so as effectually to bend the most unyielding to their will. The sequel of the story shall be given in my next number. There can be no doubt with regard to the truth of the narrative. The author was known, after his conversion from popery, to some of the nobility and dignitaries of the church of England; and he has his character certified at the beginning of his first volume, under the hand of the bishop of London. He wrote what he saw and heard from eye and ear witnesses; and the Reverend J. Baker, who must have been his cotemporary, in his history of the Inquisition, gives this entire story, with a declaration of his conviction of its truth.

CHAPTER CXXVIII.

THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. MODE OF RECRUITING THE SERAGLIO OF THE INQUISITION. CRUELTIES OF THE HOLY OFFICE. CASE OF DONNA MARIA DE BOHORQUES. OTHER INSTANCES OF SAVAGE CRUELTY.

SATURDAY, December 23d, 1820. PROCEED We now to the sequel of the story of the young lady in the Inquisition, whose case occupied the greater part of my last number." About ten o'clock, Mary came, says she, and dressed me. We left Don Francisco in bed, and she carried me into another chamber, very delightful, and better furnished than the first; for the windows were lower, and I had the pleasure of seeing the river and gardens. Mary then told me, that the young ladies would come and pay me their respects before dinner; and would take me to dine with them; and begged me to remember her advice; she had scarcely finished, when I saw a troop of young beautiful ladies, finely dressed, who came, one after another, to embrace me, and to wish me joy. My surprise was so great, that I was unable to answer their compliments; but one of them seeing me silent, said, madam, the solitude of this place will affect you in the beginning, but when you begin to feel the pleasures we enjoy, you will quit your pensive thoughts. Now we beg of you the honour to come and dine with us to-day; and henceforth three days in a week. I returned them thanks; so we went to dinner. That day we had all sorts of exquisite meats, delicate fruits, and sweetmeats. The room was long, with two tables on each side, and another at the front of it; and I reckoned in it that day fifty-two young ladies, the eldest not exceeding twenty-four years. After dinner we went up to a long gallery, where some of us played on instruments of music, others at cards; and some walked about for three or four hours together. At last Mary came up ringing a small bell, which was, as I was told, the signal to go to our own rooms; but Mary said to the whole company, 'Ladies, to-day is a day of recreation, so you may go into what rooms you please till eight o'clock.' They all desired to go into my apartment with me. We found in my antichamber a table, with all sorts of sweetmeats upon it;-iced cinnamon, almond milk, and the like. Every one ate and drank, but nobody spake a word about the sumptuousness of the table, or the Inquisition, or the holy fathers.

They retired to their respective apartments, at eight o'clock, when Mary came to conduct me to Don Francisco, with whom I was to sup

and spend the night. In the morning, when I returned to my own chamber, I found ready two suits of clothes of rich brocade, and every thing else suitable to a lady of the first rank. I put on one, and when I was quite dressed, the ladies came to wish me joy, all dressed in different clothes, much richer than before. We spent the second and the third day in the same sort of recreation; Don Francisco continuing in the same manner with me: but on the fourth morning, after drinking chocolate, (which it was the custom to do in bed,) Mary told me, that a lady was waiting for me in her own room, and with an air of authority desired me to get up. Don Francisco saying nothing to the contrary, I obeyed, and left him in bed. I thought this was to give me some new comfort, but I was very much mistaken; for Mary conveyed me into a lady's room not eight feet long, which was a perfect prison; and told me this was my room, and this young lady my bedfellow and companion; and without saying any more she left me there.

"What is this, dear lady? said I; is it an enchanted place, or hell upon earth? I have lost father and mother, and what is worse, I . have lost my honour and my soul for ever. My new companion, seeing my agitation, took me by the hands, and said, Dear sister, forbear to cry and grieve; for such extravagant behaviour will only draw upon you a cruel death. Your misfortunes and ours are exactly of a piece. You suffer nothing that we have not suffered before you; but we dare not show our grief for fear of greater evils. She advised me to be sure and show no uneasiness before Mary, who was the only instrument of their torments or comfort. I was in a most desperate condition; but my new sister Leonora prevailed so much upon me, that I overcame my vexation before Mary came to bring our dinner, which was very different from what we had had for three days before. After dinner another maid came to take away the plate and knife, for we had but one for us both; and after she had gone out and locked the door, Leonora told me that we should not be disturbed again till eight o'clock; and that if I would promise to keep secret what she should tell me, while I remained in that house, she would reveal all that she knew. I promised all that she desired, upon which she began as follows:

