having provided for him competent teachers, with whom, fortunately, his native town was not ill supplied.

With his attainments in science his friends were delighted; but Savonarola himself was dissatisfied. Destined by his father for the profession of physic, he felt far other impulses within his soul, and he longed to lead a life of simplicity and devotion. This disposition was increased by the inauspicious issue of a love affair, in which he became entangled; and accordingly, determining to desert the world and its vices, he clandestinely left Ferrara during the festival of its patron St. George, and sought refuge in the Dominican cloister in Bologna. How deeply he had reflected on this step, and how bitterly he appreciated the sacrifices involved in it, appear from an exculpatory letter which he sent the next day to his father.

Savonarola had now attained the twenty-third year of his age. Although his desires were modestly confined to the humble privileges of a lay brother of the order, his superiors, availing themselves to the utmost of the learning he had acquired, employed him in teaching metaphysics and natural philosophy. This task, however, was soon felt by Savonarola as a weary burthen, and as anything but the object for which he had renounced the world; he resorted, therefore, to profounder contemplations. The sacred writings he made his especial study, and by frequent perusal, at length knew them almost by heart. Thereto he added prayer; by means of which, in his lonely cell, he learned more and more of the divine attributes and majesty, and of the nature of the duties incumbent upon fallen man. The undefiled conscience requires, of the world, of man and nature, answerable purity; and we may understand the kind and degree of wrath with which Savonarola discovered that the members of his fraternity were as much estranged from the principles that animated him, as was the world he had abandoned. He found that their conduct was as much opposed to the precepts of the New Testament as to the state of his own feelings-that they were in antagonism both to the written and unwritten revelations, which he had acknowledged as consenting oracles of the same celestial verities.

Influenced by such feelings, it is no wonder that Savonarola long rejected the office of the priesthood. He conceived that he could best fulfil the call to a pious life, which he had entertained, by remaining a lay brother. The solicitations of his brethren, however, prevailed; and Savonarola was ordained, after spending seven years in his lay novitiate, travelling from place to place by direction of his order, and teaching from cloister to cloister. The success attending his lectures led his supe

riors to anticipate for him a triumphant career as a preacher; but his first attempts at pulpit oratory were exceedingly unpropitious. Being appointed to preach the fast-day sermons at Florence in the Lent of 1483, his ungainly carriage and harsh elocution speedily emptied the church of St. Lorenzo, wherein he officiated, of its previously numerous congregation. Mortified, though not discouraged, he retired to his convent; spending his time, partly in expounding to youth the Scriptures, partly in gaining strength and experience as a preacher, by making preparatory trials of his powers in divers towns, at long and accidental intervals, and without publicity.

Savonarola's first successful attempt as a preacher was made at Brescia, in the year 1485. His mind was full of the Scriptures; and that part of them which he proposed to expound was none other than the mysterious, soul-inspiring, spirit-stirring Apocalypse. Such was the holy fervour which fired his imagination and awakened his eloquence, that to his hearers his words appeared to flow like water from the divine fountain of life, and his brows to be surrounded by the new lights of Gospel truth, with a glory like the aureola of saints. He stood before the people as a prophet. Without his announcement they believed his divine mission, for he brought the crime of a corrupt and apostate clergy to the judgment of the book, and denounced them in the language of God himself: and for such exposures the Italian populace were not unprepared; the condition of the Papacy had to them long been notorious. From this time forward the prophetic character was always ascribed to Savonarola; more pertinaciously, perhaps, than he desired. None but prophets in days of old exhibited such daring; nor, in these days, could impassioned Italians believe the courageous spirit less than prophetic, or a Savonarola less than inspired.

The fame of the new preacher was quickly spread abroad, and at length even penetrated the scene of his former failures. About the year 1487, a provincial chapter of the Dominicans of Lombardy was held at Reggio, at which Savonarola and Prince Pico della Mirandola were present. In the disputation which then took place, Savonarola showed so much talent, eloquence, and erudition, taat Pico conceived a strong interest in his favour, and was desirous to have him recalled to Florence, feeling assured that the preacher would now appear to more advantage than heretofore. He therefore wrote to his friend, the celebrated Lorenzo di Medici, concerning him, and strongly urged the expediency of that city being enriched with the presence of so much learning and ability as he recognized in the person of this Dominican. Thus was Savonarola invited thither, and be

came consequently the prior of San Marco. Henceforth his name is connected with the history of Florence.

