vest with sleeves down to the elbows, and trowsers, which came down to the ancles, the whole being made of black cloth striped with white."

There was a meaning in these same white stripes. They meant life, and liberty, and country, and authorship, and the dedication of the book before us to Mademoiselle des Cambout de Coislin, and some good measure of posthumous fame. But M. Dellon could not read all this; he knew not the character, and could not read the hieroglyphics.

As

About two in the morning, the guards returned, and M. Dellon was led into a long gallery, where he found a good number of his fellow-prisoners ranged along the wall. Others were gradually brought forward until the number amounted to about 200. these were all dressed like himself, and as he could see no distinction in the manner of treating any of them, he thought it likely that the fate of all was to be the same. But he could not imagine it possible that the common fate of such a multitude should be death; and thus did a ray of hope once more shine into his soul.

And the hope was not delusive. He had to pass two hours of dire suspense, while the criminals were dressed with scapulars (san benitos) and caps (carrochas) indicating the various grades of their crimes. His agitation during this ceremony is simply and forcibly described, but we shall not dwell upon it. At last, however, the preparations were finished. Just before daylight on that sabbath morning, the great bell of the cathedral clanged out its booming notes, while from all the country round, immense crowds of men and women, and of little boys and girls, are flocking in to Goa, to hold high festival. Inside the Santa Casa, the officials of the Inquisition have arranged the procession, and have decked out those who are to take part in it in the various uniforms of life or death. The Confessors have received the last shrift of those who are doomed to die: the Inquisitor has taken his place in the great hall, and around him are assembled a large number of the inhabitants of Goa, summoned for a purpose that will presently appear. Each criminal, carrying a wax taper, marches singly into this hall. As he enters, the secretary reads out from a list the name of one of the gentlemen present, who rises and places himself by the side of the criminal: he is to be his sponsor in the Auto-da-Fè. Our author had for his sponsor the Portuguese admiral, which proved afterwards to be a fortunate occurrence for him. The procession is now formed. It is headed by the Dominicans, before whom is borne the gorgeous banner of the holy office. Then come the prisoners and their sponsors, arranged according to the crimes of

the former, the least criminal having the precedence, and those doomed to die bringing up the rear, accompanied by effigies of such as have died during their trial, and such as have been tried after death. The bones of such are also borne in boxes in the procession. We cannot detail all the marching and countermarching, the oaths, and sermons, and sentences. Any one who will enquire into the matter, will be struck with the great skill displayed in arranging the whole ceremonial, with the object of magnifying the holy office, and striking terror into the hearts of the spectators.

Our author's sentence was that he should be excommunicated, his effects confiscated, and himself banished from India, and condemned to serve in the galleys of Portugal for five years, and further to undergo such penances as the Inquisition should prescribe.

We need not dwell upon the subsequent history of M. Dellon. After about a fortnight he was ironed and taken on board ship, and made over to the charge of the Captain, who was ordered to deliver him over to the Inquisition at Lisbon. As soon as the anchors were up, his irons were taken off, and he seems to have received kind treatment, for which we suspect he was more or less indebted to the accident of his having the admiral for his sponsor. When the ship arrived at Brazil, he was put into prison there, but was kindly treated. After a short stay here, he re-embarked and reached Lisbon on the 16th December, about eleven months from Goa. Here he was set to his penal servitude of five years as a galley-slave in the dock-yards. But through the intercession of some of his countrymen, the grand Inquisition were prevailed on to remit the unexpired portion of his sentence, and after a servitude of about eighteen months, he was liberated on the 1st of June, 1677. After some difficulties and obstructions, he found means to procure a passage in a vessel bound for France; and after a lapse of four years, he set about the composition of his narrative, which he kept four years longer before he could make up his mind to publish it.

Such is a brief summary of a single case, and that not an aggravated one, of oppression and injustice inflicted by this spiritual court in the name of Jesus Christ. We see no reason to doubt the perfect accuracy of the narrative. Not only does an air of truthfulness pervade it, not only was its substantial vraisemblance admitted by the Inquisitor to Dr. Buchanan, but there is almost a perfect coincidence between the course of procedure represented to have been followed, with the rules laid down for the guidance of the courts of the Inquisition in Spain. These rules had been kept secret until they were published in SEPT., 1857.

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Llorente's History of the Inquisition in that country. They could not therefore have been known to our author, who wrote more than 100 years earlier. Yet the treatment which he represents himself as having experienced, is, even to the most minute particulars, that which is prescribed in these rules for the treatment of persons accused as he was.

Such then being the quality of the Inquisition, it becomes a matter of interest to enquire into the number of its victims. Now we have seen that in the Auto-da-Fè, in which our author bore a part, there were about 200 men, besides women, of whom we do not know the number. But supposing them to have been but half as numerous as the men, we have a total of 300, the accumulation of twenty-five months that had elapsed since the last Auto-da-Fè. We see then that the evil was not a theoretical one merely. We should say it was rather of the most practical. We learn from Llorente that the number of victims in Spain from A.D. 1481 to A.D. 1808, a period of 328 years, was 341,021, giving an average of as nearly as possible 1,040 a year. Of these, 31,912, or ninety-seven a year, were burnt. These are simple facts. If we set out with what we may now reckon an axiom, that persecution for religion is altogether wrong, and consider that the Inquisition could not take cognizance of crimes, but only of sins, we come to the conclusion that all these were murdered. But even if we give the Inquisition the credit of the darkness of the age in which it was instituted, and of the countries in which it was established, it would require a man of singular charity, or singular absence of the power of judging from cause to effect, to believe that with a tribunal so constituted, and proceedings so conducted, a very larger number were not made to experience wrongfully the severity of the laws, even if those laws had not been themselves wrongful.

