Under these circumstances, it was determined to fit him, the eldest of four children, for his father's counting-house, with a view to his succeeding to the establishment when his father should retire; but the meagre training deemed sufficient for this purpose gives but a melancholy picture of the state of education in Spain, even among the better classes.

"A private teacher was accordingly procured, who read with me in the evening, after I had spent the best part of the day in making copies of the extensive correspondence of the house. I was now about ten years old, and though, from a child, excessively fond of reading, my acquaintance with books did not extend beyond the history of the Old Testament, a collection of the Lives of the Saints mentioned in the Catholic Almanac, out of which I chose the Martyrs, for modern Saints were never to my taste, - a little work that gave an amusing miracle of the Virgin Mary for every day of the year, and, prized above all, a Spanish translation of Fenelon's Telemachus, which I perused till I had nearly learned it by heart. I heard, therefore, with uncommon pleasure that, in acquiring a knowledge of Latin, I should have to read stories not unlike that of my favorite, the Prince of Ithaca. Little time, however, was allowed me for study, lest, from my love of learning, I should conceive a dislike to mercantile pursuits. But my mind had taken a decided bent. I hated the counting-house, and loved my books. Learning and the church were, to me, inseparable ideas; and I soon declared to my mother that I would be nothing but a clergyman.” — Ibid. pp. 80, 81.

The superstition of his parents, seconded, as it probably was in the instance in question, by family pride, and the influence of their spiritual advisers, would have accounted it a sort of sacrilege to oppose this self-consecration of their child. He was, therefore, sent first to the College of Dominicans, and afterwards to the University of Seville, to prepare himself for orders; but the regular routine of studies pursued at these places aimed at nothing higher than giving an imperfect knowledge of logic, natural philosophy, and school divinity. Even at that time, however, there appears to have existed, in most of the Spanish Universities, a philosophical party, a knot of bolder spirits, who, unawed by the spies and dungeons of the Inquisition, were not afraid to wander a little from the beaten paths. Our author's innate love of truth, and impatience of restraint soon drew him within the influences of a circle of this description; and it was through the stealthy privileges thus enjoyed, that he made his first acquaintance with

the literature of his own country, as well as with that of Italy and France. One thing led to another.

66

Hitherto," he says, "I had never had courage enough to take a forbidden book in my hands. The excommunication impending over me by the words ipso facto was indeed too terrific an object for my inexperienced mind. Delighted with the taste for poetry and eloquence which I had acquired, I had never brooded over any religious doubts, or rather, sincerely adhering to the Roman Catholic law, which makes the examination of such doubts as great a crime as the denial of the article of belief they affect, I had always shrunk with terror from every heterodox suggestion. But my now intimate friend and guide had made canon law his profession. Ecclesiastical history, in which he was deeply versed, had, without weakening his Catholic principles, made him a pupil of that school of canonists who, both in Germany and Italy, having exposed the forgeries by means of which papal power had made itself paramount to every human authority, were but too visibly disposed to a separation from Rome. My friend denied the existence of any power in the church to inflict excommunication, without a declaratory sentence in consequence of the trial of the offender. Upon the strength of this doctrine, he made me read the 'Discourses on Ecclesiastical History,' by the Abbé Fleury, a work teeming with invective against monks and friars, doubts on modern miracles, and strictures on the virtues of modern saints. Eve's heart, I confess, when

'her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate,'

could not have beaten more convulsively than mine, as I opened the forbidden book. Vague fears and doubts haunted my conscience for many days. But my friend, besides being a sound Catholic, was a devout man. He had lately taken priest's orders, and was now not only my literary, but my spiritual director. His abilities and his affection to me had obtained a most perfect command over my mind, and it was not long before I could match him in mental boldness, on points unconnected with articles of faith.

"This was, indeed, the happiest period of my life. The greatest part of my time, with the exception of that required for my daily attendance at the dull lectures of the divinity professors, was devoted to the French critics, André, Le Bossu, Batteux, Rollin, La Harpe, and many others of less note. The habit of analyzing language and ideas, which I acquired in the perusal of such works, soon led me to some of the French metaphysicians, especially Condillac." Ibid. pp. 118-120.

But the light that liberalized his mind had begun already to

unsettle it. Often he recoiled at the approach of the day when, at the canonical age of twenty-five, he was to bind himself to his profession by the irrevocable vow. It came, however; and his own impressive account of what took place on the occasion will show, that the imposing ritual of his church had not lost, as yet, any considerable degree of its power over his imagination.

"If mental excitement, attended with the most thrilling and sublime sensations, though arising from deception, could be indulged without injury to our noblest faculties, if life could be made a long dream without the painful startings produced by the din and collision of the world, if the opium of delusion could be largely administered without a complete enervation of our rational energies, the lot of a man of feeling, brought up in the undisturbed belief of the Catholic doctrines, and raised to be a dispenser of its mysteries, would be enviable above all others. No abstract persuasions, if I am to trust my experience, can either soothe our fears or feed our hopes, independently of the imagination; and I am strongly inclined to assert that no genuine persuasion exists upon unearthly subjects, without the cooperation of the imaginative faculty. Hence the powerful effects of the splendid and striking system of worship adopted by the Roman church. A foreigner may be inclined to laugh at the strange ceremonies performed in a Spanish cathedral, because these ceremonies are a conventional language, to which he attaches no ideas. But he that, from the cradle, has been accustomed to kiss the hand of every priest, and receive his blessing, that has associated the name and attributes of the Deity with the consecrated bread, that has observed the awe with which it is handled, - how none but a priest dare touch it, what clouds of incense, what brilliancy of gems, surround it when exposed to the view; with what heart-felt anxiety the glare of lights, the sound of music, and the uninterrupted adoration of the priests in waiting, are made to evince the overpowering feeling of a God dwelling among men; such a man alone can conceive the state of a warm-hearted youth, who, for the first time, approaches the altar, not as a mere attendant, but as the sole worker of the greatest of miracles.

