were then widely spread, and that the numbers who
suffered for them in Italy were great. Need I mention the names of
Milan, of Vicenza, of Verona, of Venice, of Padua, of Ferrara,--one of
the brightest in this constellation,--of Bologna, of Florence, of
Sienna, of Rome? Most of these cities are renowned in the classic
annals; all of them shared in the wealth and independence which the
commerce of the middle ages conferred on the Italian republics; all of
them figure in the revival of letters in the fifteenth century; but they
are encompassed by a holier and yet more unfading halo, as the spots
where the Italian reformers lived,--where they preached the blessed
truths of the Bible to their countrymen,--and where they sealed their
testimony with their blood. "During the whole of this century," that is,
the sixteenth, says Dr M'Crie, in his "Progress and Suppression of the
Reformation in Italy," "the prisons of the Inquisition in Italy, and
particularly at Rome, were filled with victims, including persons of
noble birth, male and female, men of letters, and mechanics. Multitudes
were condemned to penance, to the galleys, or other arbitrary
punishments; and from time to time individuals were put to death." "The
following description," says the same historian, "of the state of
matters in 1568 is from the pen of one who was residing at that time on
the borders of Italy:--'At Rome some are every day burnt, hanged, or
beheaded. All the prisons and places of confinement are filled; and they
are obliged to build new ones. That large city cannot furnish jails for
the number of pious persons which are continually apprehended.'"

I had time to ruminate on these things as I paced to and fro in the
empty midnight streets of Brescia. Methought I could hear, in the silent
night, the cry of the martyrs whose ashes sleep in the plains around,
saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge
our blood on them that dwell on the earth!" Yes; God has judged, and is
avenging; and the doom takes the very form that the crime wore. An era
of dungeons, and chains, and victims, has again come round to Italy; but
this time it is "the men which dwell on the" papal "earth" that are
suffering. When the Italians permitted Arnold, and thousands such as he,
to be put to death, they were just opening the way for the wrath of the
Papacy to reach themselves, which it has now done. Ah! little do those
who gnash their teeth in the extrem