And what has been the result? Read it in the history of Portugal; read it in the present as compared with the past state of Goa. Our author furnishes us with a description of the city as it was in his days:

“We come now to the celebrated city of Goa, the most beautiful, the largest, and the most magnificent in all India. It is situated under the fifteenth degree (of latitude.) The Portuguese have built it on a small island formed by the river. On the two points of land, between which the river falls into the sea, there are two very fine forts, that on the southern point, called Mourmougon, and that on the northern Agoada. As the island extends down to the junction of the river with the sea, the most westerly point of the island is almost abreast of the two points on which those forts stand, and here they have constructed a harbour.

"From the month of May, till the month of August, the bar or entrance of the river on the Agoada side is closed by the sands which the south-west winds throw up; and vessels arriving at that season enter by the Mourmougon branch: during the rest of the year all enter by the Agoada branch, and go quite up to the town.

"In passing up the river, we find a prodigious number of villas (maisons de plaisance) which may well be styled palaces. These the influential men among the Portuguese, while their state was in its glory, vied with each other in building, to shew forth their magnificence. It may well be believed that a town whose exteriors are so superb, contains within it what may excite the admiration of all beholders. And in point of fact, although the nation which occupies it is now in its decay, although it has had losses which can scarcely be comprehended, and its trade is barely the shadow of what it was; yet its houses are very beautiful, and nowhere can the riches and magnificence of its churches and its convents be surpassed. Amongst them, one is never weary of admiring the grandeur and the beauty of the houses and churches of the Jesuit Fathers, in one of which are preserved with peculiar veneration the precious relics of the great apostle of India and Japan, St. Francis Xavier, for whom all the orientals have a very great respect. Do as they might to honor his memory, they could but imperfectly express the great obligations under which they lie to him, for having a million times risked his health and his life, in order to instruct them and to lead them to Jesus Christ. After the houses of the Jesuit fathers, nothing is grander or richer than the convents of the Jacobins and the Augustinians. The church of the Theatines is undoubtedly one of the neatest in Goa, though it is not one of the most magnificent. The bare-footed Carmelites have also a fine convent. The cathedral, dedicated to St. Catherine, and the church of Mercy, are of wonderful richness and beauty, and I should never have done, if I were to describe in detail the magnificence of these churches, and of others which I do not mention, the least of which attracts the admiration of strangers.

Although there are in Goa a very great number of private gentlemen who have houses that might serve for the accommodation of princes, yet none of them can be compared, for beauty, size and richness, with the vice-regal palace. Each successive viceroy has added to it and embellished it. It looks, on one side, upon the river, and on the other upon a grand square, which is before the principal gate."

And so forth. It is like the description of old Tyre in the days when "her merchants were princes, and her traffickers the honorable of the earth." Look now upon the other picture, that of the same city as it is now, or as it was half a dozen years ago, when visited by Lieut. R. F. Burton:

"When the moon began to sail slowly over the eastern hills, we started on our tour of inspection, and, as a preliminary measure.

walked down the wharf, a long and broad road, lined with double rows of trees, and faced with stone, opposite the sea. A more sug

gestive scene could not be conceived than the utter desolation which lay before us. Everything that met the eye or ear seemed teeming with melancholy associations; the very rustling of the trees and the murmur of the waves sounded like a dirge for the departed grandeur of the city.

"A few minutes' walk led us to a conspicuous object on the right hand side of the wharf. It was a solitary gateway, towering above the huge mass of ruins which flanks the entrance to the Strada Diretta.* On approaching it, we observed the statue of Saint Catherine, shrined in an upper niche, and a grotesque figure of Vasco de Gama in one beneath. Under this arch the newly-appointed viceroys of Goa used to pass in triumphal procession towards the palace.

"Beyond the gateway a level road, once a populous thoroughfare, leads to the Terra di Sabaio, a large square, fronting the Se Primaçial or Cathedral of Saint Catherine, and flanked by the Casa Santa. Before visiting the latter spot, we turned to the left, and ascending a heap of ruins, looked down upon the excavation, which now marks the place where the Viceregal Palace rose. The building, which occupied more than two acres of ground, has long been razed from the very foundations, and the ground on which it stood is now covered with the luxuriant growth of poisonous plants and thorny trees. As we wandered amidst them, a solitary jackal, slinking away from the intruder, was the only living being that met our view, and the deep bell of the cathedral, marking the lapse of time for dozens, where hundreds of thousands had once hearkened to it, the only sound telling of man's presence that reached our ear.

"In the streets beyond, nothing but the foundations of the houses could be traced, the tall cocoa and the lank grass waving rankly over many a forgotten building. In the only edifices which superstition has hitherto saved, the churches, convents, and monasteries, a window or two, dimly lighted up, showed that here and there dwells some solitary priest. The whole scene reminded us of the Arab's eloquent description of the city with impenetrable gates, still, without a voice or a cheery inhabitant: the owl hooting in its quarters, and birds skimming in circles in its areas, and the raven croaking in its great thoroughfare streets, as if bewailing those that had been in it.' What a contrast between the moonlit scenery of the distant bay, smiling in all eternal Nature's loveliness, and the dull grey piles of ruined or desolate habitations, the short-lived labours of man!

“We turned towards the Casa Santa, and with little difficulty climbed to the top of the heaps which mark the front where its

*The Straight Street, so called because almost all the streets of Goa were laid out in curvilinear form.

+ St. Catherine was appointed patron saint of Goa, because the city was taken by the Portuguese on her day.