grounds for believing
that some of those attendants, particularly that portion of them composed
of the fair sex, have abjured the errors of the Roman Catholic communion.
The rising generation is impregnated with ideas of religious reform, and
we have seen works of some of the young writers of that country in which
the prejudices of former times are openly attacked, and principles of
independence and religious liberty proclaimed,--a course of action which,
in other epochs, would have provoked the scandal and indignation of the
authorities and of the nation at large.

In Lima, the capital of Peru, a city abounding with convents, and
celebrated for the wealth and power of its secular clergy, Dr Vigil, a
priest of irreproachable conduct and profound learning, has published a
voluminous work, in which he attacks and pulverises the pretensions of
the Roman Court, defends the independence of the bishops, and
demonstrates, in the most luminous manner, the necessity of an
ecclesiastical reformation, differing but very little from that which was
most dexterously and successfully headed by Luther. That work of Dr
Vigil was condemned, and its author excommunicated by a pontifical bull;
and yet, despite this circumstance, the book circulates from hand to hand
freely throughout Peru, and the doctor himself lives in perfect
tranquillity in the midst of his fellow-countrymen, respected by all, and
employed by the government in the distinguished post of director of the
national library.

In New Granada this reformation has proceeded from the government itself.
The archbishop and the Jesuits have been banished from the territory of
the republic, the legislative power has sanctioned the liberty of
worship, and the public writers employ themselves in enlightening the
people upon the falsity of the Roman doctrines, and the necessity of
undoing the work, which, ever since the discovery of the new world, has
been set up and perfected in it by the enemies of the true faith of Jesus
Christ.

If the publication of this present work shall contribute, in any manner,
to the intellectual emancipation of those favoured portions of the human
race, its author will have received the only recompence which he desires.

* * * * *

THE END.

Footnotes:

{15} Cover me with flowers,
For I am dying of love.

{16} The Virgin of Anguish,
She it is who knows my grief,
Because