long fallen into arrears) frequently saved the King from excommunication, and the realm from an interdict. On the venality alike of Pope and cardinals, we have several intimations in both these volumes. Thus, the excellent John of Salisbury, in a letter to the archbishop :

for persons among the successors of St. Peter? This is not so with God, who treats prince and plebeian alike as they have deserved. What glory can there be either for God or man in giving the poor man his rights and restraining princes from heinous crimes? Justice severely punishes the powerful and exercises her harshest prerogative over those who are in office. Who was ever before allowed, with "I do not place much reliance on the court the connivance of the Roman pontiff, to abuse of Rome: whose necessities and mode of act- the property of the Church so licentiously as ing I now see through. Our lord the pope, the king of England has done? He has now indeed, is a holy and righteous man, and his for five years held the revenues of our see and abbat, as I am told by many, does his best to all our goods, besides the bishoprics of Linimitate him but their necessities are so great, coln, Bath, Hereford, and Ely, whilst the posand the dishonesty and cupidity of the Ro- sessions of the see of Landaff have been almans are so startling, that the pope some-most all squandered upon his knights, and tines uses his prerogative, and by dispensation obtains what may benefit the state, but cannot benefit religion."

And Becket himself is often loud in his

complaints Hearing that English gold had produced great relaxation in the severity intended to be adopted toward the guilty, he thus observes in a letter to his agent at Rome

"If this is true, then without doubt, his lordship the pope has suffocated and strangled, not only our own person, but himself and every ecclesiastic of both kingdoms; yea, both churches together, the Gallican and the English. For what will not the kings of the earth dare against the clergy, under cover of this most wretched precedent? And on what can the Church of Rome rely, when it thus deserts and leaves destitute the persons who are making a stand in its cause, and contending for it even unto death?"

Again, speaking of Rome:

"The glorious city is captured, that city which subdued the world is subverted and sunk before the love of human favor; and that which could not be slain with the sword, has been cut off by the poisons of these western regions. With shame be it spoken: by her fall the Church's liberties have been sacrificed for the sake of temporal advantages. The road to her ruin lay through the sinuous paths of riches: she has been prostituted in the streets to princes, she has conceived iniquity, and will bring forth oppression to the undeserving."

And in a letter to the Pope himself— "We have one miserable source of consolation in all this, if you will allow me to say so : that the Roman Church takes this mode of rewarding its friends and faithful children. May God comfort her better than she provides for herself: may he comfort the Church of England and us, and all our wretched ones." In another letter to the papal legate he says: "To quell the haughty, but to spare the fallen,' was the ancient motto of the Romans, and it is surely the doctrine of Christ's Church, 'Behold, I have set thee over nations and kingdoms,' &c. Should there be any regard

Bangor has been ten years without a bishop, because the king will not consent to an election."

The following (to Cardinal Albert) is still stronger :

"I wish, my dear friend, your ears were hard by the mouths of some of our people, that you might hear what is chaunted in the streets of Ascalon to the discredit of the Roman Church. Our last messengers seemed to have brought us some consolation in the Pope's letters which we have received, but their authority has been altogether nullified by other letters, commanding that Satan should be set free to the destruction of the Church. Thus by the apostolic mandate the bishops of London and Salisbury, one of whom is known to have been the fomenter of the schism, and the contriver of all this wickedness from the beginning, and to have inveigled the bishop of Salisbury and others into the crime of disobedience, have been absolved from excommunication. I know not how it is; but at your court Barabbas is always let go free, and Christ is crucified. Our proscription and the sufferings of the Church have now lasted nearly six years. The innocent, poor and exiled, are condemned before you, and for no other cause, I say conscientiously, than because they are Christ's poor and helpless ones, and would not recede from God's righteousness: whilst on the other hand the sacrilgeious, murderers, and robbers, are acquitted, however impenitent, though I say, on Christ's own authority, that St. Peter himself, sitting on the tribunal, would have no power to acquit them."

"Roman robbers," "traitors to religion," the kind, are by no means spared by the sons of perdition," and other terms of offended exile, and assuredly they seem to have been fully deserved.

The letters before us (and they are numerous) give us an unfavorable account of and wished not to have, any will but the the English bishops generally, who had not, King's. Thus the admirable writer we have before quoted (John of Salisbury), in a letter to Becket:

"The consolatory letters which your faithful tory. When compelled to leave Pontigny children, the bishops of the province of Can- by the menaces of the king, who threatened terbury, lately sent you, after your long exile to seize all the possessions of the order and proscription, I have carefully perused, and

I look upon them as dictated by Ahitophel (the Cistercian) in England, unless he were himself come to life, and written by a second expelled, the sentiment was not likely to Doeg of Idumea, thirsting for the blood of cool. Christ and his elect. Every thing is therein so perverted that it is easy for any one to see how irreconcilable they are with public opinion and the voice of truth, and how manifest ly they have been framed to give a color of justice to the appeal of the bishops."