My dear sister, you think your case very hard; but I assure you all the ladies in this house have already gone through the same. In time you will know all their stories, as they hope to know yours. I suppose Mary has been the chief instrument of your fright, as she has been of ours; and I warrant she has shown you some horrible places, though not all; and at the mere thought of them, you were so much troubled in your mind, that you have chosen the same way we did to redeem yourself from death. By what has happened to us, we know that Don Francisco has been your Nero; for the three colours of our clothes are the distinguishing tokens of the three holy fathers; the red silk belongs to Don Francisco, the blue to Guerrero, and the green to Aliaga. We are strictly commanded to make all demonstrations of joy, and to be very merry for three days when a lady comes first here, as we did with you, and you must do with others; but afterwards we live like prisoners, without seeing a living soul, but the six maids, and Mary, who is the housekeeper. We dine all of us in the hall three days in the week. When any of the holy fathers has a mind for any one of his slaves, Mary comes at nine o'clock, and conducts her to his apartment. VOL. IL-20

Some nights Mary leaves the door of our rooms open, and that is a sign that one of the fathers has a mind to visit us that night; but we do not know whether it is our patron or not. If one of us happens to be with child, she is removed to a better chamber, and she sees nobody but the maid till she is delivered. The child is taken away, and we know not where it is carried. I have been in this house six years, and was not fourteen when the officers took me from my father's house. I have had one child here. We have at present fifty-two young ladies; and we lose every year six or eight; but where they are sent we do not know. We always get new in their places; and I have seen here seventy-three ladies at once. Our continual torment is to think that when the holy fathers are tired of us they will put us to death; for they never will run the hazard of being discovered in their villany: So, though we cannot oppose their commands, yet we continually pray to God to pardon those ills which we are forced to commit, and to deliver us out of their hands; so, my dear sister, arm yourself with patience, for there is no other remedy.'"

By this discourse of Leonara, the young captive was prevailed upon to make the best of her condition. She found every thing to be as she was told. She continued in durance eighteen months, in which time the company lost eleven ladies, and got nineteen new ones. "When the French soldiers threw open the doors of their prison, M. Faulcant, says she, happily for me, opened the door of my room, and from the moment he saw me, showed me great civility. He took Leonora and me to his own lodgings, and, after hearing our stories, for fear things should turn to our disadvantage, he dressed us in men's clothes, and sent us to his father's. So we came to this house, where I was kept for two years as the old man's daughter; till M. Faulcant's regiment being broke, he came home, and two months after married me. Leonora was married to another officer, and went to live in Orleans."

From the above it appears, that about once a month, upon an average, a family in Saragossa was robbed of a daughter to recruit the seraglio of the holy fathers of the Inquisition. This narrative does not refer to the dark ages of popery; the thing took place but about a hundred years ago; and who can tell the misery that was thus inflicted upon many a family? In fact, there could be no such thing as domestic comfort in any country in which the Inquisition was established. It was not enough that every young lady kept at home; that she did not so much as show her face at a window; this would certainly have made her a victim to any member of the holy office whose spies might be passing. Every exposure of the kind therefore was most carefully avoided; but this did not serve the purpose of concealing such as might be desirable inmates of the Inquisition. Every lady was required to make confession to a priest twice, or at least once, a year; the priests were all dependants of the holy office; they were in short the panders of lewdness to the lords inquisitors; and becoming, by means of confession, acquainted with the name and circumstances of every individual in every family, it was easy for them to inform their superiors where they might obtain a victim, to be sacrificed at the shrine of their lusts.

It is difficult to exhibit any thing more wicked than what I have related, with regard to the Inquisition, in this and my last number; but

there is something more tragical in what follows; in which we shall find that all the horrors of the "dry-pan," or burning to death, were actually realized in the case of young accomplished ladies, for no crime but that of heresy, or believing as they were taught by the word of God. I quote from an article formerly referred to, in the Literary and Statistical Magazine for June last; as continued from the number for March:

"Among the twenty-one victims who were burned at Valladolid, in the auto-da-fe of 1559, the case of Dona Maria de Bohorques is peculiarly interesting. Dona Maria was a natural daughter of Pedro Garcia de Xeres Bohorques, and had just completed her twenty-first year, when she was arrested on suspicion of Lutheranism. Under the instruction of D. Juan Gil, bishop elect of Tortosa, she was perfectly acquainted with the Latin language, and had made considerable progress in Greek. She knew the gospels by heart, and was deeply read in those commentaries, which explain in a Lutheran sense, the texts referring to justification by faith, good works, the sacraments, and the characteristics of the true church.