Small space have we to expatiate on the condition of Florence at this crisis. Suffice it to say, that its morals were almost irretrievably contaminated, its prosperity fictitious, and its liberties in danger of being swamped by the overgrown influence of one family. As the monastery of San Marco had been founded. by Cosimo di Medici at an enormous expense, and as the patronage still remained in his family, they expected, not unreasonably, that the new prior would follow the example of his predecessors, and regard them with deferential respect. But the frame of mind in which Savonarola assumed his new duties was altogether alien to the then spiritual and political condition of men and manners in Florence. There was no man bold enough to chastise with eloquence the vices and follies of the age. The most celebrated preachers of the time were moral preachers; that is to say, preachers who studiously concealed the deep and grievous evil of sin from the people, and based the divine blessing on the performance of meritorious and self-elected duties. Men admired their masterly disposition, the logical clearness and soundness with which they treated their argument-"qualities (says the writer before us) surely subordinate in importance, where first the demonstration of the Spirit with power is requisite"-but went away cold and unmoved from their preaching. Savonarola's oratory, on the contrary, was impassioned and all-emphatic. Reform-repentance, were the subjects he treated; reform in the discipline of the Church, in the disorders of the clergy, in the morals of the people. The tempest of divine vengeance he perceived impending over Italy, only to be averted by prayer and fasting, and a change of life. He suffered few appeals to the reason, fewer to the ordinary principles or even passions of men; in the name of heaven alone he commanded them to repent; and if his words were indeed clothed with authority and terror, it was by virtue of that fearful inspiration which endowed his lips with eloquence to denounce anarchy and ruin. No suavity of delivery, no insinuating gentleness of address was his; the words he uttered were those of an offended God threatening desolation and danger, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Refusing to recognize the usurpation of Lorenzo di Medici, he pursued with fierce anathemas the luxury and despotism of the aristocracy; while multitudes, believing in his mission, gave evidence by the modesty of their dress, their discourse, and their countenance, that his moral exhortations had produced a strong, if not abiding effect upon his auditors.

After the death of Lorenzo, and the expulsion of his son Pietro, Savonarola took a still more active part in the political affairs of Florence. He put himself at the head of those who demanded a popular form of government, and declared that the legislative power should be extended to all such citizens as were worthy and capable of exercising it for the benefit of the community. His representations induced the newly-elected magistrates to relinquish their offices to a council of citizens elected for the purpose of settling the affairs of the new constitution. Dissensions, however, distracted the republic; the aristocratical and democratical parties persecuted each other with great fury, the former consisting of the friends of the old order of things, and the latter of the devout admirers of the monk.

In 1494, Savonarola was deputed by the Florentines as envoy to Charles VIII., at Lucca. In this prince he expected his prophecies to be accomplished, but they were only partially • SO. He was, however, not at all disheartened at the apparent failure of his sanguine hopes, but persevered with unabated heroism in his course. He remodelled the Church and Republic at Florence, and for some time maintained in this city an almost absolute authority, in defiance of the Pope of Rome. At length, however, his antagonists, instigated by fear, jealousy, shame, and hatred, congregated their forces against Savonarola, and his spiritual domination was crushed by the weight of established authorities, who felt that their craft was in danger from the shafts of his righteous invective. According to the temper of that unhappy age, the Roman hierarchy chose to confound the supernaturalism of the prophet with the imposture of the magician, and put Savonarola to an ordeal, which was not unfrequently applied to witchcraft. Indignant as he was at so pitiful and invidious a treatment, he yet thought the honour of his faith obliged him to run all risks, and thus he became entangled in the meshes of a false position, and added his name to the catalogue of martyrs for the truth.

But the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Though Savonarola perished, his cause triumphed. The spark of living faith which he struck out from the flinty rock of adversity, kindled a fire, which warmed and illumined the heart of all Europe-a fire which will burn on, through Reformation after Reformation, till falsehood and corruption be consumed from the face of the earth.

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ART. IX.-Lord Ashley's Speech on Introducing the Factory Education Bill in the House of Commons. London: Olivier. 1843.

IN an article of much humour in an old periodical we read of a scientific gentleman, who, by the force of some occult arts, in which he was deeply learned, contrived a magic vehicle, which should pass through all the streets of the principal cities (invisible to all but those who are adept in knowledge) at the most public hours of the day. This should be driven by a virtuoso dustman, who was not to take away the rubbish of the house, but to make it his business to remove moral turpitude only, in its representative of male or female. And this, he argued, must be seen to be an institution of general emolument and good. For persons, he says, affected with contagious disorders are interdicted all commerce with their healthy fellow-creatures, and their corpses even thrown into some common receptacle, without the ceremony of interment, and this only because they were touched with a calamity to which mortality is necessarily liable, without any guilt of theirs to deserve such treatment. If, then, preservation of those who are untainted can warrant this usage of the calamitous, who are not so by their own fault, but misfortune, how just and equal is this plan to carry off, by a magical vehicle, persons who, by their conversations and vices, willingly and industriously spread contagions that destroy the happiness, wealth, and more, the morality of their neighbours!

Now such a vehicle as this the late Whig Government, in the shape of magical commissions, have been driving, or endeavouring to drive, not only during the public hours of the day, but also during the almost more public hours of the night. They have been true day and night scavengers, and a pretty load of scum and filth they have presented before the public eye. The public have paid heavily for the horrid sights revealed to them, and now must pay still more heavily for the remedy. The disease has been discovered, if not probed; and there is such a hurt in the daughter of my people as cannot be healed slightly. If a little learning be a dangerous thing, a little doctoring, in this case, will be of no avail. Lord Ashley, that humane and eloquent nobleman, stated the case as divulged by the Whig underlings, who have been searching here and there too successfully for instances of poverty, profligacy, and ignorance; and Sir James Graham, as the proper organ of the Conservative Government, was prompt in suggesting the administration of a sanatory cure. We find no fault with the

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