(vol. xiv. p. 104.)

The elder son of the Marchesa, Onofrio Marchese dell' Oriolo, was
arrested on the strength of an ambiguous scrap of writing, which
appeared to implicate him in his brother's guilt; and subjected in
prison to such a daily and day-long examination on the subject of this
letter, that his mind gave way, and the desired avowal was extracted
from him. He confessed to having implied, under reserves and conditions
which practically neutralized the confession, his assent to his mother's
death. He was beheaded accordingly; and the Governor of Rome, Taverna,
who had conducted the inquisition, was rewarded by a Cardinal's hat.
Other motives were, however, involved in the proceeding than the Pope's
quickened zeal for justice. He had entrusted the case to his nephew,
Cardinal Aldobrandini; and it was known that the Cardinal and the
Marchese had courted the same lady, and the latter unwisely flaunted the
possession of a ring which was his pledge of victory.

This story, with other details which I have not space to give, was taken
from a contemporary Italian chronicle, of which some lines are literally
transcribed.

The heretic of "THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY" was Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last
Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templars, and against whom
preposterous accusations had been brought. This "Jacques," whom the
speaker erroneously calls "John," and who might stand for any victim of
middle-age fanaticism, was burned in Paris in 1314; and the "Interlude,"
we are told, "would seem to be a reminiscence of this event, as
distorted by two centuries of refraction from Flemish brain to brain."
The scene is carried on by one singer, in a succession of verses, and by
a chorus which takes up the last and most significant words of each
verse; the organ accompanying in a plagal cadence,[85] which completes
its effect. The chant is preceded by an admonition from the abbot, which
lays down its text: that God is unchanging, and His justice as infinite
as His mercy; and singer and chorus both denounce the impious heresy of
"John:" who admitted only the love, and sinned the "Unknown Sin," in his
confidence in it. How the logs are fired; how the victim roasts; amidst
what hideous and fantastic torments the damned soul "flares forth into
the dark" is quaintly and powerfully described.

ROMANTIC POEMS.

The prevalence of thought in Mr. Browning's poetry has created in many
minds an impression that he is more a thinker