"Dona Maria was confined in the secret prison of the Inquisition, where she avowed the doctrines imputed to her, defended them against the arguments of the priests who visited her, and boldly told the inquisitors, that instead of punishing her for the creed which she held, they would do much better to imitate her example. With regard to the depositions of her accusers, though she allowed the principal points, she persisted in denying some facts which related to the opinions of other individuals; and this denial gave the inquisitors an opportunity of putting her to the rack. By this torture they only procured a confession, that her sister Johanna Bohorques knew her sentiments and had not disapproved them: and as she persisted in her profession of faith, sentence was passed upon her as an obstinate heretic. In the interval between her condemnation and the auto-da-fe, in which she was to suffer, the inquisitors made every exertion to bring her back to the Romish faith. They sent to her successively two Jesuits and two Dominican priests, who laboured with great zeal for her conversion, but returned without having effected their object, full of admiration of the talents she displayed, and regretting the obstinacy with which she persisted in what they supposed a damnable heresy. The evening before the auto-da-fe, two Dominicans joined in the attempt, and were followed by several theologians of other orders. Dona Maria received them with civility, but dissuaded them from attempting a hopeless task. To the professions which they made of being interested in the welfare of her soul, she answered that she believed them to be sincere, but that they must not suppose that she, being the party chiefly concerned, felt a less interest in the matter than they did. She told them that she came to prison fully satisfied of the orthodoxy of the creed which she held, and that she had been confirmed in her belief by the evident futility of the arguments brought against it.

"At the stake, Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had just abjured the Lutheran doctrines, exhorted Dona Maria to follow his example. The weakness of this apostate for a moment overcame her, and she silenced him by language rather of contempt than of pity. Recollecting herself, however, she told him that the time for controversy was past, and

that their wisest plan would be, to occupy the few minutes which remained to them, in meditating on the death of their Redeemer, in order to confirm that faith by which alone they could be justified. We have already mentioned, that if a condemned heretic renounced his heresy even at the stake, he was not burned alive, but first strangled and then burned ; (and this was all that poor Juan Ponce de Leon gained by his apostasy.) On this occasion the attendant priests, moved by the youth and talents of Dona Maria, offered her this milder death if she would merely repeat the creed. With this offer she readily complied, but having finished it, she immediately began to explain its articles according to the sense of the reformers. This confession of faith was immediately interrupted; Dona Maria was strangled by the executioner, and her body was afterwards consumed to ashes.

We have mentioned that the only confession extorted by the rack from Maria Bohorques was, that her sister knew her religious sentiments, and had not disapproved them. This sister was named Johanna; she was a legitimate daughter of the same Pedro Garcia, and was married to Don Francis de Vargas, lord of Heguera. She was immediately arrested upon the confession of her sister Maria; and though six months advanced in pregnancy, she was confined in one of the common dungeons of the Inquisition. In this dungeon she was delivered of a child, and received no assistance except from a young woman, confined on a charge of Lutheranism, who occupied the same cell. Eight days after its birth the child was taken from her; and soon after, her friendly nurse, having been tortured, returned to the dungeon with bruised and dislocated limbs; and Dona Johanna, still feeble from her confinement, was called upon to repay the charitable attentions she had received. Before her health was established, she also was subjected to the torture. Her enfeebled frame sunk under its sufferings: a blood vessel burst while she was on the rack, and in two days she was delivered by death from any further persecution. After perpetrating this foul murder, the inquisitors thought it sufficient expiation to declare Dona Johanna innocent at the ensuing auto-da-fe.”

Cases of the same kind might be multiplied to any extent; but my design is, to give only a selection by way of sample. The following affords a view of the secresy with which the affairs of the holy office were conducted: "When the familiar is sent for to apprehend any person, he has the following order put into his hand. By the command of the reverend Father N. an inquisitor of heretical pravity, let B. be apprehended and committed to the prisons of this holy office, and not be released out of them, but by the express order of the said reverend inquisitor. And if several persons are to be taken up at the same time, the familiars are commanded so to order things, that they may know nothing of one another's being apprehended. And at this the familiars are so expert, that a father and his three sons, and three daughters, who lived together in the same house, were all carried prisoners to the Inquisition, without knowing any thing of one another's being there until seven years afterwards, when they that were alive came forth to an auto-da-fe."-Limborch, Vol. I. p. 187.

Thus persons the most nearly related to one another, may be confined in contiguous cells without knowing it; and the merciless turnkeys of the holy office are constantly on the watch, to prevent the utter