His former excommunications had been suspended by the Pope; at Clairvaux he was permitted to renew them. But how were they to be served? Unless actually delivered they had no efficacy; and Henry more suo, had threatened with death every body that should land in England with censures of any kind from Pope or Archbishop. Several messengers, in fact, had been put to death, and the coasts were diligently watched to prevent the arrival of such dreaded missives. Could Henry have succeeded in his object of preventing all communication between his clergy and the Roman see, he might easily flatter himself with the hope of making the English Church as dependent on his caprice, and subject to his rapacity, as the humblest But all his vigilance peasant in the land. was vain :—

Elsewhere he asserts that their faces must be no less brazen than a harlot's, for daring to assure the Pope that Henry was "an obedient son of the Church." He is particularly severe on the bishop of London, the most bitter of Becket's enemies, and the most servile tool of royalty: "He boasts that London was once the seat of an arch-flamen, when Jupiter was worshipped in Britain. So wise and religious a man as he might perhaps like to see the worship of Jupiter restored, that if he cannot be archbishop, he may at least be arch-flamen." Becket, who was invested with the legatine authority, (though he had the morti"The archbishop was for some time sorely fication often to see that authority suspendat a loss to find a person who would venture to ed through English gold,) was not a man convey this sentence into England. At last a to suffer with impunity the injustice of his young layman, named Berenger, offered himown and the Church's enemies. Against self, and we learn from the narrative of Fitzthe most prominent of them, barons or Stephen in what manner he discharged his bishops, he issued his fulminations, both mission. On the festival of Ascension Day a from Pontigny and Clairvaux. During his priest, an excellent but timid man, named Viretirement at the former place, he doubtless talis, was officiating at the high altar of St. Paul's Church, London, when, just as they imbibed strong feelings of enthusiasm. In began to chaunt the offerenda, and the priest the history of saints, confessors, and mar- had presented the bread and wine, and made tyrs, he found subjects enough for contem-ready the chalice, a stranger, named Berenplation; the study of the canon law exalted ger, approached, and falling down on his knees, in his eyes the prerogatives of the Church; held out to the priest what appeared to be his and the denunciations of Scripture on ished at the man's behavior, held out his donation to the offertory. The priest, astonevil-doers, especially the great of the earth, hand to receive the oblation. Berenger put gave to his feelings a new degree of inten- into his hand a letter, saying, The bishop of sity. These were deepened by the arrival this diocese is not present; no more is the of so many of his servants and dependents, dean; but I see you as Christ's officiating and his friends and kinsfolk, banished from minister, and I here, in the name of God and England, and who must have perished for our lord the pope, present to you this letter want of the necessaries of life, had not the from the archbishop of Canterbury, containing the sentence which he has pronounced on the French king, the Pope, and the Queen of bishop of London, also another letter to the Sicily administered to their relief. With dean, enjoining him and his clergy to observe refinement of cruelty, the despot had this sentence. And I forbid you, by God's forced the exiles to swear that they would authority, to celebrate in this church after the hasten to the exile at Pontigny and show present mass, until you have delivered to the him their miserable plight. The archbishop bishop and the dean these letters.' The had already been merged in the excited stranger, having spoken these words, disappeared amid the crowds of people who were monk; his human feelings could not sup-moving off to their homes, as was usual after port the present sight; and in this unfor- the Gospel had been read, for they had already tunate temper he fulminated the censures heard mass in their own parish churches. Ă so well known to readers of English his-buzz went round among those who were near

a

est to the altar, and they began to ask the been Henry's dupe, restored his favor to priest if divine service was prohibited in the the Archbishop. cathedral. On his answering in the negative the people said no more, and the man retired unmolested. The priest meanwhile continued the service of the mass; but the king's officials made search in all parts of the city for Berenger, and placed guards at all the crossings of the streets, but he could nowhere be found. Not many days elapsed before the bishop and dean returned to London, when the priest Vitalis delivered to each his letter."

The sorrows of his kinsmen, his friends, and above all, his poor dependents, were infinitely more galling to the Archbishop than his own. For their sakes he often submitted to negotiate, though he well knew from the character of the king that little benefit was to be expected from it. Nor did he like his own continued dependence on the bounty of others. Though he had often found a friend in the French king, he more than once had reason to distrust his sincerity; and on one occasion, a misunderstanding having risen, both he and his companions believed the door of hope to be closed. This was after an ineffectual interview between Louis, Henry, and Becket, at Montmirail:

6

The hollow reconciliation on the part of the king, which enabled Becket to revisit his flock, is too well known to require further exposure. Surprise has been expressed that so penetrating a man should have suffered himself to be deluded by royal hypocrisy, especially when the kiss of peace was so pertinaciously denied him. The truth, however, is that he was not deluded at all. He saw that the promised conditions would not be fulfilled; he knew that mischief was designed him; he had warnings enough from many quarters that if he returned to his see his life would be taken. But he despised the foreseen consequence; and he solemnly declared, that whether he lived or died he would no longer be kept from his flock. He went; and, as every body knows, perished in a manner the most barbarous, but with a dignity unequalled.

