its secrets or transactions, but that there was sometimes more, and sometimes fewer than at the present time." The holy father also stated, "that now the prisoners were not exposed to public view on the day of Auto da Fe, as before, but suffered within the walls of the Inquisition."—Thus leaving the friends and relatives of the prisoners in utter ignorance as to their fate.

We shall pass over the description Dellon gives of the Auto da Fe, as it is very similiar to what we have already inserted-and recount the severity of the Inquisition in its proceedings against books.

As soon as a book is published, it is carefully read by some of the familiars belonging to the Inquisition. These wretched critics are too ignorant to have taste, too bigoted to search for truth, and too malicious to relish beauties.They scrutinize not for the merits, but for the defects of an author, and pursue the slips of the pen with unremitting diligence.-Hence they read with prejudice, judge with partiality, pursue error with avidity, and strain that which is innocent into offensive meaning. They misunderstand, misapply, confound and pervert the sense; and when they have gratified the malignity of their disposition, discharge their thunder upon the author, that a prosecution may be founded upon their false conceptions, and designed misinterpretations. The most trivial charge causes the censure of a book; but it is to be observed, that the censure is of a threefold nature, viz.

R2

1

1. When the book is wholly condemned:

2. When the book is partly condemned, that is, when certain passages are pointed out as exceptionable, and orderto be expunged:

3. When the book is deemed incorrect; the meaning of which is, that a few words or expressions displease the inquisitors. These, therefore, are ordered to be altered, and such alterations go under the name of corrections.

From what has been said, it is evident that the inquisitors check the progress of learning, impede the increase of arts, nip genius in the bud, destroy the national taste, and continue the cloud of ignorance over the minds of the people.

A catalogue of condemned books is annually published under the three different heads of censures already mentioned, and being printed on a very large sheet of paper, is hung up in the most public and conspicuous places.-After

'which, people are obliged to destroy all such books as come under the first censure, and to keep none belonging to the other two censures, unless the exceptionable passages have been expunged, and the corrections made; as in either case disobedience would be of the most fatal consequence: for the possessing or reading the proscribed books are deemed very atrocious crimes.

The publisher of such books is usually ruined in his circumstances, and sometimes obliged to pass the remainder of his life in the Inquisition.

FORM OF

Excommunication.

The Pope's dreadful curse; being the form of excommunication of the church of Rome; taken out of the ledger book of the church of Rochester, now in the custody of the Dean and Chapter there: written by Ernulfus, the bishop.

By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, the mother and patroness of our Saviour, and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubims and seraphims, and of the holy patriarchs, pro