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"Every age, as it passed over the Vatican, seemed to add to its holiness and dignity; and the coronation of an emperor, or the installation of a pope, the deposition of the remains of a prince, or the enshrinement of the reliques of a saint, appeared as so many tributes paid to its supereminence, and gave it so many new claims to the veneration of the Christian world. At length, however, after eleven centuries of glory, the walls of the ancient Basilica began to give way, and symptoms of approaching ruin were become so visible about the year 1450, that Nicholas V. conceived the project of taking down the old church, and erecting in its stead a new and more extensive structure."

The new Church of St. Peter's at length slowly arose, completed by the contributions of Christendom, wrung from superstitious devotees, by means which have rendered it one of the most remarkable monuments of the Reformation. The reader is doubtless familiar with the history of the sale of Indulgences of the claims of exemption from penance of certain German possessors of these papal privileges: of the stern protest of the monk Luther against them and their retailers and of the great consequences to all succeeding ages which have sprung out of what seemed at first only the sticklings of an obscure and uninfluential monk. Thus may the protestant Christian regard the vast pile of St. Peter's at Rome, not only as a work which for upwards of a century occupied the zeal, and exhausted the revenues of eighteen successive pontiffs, and ere it had been brought to a close had extended over the long period, embracing the pontificates of Nicholas V. in 1450, to that of Pius VI. in the present century. Of how many memorable changes may it be esteemed the memorial. Re-edified as the visible centre of the papal system, with its vast system of pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, and nuns; its monasteries, its penances, its inquisitions, its auto-da-fés; it has

seemed to stand still with its little, old-world centre of things, while all else is changing. The gorgeous magnificence of the papacy still exists there; but we cannot look on the passing events and believe that all is sound and enduring, though the gilding and the tinsel is still renewed on its showy exterior. This century has twice witnessed the sovereign pontiff driven from his sevenhilled throne, and twice has he been restored to it by the most unlikely means. Once did protestant England step forward to rescue the successor of St. Peter from the undutiful hands of those who pretended still to own his infallibility, and to recognise him as the divinely appointed vicegerent and representative of God on earth. A second time it may be said to be the work of faithless, of infidel France, whose children for the most part declare that pope and pagan are alike to them; though it has not escaped the thoughts of many, that the unbelieving gallic soldiery may be, after all, only the tools of those who are watching the working out of the present restless changes of France, and dexterously converting them to the ends of the same vast system. Into such questions it is not our province to enter here. Yet no thoughtful mind can contemplate that gorgeous pile, where the visible head of the Romish Church occupies the throne of temporal and spiritual power, without the thoughts reverting to that vast system, which has for ages enslaved the souls of millions, and bound the nations down under its dark and blighting yoke of ignorance, superstition, and cunning priestcraft. How strange a change from old imperial Rome.

The city stands, her domes and turrets crowned
With many a cross; but they that issue forth,
Wander like strangers who had built among
The mighty ruing, silent, spiritless;

And on the road where once we might have met
Cæsar and Cato, and men more than kings,
We meet, none else, the pilgrim and the beggar.

The change is indeed immense from the Imperial City, along whose crowded ways the tramp of armed men bore the spoils of the world, and shouted the triumphs of victorious leaders. Yet the cowled and sandaled cohorts of the later holder of its world-empire, drag more abject slaves in their train, and have proved more invincible in their conquests and more enduring in their triumphs, than even were the imperial legions, when the world admitted but of one throne. The Goths and Vandals of the north, swept at length over the decrepid empire, tottering to its fall, and we cannot doubt, but that the days of that system are also numbered, the history of which reveals so much that is at variance with the whole system of divine law.

CHAPTER V.

BRITISH PAGAN TEMPLES.

Screams round the Arch-druid's brow the seamew-white

As Menai's foam; and towards the mystic ring

Where Augurs stand, the futare questioning,

Slowly the cormorant aims her heavy flight,

Portending ruin to each baleful rite,

That, in the lapse of ages, hath crept o'er
Diluvian truths and patriarchal lore.

WORDSWORTH.

We are so accustomed to date our national history from the period of the Roman invasion, if not indeed from the later eras of the Saxon heptarchy, or the Norman conquest, that comparatively few allow their thoughts to

dwell on the possibility of a period of national existence prior to the earliest of these events. Yet not only was Britain a populous and comparatively civilized country at the remotest of these fixed epochs, but even at this day the sites of many important localities are traceable to events of that dim or altogether unexplored period of our history. The city of Exeter occupies a site where evidences of Greek and Phoenician intercourse have been discovered, manifestly long prior to the first visit of the Romans to our shores. The city of York, it is believed, covers the area of a druidical temple, where the bloody rites of heathen superstition were practised for ages; and the site of the venerable Abbey of St. Albans is still surrounded with the traces of ancient occupation. In its immediate vicinity the most remarkable example of a Roman amphitheatre ever found in England has been disclosed.

Doubt and uncertainty necessarily attends us when we seek to explore these unilluminated portions of history. It seems indeed, at first sight, vain to hope for any light to guide our investigations, or furnish a single well-authenticated fact. The dimness of this remote period, and the illusive shadows of its traditions and fables struck the fancy of the poet from whose beautiful series of ecclesiastical sonnets the motto of the present chapter is selected, and he thus depicts the vain attempt to grope our way amid its mysterious gloom :-

"Darkness surrounds us; sceking, we are lost
On Snowdon's wilds, amid Brigantine coves,
Or where the solitary shepherd roves
Along the plain of Sarum, by the ghost

Of Time and shadows of Tradition, crost;
And where the boatman of the Western Isles
Slackens his course-to mark those holy piles.

Which yet survive on bleak Iona's coast.
Nor these, nor monuments of eldest fame,
Nor Taliesin's unforgotten lays,

Nor characters of Greek or Roman fame,

To an unquestionable Source have led;

Enough-if eyes that sought the fountain head in vain,
In vain, upon the growing Rill may gaze.

Yet though we cannot reach the fountain head, much curious insight may be gleaned into the features, once visible within this surrounding darkness. The investigations into the very early period of human history are now receiving a degree of attention, never yielded to them before. The study of the past is recognized as something not necessarily dependent altogether on written histories, nor even on graven inscriptions; although we have seen the remarkable light, which hieroglyphic and cuneiform records are capable of throwing on periods which had seemed utterly passed away into oblivion. We possess in England no such definite records of its infant history. Both letters and science are affirmed to have been familiar to the British Druids, but if so they used them solely for their own ends, and if they left any graven inscriptions relating to their creed, or to the national annals, the last of these have long since been swept away with numberless other monuments of the period to which they pertained. Nevertheless remarkable memorials of the age still remain, which have already sufficed as the basis for some intelligent conclusions, and for far more vague and profitless theories and speculations. Huge volumes have been written about the Druids, their worship, their learning, their government, their mysteries and rites, and yet after all it must be owned that we know very little about them, and can place but slight reliance on nearly all the statements even of the earliest and most trustworthy writers. But besides the remains of temples associated with Druid rites, we possess some curious though little noted traces of the barbarian state of ancient Britain, which, insignificant as they may appear, cannot be altogether unworthy of notice, since

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