On that tragical event, the particulars of which have been so long familiar to every reader, it would be useless to comment. But we think no unbiassed reader can arise from a perusal of the circumstances that preceded and followed it, without a "The party at St. Columba's were discus- conviction that the murder was expressly sing the events which had lately happened, commanded by Henry. It is evidently, and the failure of their journey to Montmirail. indeed, not Dr. Giles's opinion; but Dr. They had also another subject for conversa- Giles is not much distinguished for either tion, in the supposed alienation and continued silence of the French king. The archbishop, penetration or reflection. He falls too smiling at the different suggestions that were blindly into the train of preceding writers; offered, said, 'I am the only one amongst you and leans to conclusions not warranted by whom king Henry wishes to injure, and if I go the facts which he himself adduces. His away, no one will impede or harm you: do work wants connexion: it has little cohenot be afraid. It is for you that we take rency of parts; the events are not consecuthought,' replied they, because we do not see where you can find refuge; and though you tively dependent on each other. This is are so high in dignity, yet all your friends chiefly the fault of the plan, which, consisthave deserted you. Then do not care for ing for the most part of letters from many me,' said he, 'I commend my cause to God, different persons, cannot possibly have the who is very well able to protect me. Though unity of purpose essential to the solution of both England and France are closed against an historical problem. A carefully conme, I shall not be undone. I will not apply structed narrative founded on the letters, to those Roman robbers, for they do nothing biographies, and histories of the period, with but plunder the needy without compunction. I will adopt another mode of action. It is said the originals in a copious appendix, would that the people who live on the banks of the have been a far preferable mode of dealing Arar in Burgundy, as far as the borders of with the subject. Such a concatenation of Provence, are more liberal. I will take only parts would have allowed of comparison one companion with me, and we will go and inference, and have imperceptibly conamongst those people on foot, and they will ducted the reader's mind to the legitimate assuredly have compassion on us. At that conclusion for which we are contendingmoment an officer appeared from the French king, inviting the archbishop to an interview. Becket's authorized murder. At the same 'He means to turn us out of his kingdom,' time it would have displayed the king's said one of those who were present. Do not character in true colors, by dispersing the forebode ill,' said the archbishop, 'you are not cloud of hypocrisy which rests upon it. a prophet, nor a son of the prophets.'" In him met two extremes, which we rarely find in any other historical personage-dis

The French king, perceiving that he had

simulation with violence. As each pre-immediately to entertain me with the private dominated, his character was estimated by histories and family'affairs of the whole party. actual beholders from it alone, little regard being had to the variableness of his caprice. After Becket's murder, it was thought by the world at large that dreadful measures would be adopted to punish the king and his advisers. But gold turned aside both interdict and excommunication, and restored monarch, baron, and bishop to the favor of Christ's vicar-thus verifying the character which Becket had so strongly passed on that court.

A brown, decayed, old cheese of a town, Piacenza is. A deserted, solitary, grassgrown place, with ruined ramparts: half filled up trenches, which afford a frowsy pasturage to the lean kine that wander about them; streets of stern houses moodily frowning at the other houses over the way. The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go wandering about with the double curse of laziness and poverty uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimentals; the In conclusion, we may observe, that if dirtiest of children play with their imDr. Giles has made a less satisfactory use promptu toys (pigs and mud) in the feeblest of his abundant materials than might have of gutters; and the gauntest of dogs trot been expected from him,-if a life of Beck-in and out of the dullest of archways, in et be still a desideratum, he has rendered perpetual search of something to eat, a valuable service to succeeding biogra- which they never seem to find. A mysteriphers. This, indeed, constitutes the true value of his book. In its actual form it cannot be called either a history or a biography; it affords us little insight into the important questions of feudal and ecclesiastical judicature; or even into the spirit and manners of the age. But, notwithstanding these obvious defects, it is really an acquisition to our literature.

From the London Daily News.

ous and solemn Palace, guarded by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands gravely in the midst of the idle town; and the king with the marble legs, who flourished in the time of the Arabian Nights, might live contentedly inside of it, and never have the energy in his upper half of flesh and blood to want to come out.

