in Italy, was the object of the negociation, in the course of which Matthioli visited Paris, had an interview with the King, and received large presents in gold and jewels. Whether the unfortunate man sold the French secrets to the enemy, or boasted of more influence than he really possessed, or had been all along the concealed agent of the Spaniards, does not appear; honesty and patriotism seem to have formed no part of his character, and his motives were probably as unprincipled as those of his employers. Baffled in his schemes, Louis became furious; his agents were employed to seduce the unfortunate Matthioli into the French territory; Catinat, soon to be immortalized by his ferocious invasion of the Waldenses, gave his assistance, the Duchess of Savoy offered no resistance, and the wretched Italian, though invested with a diplomatic character which should have rendered his person sacred, was seized and closely imprisoned in the fortress of Pignerol.* Here he underwent strict confinement, frequent examinations, and bad usage for three years, at the end of which time he and his keeper, St. Mars, were removed to Exilles with every precaution necessary to secure absolute privacy; from this prison he was again transferred to St. Marguerite, and finally to the Bastille, in whose gloomy dungeons he expired in 1703, after a cheerless imprisonment of twenty-four years.

Such is the history of the Iron Mask, and it is supported in all its parts by the extracts of correspondence between the French Court and Matthioli, and between Louvois and St. Mars. A regular report of the condition and conduct of the prisoner was sent to the Minister; no other prisoner of importance is spoken of in the dispatches, and as St. Mars was certainly the jailor of the Iron Mask, and that unfortunate prisoner accompanied him in his different migrations, the identity of Matthioli and that mysterious incognito, seems to be made out. It may be added, that the name under which the prisoner was buried, Marchially, was a name not very remote from his own,† and betokening, as Gibbon remarks, an Italian origin; that those who in spite of the surveil. lance under which he lived, happened to see him, speak of his possessing the accomplishments and information which a man of Matthioli's station in Italy would be likely to possess; and that as at the time of his arrest, no eminent person in Europe disappeared, no void was left in society, the prisoner must have been one who filled a subordinate situation, and whose place would be soon filled.

I am not aware of any objections to M. Delort's statements, supported as they are by authentic documents, except the apparent inconsistence of the rank of the prisoner and the dignity, so to say, of the confinement, and the absence of the Iron Mask, which

* Voltaire mentions this imprisonment, Gibbon doubts of it.

+ St. Mars, in his correspondence, whether by mistake or design, frequently calls him Mathioly.

certainly cuts no figure in his narrative at all proportioned to its rank in history, The first, however, seems to be sufficiently answered when we observe upon the probability that the Italian had obtained possession of more state secrets than Louis or his Ministers wished to get abroad; and that the breach of the law of nations of which Louis's vexation had made him guilty, prevented his subsequent release. The danger of possessing absolute power, even when there is no apparent motive or wish to abuse it, has been remarked by the Latin Satyrist; and in the imprisonment of Matthioli, Louis might have thought himself acting but with a necessary regard to justice and security;-his subsequent detention might have been owing to a respect for that opinion of the world to which even despots bow; and the wretched prisoner may have died in prison, because he had been partly forgotten and partly remembered.

As to the Mask, I confess that I surrender it with reluctance, but I fear that the truth of facts will not admit of its constant use. Delort has justly remarked the improbability, not to say impossibility, of any human being wearing such a machine for years on his face, as the effect would necessarily be a cutaneous disorder, resulting from the heat of the confinement; and it may be safely said, that no man could bear such a restraint for even a few days. It is not impossible that some such means of avoiding discovery might have been resorted to in the journeys of the governor and his prisoner, and when circumstances may have rendered it necessary to admit persons not possessed of the secret into the presence of Matthioli. The tale of the plate thrown out of the window, and other expedients to which the mysterious inmate of the dungeon is said to have had recourse, are also apocryphal, and probably took their rise from the attempts made by some unfortunate Huguenot ministers, confined at the same time in the same place with the Italian.*

