toria del fol. 1104. del Suplemento del Expurgatorio de 1747, y se prohibieron todos los Libros, Papeles, Cartas, imprs. ó ms. con dicha ocasion, y que nadie escribiera en pró ni en contra. This is certainly an extraordinary notice. It will be in the recollection of the reader, that, after much and long remonstrance, the condemnation of certain works of this Cardinal, in the preceding Spanish Index, was withdrawn by the same authority which inserted it. Now, the natural method in a subsequent Index, which professed to be a summary only, and refers constantly to its predecessor, as of ultimate authority, would have been to omit altogether an article which the former had thought right to erase. Or, were it judged expedient to record the edict which produced the erasure, as every article standing in these damnatory catalogues, by its very front and position, purports to be a condemned one, it certainly ought not to have been the one whose condemnation was meant to be reversed; but, on the contrary, should have been the work itself, the Index referring to the article which was thus solemnly declared to have been in fault. As the matter now stands, the passage has the effect (and correspondent intention may be inferred in all cases of obvious knowledge) of republishing and perpetuating a condemnation, which the compilers of

the present Index might choose to suppose, or believe others to suppose, was withdrawn without sufficient foundation, and even against the judgment and wishes of those who from circumstances were prevailed upon to adopt the resolution. This Index has two Appendixes, and is of more use for reference than all the former, as having rejected the division into three classes, and having observed the order of a single alphabet.

To this Indice a Supplement was published with this title: SUPLEMENTO al Indice Expurgatorio de Año de 1790, que contiene los Libros Prohibidos y mandados expurgar en todos los Reynos

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Señorios del Católico Rey de España el Sr. D. Carlos IV., desde el Edicto de 13 de Diciembre del Año de 1789, hasta el 25 de Agosto de 1805. Madrid, en la Imprenta real Año de 1805. 4to, p. 57.

57. In the Preface is contained an Edict of the Inquisitor-General, Don Felipe Bertran, 7 May, 1782, in which he complains of the abuse of licences, and restrains them; and, in order to enforce the main object of the institution, charges all Confessors, secular and regular, and especially those who have the cure of souls, to inquire of their penitents, more particularly in Lent, whether they possess any of the denounced books, and, if that be the case, to inflict the appointed penance; apprising them, at the same time, that absolution

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from the offence is reserved to the InquisitorGeneral. The principal articles occurring in this supplement are the literary produce of the French Revolution; and under Biblia are repeated the contents of the V. Regla, which has just been transcribed.

A letter of M. GREGOIRE, Bishop of Blois, to Don RAMON-JOSEPH DE ARCE, Inquisitor-General of Spain, dated Feb. 27, 1798, and prefixed to the French abridgment of Llorente's History of the Inquisition of Spain, will, by a short extract, carry on our information respecting the progress of literary proscriptions in that unhappy country. Charging the holy office with attempting to destroy the union between the two countries, he adds -J'en découvre la preuve dans le Diario de Madrid, du 9 Décembre dernièr, où si trouve insérée une liste d'ouvrages condamnés. A la vérité, la plûpart de ces écrits sont souillés par le blasphême ou la lubricité; mais dans l'article des livres prohibidos in totum, l'ouvrage intitulé: Etat moral, physique et politique de la Maison de Savoie, est frappé de censures, comme présentant une série de propositions contraires à la souveraineté, la noblesse, et le clergé de Savoie, etc.

At a period a little advancing on the preceding, some light is thrown upon our subject by a portion of VILLERS's Essay on the Spirit and Influence of

the Reformation of Luther, which obtained the prize on the question proposed by the French Institute in 1802. I use the English translation of 1805; and there I find, pp. 290-2, after an expression of just indignation against some severe restrictions upon books by a Pontiff who equally signalized himself by his fulminations against Luther and his licence of Ariosto; and after the observation that France herself, although so tenacious of her liberties, was not free from the charge of literary intolerance, the words following: In Spain, in Italy, and Austria, the prohibitions and censures went much farther; and in those countries impose many shackles on the liberty of writing and thinking. Several of the governments in the south of Germany renew, from time to time, those salutary regulations against the reading of books written by heretics, or bold speculators (les esprits forts). The works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Helvetius, of Diderot, &c. are kept under lock and key in the public libraries; and it is expressly ordered that they shall not be communicated to any person, but those who engage to refute them.' These are the words themselves of a very recent edict. A professor of an university of Bavaria was deprived of his employment a few years before the revolution in France, for having required that a copy of Bayle's critical dictionary

should be placed in the common library. These facts, and an immense number of others, which are repeated every day, characterize the spirit of Catholicism in regard to the propagation of knowThe ledge, and the liberality of instruction. maxim of the middle ages is yet preserved in those countries in all the vigour in which it is possible to preserve it in the present times; 'to retain the minds of men on certain subjects in complete stupidity; to keep them as much as possible empty, that they may be afterwards filled with any thing which is found agreeable, and that superstition may find a convenient reception.' Has any pope as yet retracted the bull In Cana Domini, by which were excommunicated all persons who should read any books composed by heretics?' It is very proper to ask, retracted; for mere intermission or discontinuance is not sufficient*. Neither is it an available reply to

* In a work written by a Roman Catholic, Count FERDINAND DAL Pozzo, Catholicism in Austria, &c., occurs the following passage. 'The Bull In Coena Domini contains a series of the most absurd pretensions. The reading of this bull, which was usually performed every year at Rome on Holy Thursday, was suspended by order of Clement XIV., to avoid offending crowned heads. But the bull itself was not revoked. Permission is still granted in the present day to absolve in cases reserved in this bull,- -no unequivocal proof that it is still considered as in vigour: were the times favourable, I think it would be read again.' Pp. 182, 3. Emancipationists, learn from an Emancipationist. Cardinal ERSKINE declares the bull to be 'implicitly in vigour in all its extension,' and 'a public declaration to preserve his (the pope's) rights.' Quoted from the Parliamentary Report