"No language can do justice to my own feelings at the ceremony of ordination, the performance of the first mass, and during the interval which elapsed between this fever of enthusiasm and the cold skepticism that soon followed it. For some months previous to the awful ceremony I voluntarily secluded myself from the world, making religious reading and meditation the sole employment of my time. The Exercises of Saint Ignatius, which immediately preceded the day of ordination, filled my heart with what

appeared to me a settled distaste for every worldly pleasure. When the consecrating rites had been performed, when my hands had been anointed, the sacred vesture, at first folded on my shoulders, let drop around me by the hands of the bishop, the sublime hymn to the all-creating Spirit uttered in solemn strains, and the power of restoring sinners to innocence conferred upon me; when, at length, raised to the dignity of a fellow-worker with God,' the bishop addressed me, in the name of the Saviour: 'Henceforth I call you not servant . . . . . but I have called you friend; I truly felt as if, freed from the material part of my being, I belonged to a higher rank of existence. I had still a heart, it is true, a heart ready to burst at the sight of my parents, on their knees, while impressing the first kiss on my newly consecrated hands; but it was dead to the charms of beauty. Among the friendly crowd that surrounded me for the same purpose, were those lips which, a few months before, I would have died to press; yet I could but just mark their superior softness. In vain did I exert myself to check exuberance of feelings at my first mass. My tears bedewed the corporals on which, with the eyes of faith, I beheld the disguised lover of mankind whom I had drawn from heaven to my hands. These are dreams, indeed, · the illusions of an over-heated fancy; but dreams they are which some of the noblest minds have dreamt through life without waking,dreams which, while passing vividly before the mental eye, must entirely wrap up the soul of every one who is neither more nor less than a man.' Ibid. pp. 122-125.

For a time, nothing could exceed the fidelity with which he applied himself to the labors and studies proper to the sacred office; in proof of which, it is only necessary to observe, that a year had scarcely elapsed after his elevation to the priesthood, before he obtained, by competition with other candidates in a public examination, the place of Magistral, or Preacher, in the chapter of King's Chaplains, at Seville. Light clouds of doubt began now to pass over his mind, which the warmth of his devotion alone was able to dissipate: but they returned again and again, and the darkness thickened around him. The crisis we will give in his own words.

"One morning, as I was wrapt up in my usual thoughts, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, a gentleman who had lately been named by the government to an important place in our provincial judicature, joined me in the course of my ramble. We had been acquainted but a short time, and he, though forced into caution by an early danger from the Inquisition, was still friendly and communicative. His talents of forensic eloquence, and the sprightliness

and elegance of his conversation, had induced a conviction on my mind, that he belonged to the philosophical party of the university where he had been educated. Urged by an irresistible impulse, I ventured with him upon neutral ground, - monks, ecclesiastical encroachments, extravagant devotion, till the stream of thought I had thus allowed to glide over the feeble mound of my fears, swelling every moment, broke forth as a torrent from its long and violent confinement. I was listened to with encouraging kindness, and there was not a doubt in my heart which I did not disclose. Doubts they had indeed appeared to me till that moment; but utterance transformed them, at once, into demonstrations. It would be impossible to describe the fear and trepidation that seized me the moment I parted from my good-natured confidant. The prisons of the Inquisition seemed ready to close their studded gates upon me; and the very hell I had just denied, appeared yawning before my eyes. Yet, a few days elapsed, and no evil had overtaken me. I performed mass with a heart in open rebellion to the Church that enjoined it: but I had now settled with myself to offer it up to my Creator, as I imagined that the enlightened Greeks and Romans must have done their sacrifices. I was, like them, forced to express my thankfulness in an absurd language." Ibid. pp. 131-133.

In opposition to those who maintain, "that immorality and levity are always the source of unbelief," he says in his "Evidence against Catholicism": "As to myself, I declare most solemnly, that my rejection of Christianity took place at a period when my conscience could not reproach me with any open breach of duty but those committed several years before; that, during the transition from religious belief to incredulity, the horror of sins against the faith, deeply implanted by education in my soul, haunted me night and day; and that I exerted all the powers of my mind to counteract the involuntary doubts which were daily acquiring an irresistible strength." His lapse into a state bordering on atheism, is not difficult to be accounted for on other principles. The fervors of his devotion, while they lasted, had no better foundation than an artificial and temporary excitement of the feelings and imagination; and his belief, if belief it could be called, never rested on degrees of evidence, or on rational conviction of any kind, but on the single point of arbitrary authority, it being assumed by him, in common with most Catholics, that the only alternative was between revelation as explained by the church of Rome, and no revelation. It was, Catholic or Deist; Christ with the Pope, or no Christ. In this state of mind, every thing of course depended