reconciling Plato
with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of
the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so
extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these words
we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first
sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion;
yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as
beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God.' A critic of this century can
only exclaim with stupefaction: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!_
Thus Spain began to devour and depopulate herself. The curse which fell
upon the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher and patriot. The
very life of the nation, in its commerce, its industry, its free
thought, its energy of character, was deliberately and steadily
throttled. And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain was
destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her
manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color
of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom.

[1] This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his
_History of the Inquisition_ (p. 83) gives both 800,000 and
400,000; he also speaks of 170,000 _families_ as one
calculation.

[2] Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is
truly awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The
passage may be read in Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_,
chapter 17.

Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus--indulging his lust and pride
in the Vatican, adorning the chapel called after his name with
masterpieces,[1] rending Italy with broils for the aggrandizement of
favorites, haggling over the prices to be paid for bishoprics, extorting
money from starved provinces, plotting murder against his enemies,
hounding the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences,
refusing aid to Venice in her championship of Christendom against the
Turk--yet meanwhile thinking to please God by holocausts of Moors, by
myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious
Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe out his sins by the
blood of others, to burn his own vices in the _autos da fe_ of Seville,
and by the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisition to
secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.[2] This is not the
language of