It is impossible to contemplate the picture of human suffering sustained by this wretched man, and his scarcely less wretched jailor, for so many years, without a movement of indignation against the merciless tyrant who inflicted it. No human guilt could justify such cruelty, and scarcely any fortitude could sustain it. Without extenuating the guilt of the sufferer, it was too common to be marked by such severity of punishment; and if all the dungeons and all the jailors of the Grand Monarque could tell their tales as distinctly as Pignerol and Marguerite's, what a picture would probably be presented of human suffering and human guilt! If Matthioli was condemned to the imprisonment during life for one breach of faith, how many years' imprisonment should be awarded to the cold and unfeeling tyrant for the multi

• The stories of the respect shewn to the prisoner, even by the imperious Louvois are, it is probable, all fictitious, and perhaps invented by St. Mars, to prevent public curiosity penetrating his secret. There is no evidence that Louvois visited Provence subsequent to the transfer thither of the Iron Mask.

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plied acts of perfidy and baseness which mark his splendid but inhuman career. After all, the extreme desire the French court manifested of concealing the secret, so far as to raise the floor of the dungeon in which Matthioli was confined, and to destroy all the plate and linen of which he made use, can scarcely be accounted for, except on the supposition of a greater sensibility to public opinion than courts in general exhibit, and least of all the Court of Versailles.

One reflection forces itself on the mind in a review of such circumstances, how worthless and unimportant are all the mysteries of history, if this decantata questio, be taken as a fair specimen of them. Unimportant, and almost uninteresting, it derived all its value from the veil which shrouded it; and in giving us one more instance of vulgar error, and vulgar cruelty, scarcely produces a sensation. There is but one subject which increases in importance as we become more intimate with its mysteries, and whose secrets, when gradually unfolded to the eye of faith, acquire due dignity as they expand beyond time.

H.

SIR,

IRISH AND SANSCRIT.

I beg to communicate through you to the public the following singular circumstance which I have extracted from a private letter, just received from a learned and pious missionary in India. "I conclude that you have heard of the close resemblance between the pronunciation of the Irish and that of the Sanscrit language. An Irish major, hearing some Brahmins at their superstitious devotions, went among them, and repeated the Lord's Prayer in his native language. The poor creatures instantly discontinued their devotions, and flocked round him, expressing their admiration, at the accuracy with which they supposed him to be pronouncing their sacred tongue. Very few of them understand the meaning of their Sanscrit prayers, so that they might be easily deceived by the sound." I know not if this anecdote can be adduced in confirmation of the oriental origin of our countrymen, but you will perhaps agree with me that it deserves the publicity which your Miscellany can give. I am, Sir, your's, &c.

COUNCIL OF TRENT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

S.

SIR-Doctor Doyle, in his famous pastoral to the Carlow clergy, has referred to the Council of Trent as his authority for closing up the discussion with Protestants, and affecting to treat us as obstinate and condemned heretics, under the curse of God and

the Church. He thus describes the proceedings of that memorable assembly towards Protestants: "The cause is concluded; there "can be no new hearing-no new trial. The Church at Trent "invited the heretics of the sixteenth century (those who broached, or renewed, the errors which are now revived) to plead their own cause before the Council. These blind and obstinate men "refused to do so; but their cause was examined fully and dispassionately sentence at length was passed, and the matter "set at rest for ever-Causa finita est: it can never be revived"it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to our Fathers, so "to determine; and there can be no re-hearing of the case." From this dictum of the most influential Doctor of the Romish Church in Ireland, we see before us the fate to which he is pleased to consign us. As heretics we are found guilty, and sentenced to the anathema of an irrevocable curse-it must abide, there can be no re-hearing. Now, Sir, as this is a hard saying, and we may well exclaim, Who can bear it from those professing to believe in a common God, and hope to be redeemed by a common Saviour, I think a portion of your pages may not be unduly occupied by a short examination of the character of that Council, which assumed to itself the infallible and irreversible authority of dealing out damnation on the third part of Christendom.* The work of Father Paul Sarpi, the excellent historian of that Council, even suppose it were within the reach of most of your readers, is cumbrous, and few general readers in these pamphletloving days can screw up courage to fall to work on such a folio ; therefore, to save Magazine-readers such trouble, I now offer the following remarks, in order to satisfy them that the Christian world owes no respect whatsoever to the dictates of the assembly of Popish Churchmen at Trent.

