CHAPTER III.

We next find our traveller at Padua, where the genius of the place presented him with a fair opportunity, and his own infirm constitution gave him frequent occasion, to apply himself diligently to the study of physic; in which, by a rapid proficiency, he gained the friendship and assistance of the most excellent men in that university. Here, indeed, as at Leipsic, he was (for his own comfort and advantage) too well known, and his society too much sought.

And besides the Paduans, he was oppressed by frequent visits from the English, whose character abroad is to seek too assiduously the society and conversation of their own countrymen: he therefore retired from the city, sometimes ten, twenty, thirty, or forty miles into the country, frequently changing his residence, and then returning for three weeks or a month to Padua, or to Venice, where he was received and treated in an obliging manner by Sir Dud

ley Carleton, at that time the English ambassador. Once during his stay at Padua he was attacked by a violent fit of illness: his physicians were his particular acquaintance; and as the case approached to a crisis, they had a consultation in his chamber.

Bleeding was determined upon as the last remedy; to which he was ready to submit, though reasoning the case with them, he conIcluded it would hasten his end; when a very old physician, who came to him in pure kindness, and had been silent before, protested he was his own best physician, and prevailed upon them to defer the bleeding. Next morning there appeared some favourable symptoms; and within three or four days, they were perfectly of opinion, that had they opened a vein, he had infallibly died. The good old physician, transported with joy to have been, under God, his preserver, came daily, and sat whole hours with him whilst he kept his chamber, admiring the excellency of his parts, as well intellectual as moral.

Ferrar, as an ardent student in history, had gone deep into the lore of Rome and her antiquities; he had also read with interest the best

accounts given in those days of modern Rome : if this study had produced in him the wish that it excited in St. Augustine, to have seen her ancient glory, it gave him also an anxious desire to see her modern policy. But conferring with some persons who were well acquainted with the English college there, and who had recently come from thence, he was assured that the Jesuits were not ignorant of his name or talents; that they were, in the spirit of inquisitorial jealousy, watchful over his movements on the continent; that they had a description of his person, as well as his character; and they concluded he came abroad upon some great design inimical perhaps to the doctrines of their sect, or subversive of the religion of Rome.

Rome was not, in the early part of the seventeenth century, so safe a place for Protestants as it is now in the nineteenth. Ferrar therefore, bent on visiting the papal city, stole away from Padua, travelled very privately on foot, and so arranged his progress that he arrived at Rome on Monday, in the great holy week before Easter-day.

He changed his lodging every night, and

stayed there but ten days, which he husbanded so advantageously, as to be enabled to take a view of every thing remarkable.

It is to be lamented that little detail of any interest or importance can be afforded of his visit to Rome. It would have been highly interesting to have had a view of the reflections of such a mind as Ferrar's upon a place and a subject on which modern travellers of much less power of intellect, depth of research, or faculty of observation, delight to expatiate; and we must regret that a Christian, a scholar, and a gentleman,-a man of diligent research and acute observation, should have visited Rome in the early part of the seventeenth century, without, as far as we are able to discover, gratifying the world by a transcript of his reflections on such a visit.

His biographer, Dr. Turner, mentions one curious circumstance which happened to our traveller at Rome. He had unadvisedly pressed into a gallery through which the Pope was passing by in state, when all the people fell on their knees to beg his indulgence and blessing before Easter. Though he was too sensible a traveller to have scrupled at such com

pliments as are usually paid to the Pope as a temporal prince, yet this good Protestant was so surprised by the suddenness of the encounter, that he remained standing. One of the Swiss guards seeing him stand amazed amidst the kneeling throng, and taking him perhaps for a Dutchman, ignorant of the customs of Rome, came up to him, as if to preserve him from the consequences of his unintentional disrespect, and clapping his heavy hand upon his shoulder, whispered softly in his ear in the Dutch language, "Down, simpleton, down!" When the Pope was gone by, the Swiss took off his hand from his neck, got up, and passed away in the throng; but Ferrar, whilst he felt the kind intention of the man, felt also the effects of his roughness for a week after, nor would he thrust himself into such places of danger any more.

And now, intending to take leave of Italy, he repaired to Marseilles, designing thence to go by sea to Spain. But at Marseilles he met with an interruption. There he was again seized by a fever, even more terrible than that by which he was attacked at Padua. His physician and his landlord took him for a knight