mended himself to Edward the third, by rebuilding the castle of Windsor: "and yet they (lords) wolen not present, a clerk able of kenning of God's law, but a kitchen clerk, or a penny clerk, or wise in building castles, or worldly doing, though he kenne not reade well his sauter."

THE MONKS AND CHARLES V.

The emperor, Charles V. retired to a monastry, but it was not to be expected that he who had harassed the world as much as he could, would be quiet there; he accordingly amused himself by calling up the monks at a very early hour to matins. A young one said, upon being so disturbed, "is it not enough for your majesty to "have broken in upon the repose of the universe, "but must you also break in upon that of a "poor insignificant monk?" But so inveterate was the monarch's habit of tormenting, that being foiled here, he took to tormenting himself by flagellation which he did so successfully, that at last he was fairly whipped out of the world.

URBAN VIII.

This pope, having been, as he thought, ill treated by some considerable persons at Rome, said, "how ungrateful is this family? to oblige "them I canonized an ancestor of their's that

"did not deserve it." We believe it was this pontiff who once exclaimed, "Oh, what a pro"digy of genius is that man, he thinks exactly " as I do."

IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the society of Jesuits, although this may perhaps be doubted, they appearing of much older date, since we find Numbers 2, c. 44, some of the Israelites were "of Jesue, the family of the Jesuits," put himself into the college de Montaigne, at Paris, in 1528; he there began his studies in the sixth class to learn his grammar a second time, and desired his master to set him a task, and whip him as he did the other scholars when remiss in his lesson. He was then thirty seven years old ;a pretty sight to see this venerable saint's shirt taken up among a company of boys, spectators of the flagellating comedy, we should rather call it farce.

DONATIST CIRCUMCELLIONS.

In the middle of the fourth century the circumcellions, who formed the strength and scandal of the Donatist party, were inflamed by a frenzy of a very extraordinary kind; and which, if it really prevailed among them in so extrava

gant a degree, cannot surely be paralleled in any country, or in any age. Many of these fanatics. were possessed with the horror of life, and the desire of martyrdom, and they deemed it of little moment by what means or by what hands they perished, if their conduct were sanctified by the intention of devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith and the hope of eternal happiness. The Donatist suicides alleged in their justification the example of Razias, which is related in. the fourteenth chapter of the second book of the Maccabees. Sometimes they rudely disturbed the festivals and profaned the temples of paganism, with the design of exciting the most zealous of the idolaters to revenge the insulted honour of their Gods. They sometimes forced their way into the courts of justice, and compelled the afflicted judge to give orders for their immediate execution. They frequently stopped travellers on the public highways, and obliged them to inflict the stroke of martyrdom, by the promise of a reward if they consented, and by the threat of instant death, if they refused to grant so very singular a favour. When they were disappointed of every other resource, they announced the day on which, in the presence of their friends and brethren, they should cast themselves headlong from some lofty rock; and many precipices

VOL. III.