For, as a Council, it is not to be considered, and has not been considered, even by Roman Catholics, as general, or free. Nor is it entitled, from the character of its constitution, or the temper of its proceedings, to a comparison, or co-authority with the early Councils of the Christian Church, to which Protestants agree to pay all due deference. I shall not, Sir, occupy your valuable pages here, in detailing the character and consequences of the two preceding Councils of Basil and Constance. Suffice it to say, that a reformation in the Church and Papacy was sought for by princes and people, and eluded by the Court of Rome. But now that Luther had, in a great measure, established his doctrines in Germany, as they had spread widely over France, England, and the north of Europe as neither arms nor arguments could controul the irrepressible principle of Protestantism-and as the Emperor of Germany, and all the Princes of the Empire, united with the Protestant Reformers to demand a general Council

As Fuller, with his usual quaintness, says, "Her decrees began by lying, and "concluded with cursing."

a Council that should not only supervise doctrines, but controal abuses-a Council free and general, that should proceed to reform the Church, capite et membris-as such Council was demanded by the Princes, and called for by the public opinion of Europe, to this general demand the Papal Court could not but accede.— But here it was that Italian artifice was called into play-here it was that the Machiavelian politics of the Vatican gained a decisive victory, and evinced how, under the refinements of its policy, and the play of its diplomacy, every Court could be made subservient to its purposes; and, as in the present instance, this threatened and much feared Council, that was intended by the honest German as a pruning-hook to cut down and pare away Papal excrescences and deformities, proved, under the management, and by the direction of the Court of Rome, a dagger to stab and mutilate its enemies.* This Council, summoned by Pope Paul III. met at Trent, in the year 1542; and now let us see whether it had the characteristic qualities of a General Council, properly convened —whether it was free in its deliberations, and full in its constituency, so as to entitle it to efficiency in finishing the great cause, and giving peace to Christendom; and let us further see whether Protestants were fairly treated, and their demands and doctrines examined fully and dispassionately.

The four General Councils of the Primitive Church were called by the edicts of the Christian Emperors of Rome, the sole masters of that civilized world, or 'Oueμevn,' over which their authority and influence was paramount to call together all ecclesiastical and learned persons, and the Doctors and Prelates of the Church, from Britain to Babylon. The first Council at Nice, met in virtue of an edict of Constantine the Great; the second at Constantinople, by order of Theodosius; the third at Ephesus, was called by Theodosius the younger, and Valentinian; and the fourth at Chalcedon, by Valentinian and Marcion.

In those times the Popes had nothing to do with the summoning of Councils; the Emperors were all in all. Thus Eusebius says,† "That the Emperor seeing the troubles in the Church, called an "Ecumenical Council from all parts, to meet at Nice; and they "did hasten thither with all imaginable alacrity, according to the Emperor's order." Theodoret, speaking of Theodosius, says,‡ "That he being come to the empire, resolved, above all things, "to provide for the unity of the church; and to that end com"manded all Bishops to repair to Constantinople."

Thus we might shew in every instance, that the Primitive Coun

* De Ranchin, a Roman Catholic historian of the Council, says, "But the Popes "turned the cat in the pan, and carried the matter so handsomely, that instead of "a natural birth, the Council was delivered of a monster! and for a Canon of a "Synodical Decree, brought forth a papal bull-instead of an extirpation of abuses, a nursery of errors-a depravation for a reformation." Page 1.

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† Eusebius de vita Constant. Lib. 3, ch. 6.

Theodoret. Lib. 5, ch. 16.