What a strange, half-sorrowful and halfdelicious doze it is, to ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the sun! Each in its turn appears to be, of all the mouldy, dreary, God-forgotten

TRAVELLING LETTERS WRITTEN ON THE towns in the wide world, the chief. Sitting

ROAD.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

VIII.

PIACENZA TO BOLOGNA.

AT Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey from the inn at Stradella, we broke up our little company before the hotel door, with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all sides. The old priest was taken with the cramp again before he had got half-way down the street; and the young priest laid the bundle of books on a door step, while he dutifully rubbed the old gentleman's legs. The client of the avvocato was waiting for him at the yard gate, and kissed him on each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I am afraid he had either a very bad case, or a scantilyfurnished purse. The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering off, carrying his hat in his hand, that he might the better trail up the ends of his dishevelled moustache. And the brave courier, as he and I strolled away to look about us, began

on this hillock, where a bastion used to be, and where a noisy fortress was, in the time of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I have never known, till now, what it is to be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the same condition before he retires to the wool in his cage-or a tortoise before he buries himself. I feel that I am getting rusty. That any attempt to think, would be accompanied with a creaking noise. That there is nothing any where to be done, or needing to be done. That there is no more human progress, motion, effort, or advancement of any kind, beyond this. That the whole scheme stopped here centuries ago, and lay down to rest until the Day of Judgment.

Never while the brave courier lives! Behold him jingling out of Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest postingchaise ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if he were peeping over a garden wall; while the postilion, concentrated essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his animated conversation, to touch his hat to a

blunt-nosed little virgin hardly less shabby | shaped club on his shoulder, like Hercules. than himself, enshrined in a plaster Then, six or eight Roman chariots: each Punch's show outside the town.

with a beautiful lady in extremely short In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the petticoats, and unnaturally pink leggings, vines ou trellis-work, supported on square erect within, shedding beaming looks upon clumsy pillars, which in themselves are any the crowd, in which there was a latent exthing but picturesque. But here they twine pression of discomposure and anxiety for them around trees, and let them trail which I couldn't account, until, as the open among the hedges; and the vineyards are back of each chariot presented itself, I saw full of trees, regularly planted for this pur- the immense difficulty with which the pink pose, each with its own vine twining and legs maintained their perpendicular, over clustering about it. Their leaves are now the uneven pavement of the town, which of the brightest gold and deepest red; and gave me quite a new idea of the ancient never was any thing so enchantingly grace- Romans and Britons. The procession was ful and full of beauty. Through miles of brought to a close by some dozen indomitathese delightful forms and colors, the road ble warriors of different nations riding two winds its way. The wild festoons; the and two, and haughtily surveying the tame elegant wreaths and crowns, and garlands population of Modena, among whom, howof all shapes; the fairy nets flung over ever, they occasionally condescended to great trees, and making them prisoners in scatter largesses in the form of a few handsport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of bills. After caracolling among the lions exquisite shapes upon the ground; how and tigers, and proclaiming that evening's rich and beautiful they are! And every entertainments with blast of trumpet, it then now and then a long, long line of trees, filed off by the other end of the square, and left will be all bound and garlanded together, a new and greatly increased dulness behind. as if they had taken hold of one another, and were coming dancing down the fields! It was most delicious weather when the tall posting-chaise brought us into Modena, where the darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways, skirting the main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory of the day into a dim cathedral, where high mass was performing, feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning the usual chaunt, in the usual low, dull, drawling, melancholy tone.

Thinking how strange it was to find in every stagnant town, this same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the centre of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another door, and was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately came tearing round the corner, an equestrian company from Paris; marshalling themselves under the walls of the church, and flouting with their horses' heels the very griffons, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and marble, decorating its exterior. First, there came a stately nobleman, with a great deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous banner, on which was inscribed, MAZEPPA! TO-NIGHT! Then, a Mexican chief, with a great pear

When the procession had so entirely passed away, that the shrill trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the last horse was hopelessly round the corner, the people who had come out of the church to stare at it, went back again. But one old lady kneeling on the pavement within, near the door, had seen it all, and had been immensely interested, without getting up; and this old lady's eye, at that juncture, I happened to catch, to our mutual confusion. She cut our embarrassment very short, however, by crossing herself devoutly, and going down at full length on her face before a figure in a blue silk petticoat and a gilt crown; which was so like one of the procession-figures, that perhaps at this hour she may think the whole appearance a celestial vision. Any how, I must certainly have forgiven her her interest in the Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor.

There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder, in the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to see the bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of Modena took away from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth century, and about which there was war made, and a mock-heroic poem too. Being quite content, however, to look at the inside of the tower, and feast in imagination on the bucket within; and preferring to loiter in the shade of the tall campanile, and about the cathedral, I have no personal know