of his dominions.
By the sterner sentence of his successor, two of the brothers, the duke
and the cardinal, perished by the hand of the public executioner.[184]

After giving this proof of mastery over his own feelings, Paul addressed
himself to those reforms which had engaged his attention in early life.
He tried to enforce a stricter discipline and greater regard for morals,
both in the religious orders and the secular clergy. Above all, he
directed his efforts against the Protestant heresy, which had begun to
show itself in the head of Christendom, as it had long since done in the
extremities. The course he adopted was perfectly characteristic.
Scorning the milder methods of argument and persuasion, he resorted
wholly to persecution. The Inquisition, he declared, was the true
battery with which to assail the defences of the heretic. He suited the
action so well to the word, that in a short time the prisons of the Holy
Office were filled with the accused. In the general distrust no one felt
himself safe; and a panic was created, scarcely less than that felt by
the inhabitants when the Spaniards were at their gates.

Happily, their fears were dispelled by the death of Paul, which took
place suddenly, from a fever, on the eighteenth of August, 1559, in the
eighty-third year of his age, and fifth of his pontificate. Before the
breath was out of his body, the populace rose _en masse_, broke open the
prisons of the Inquisition, and liberated all who were confined there.
They next attacked the house of the grand-inquisitor, which they burned
to the ground; and that functionary narrowly escaped with his life. They
tore down the scutcheons, bearing the arms of the family of Caraffa,
which were affixed to the public edifices. They wasted their rage on the
senseless statue of the pope, which they overturned, and, breaking off
the head, rolled it, amidst the groans and execrations of the
by-standers, into the Tiber. Such was the fate of the reformer, who, in
his reforms, showed no touch of humanity, no sympathy with the
sufferings of his species.[185]

Yet, with all its defects, there is something in the character of Paul
the Fourth that may challenge our admiration. His project--renewing that
of Julius the Second--of driving out the _barbarians_ from Italy, was
nobly conceived, though impracticable. "Whatever others may feel, I at
least will have some care for my country," he once said to the Venetian
ambassador.

[Sidenote