ity of their torments, and curse the
priests as the authors of these, reflect that their own and their
fathers' wickedness, still unrepented of, has not less to do with their
present miseries than the priestly tyranny which they so bitterly and
justly execrate. In those ages these men were the _tools_ of the
priesthood; in this they are its _victims_. Thus it is that the Present,
in papal Europe, and especially in Italy, rises stamped with the
likeness of the Past. The _Siecle_ of Paris, while the _Siecle_ was yet
free, brought out this fact admirably, when it reminded the champions of
Popery that the horrors of the first French Revolution were not new
things, but old, which the Jacobins inherited from the Papists; and went
on to ask them "if they have forgotten that the Convention found all the
laws of the Terror written upon the past? The Committee of Public Safety
was first contrived for the benefit of the monarchy. Were not the
commissions called revolutionary tribunals first used against the
Protestants? The drums which Santerre beat round the scaffolds of
royalists followed a practice first adopted to drown the psalms of the
reformed pastors. Were not the fusilades first used at the bidding of
the priests to crush heresy? Did not the law of the suspected compel
Protestants to nourish soldiers in their houses, as a punishment for
refusing to go to mass? Were not the houses burned down of those who
frequented Protestant preaching? Were not the properties of the
Protestant emigrants confiscated? Did not the Marshal Nouilles order a
war against bankers? Was not the law of the maximum, which regulated
prices, practised by the regency? Was not the law of requisition for the
public roads practised to prepare the roads for Queen Marie Leczinska?
It is true, many priests perished in the Terror, but they were men of
terror perishing by terror,--men of the sword perishing by the sword."

I could not help feeling, too, when reflecting upon the state of
Brescia, and of all the towns of Italy, and, indeed, of all the
countries of Europe, that to nations, as well as individuals, there is
"an accepted time" and a "day of salvation," which if they miss, they
irremediably perish. If they enter not in when the door is open, it is
in vain that they knock when it is shut. The same sentiment has been
expressed by our great poet, in the well-known lines,--

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on t