CHASTISEMENT OF THE INQUISITORS OF SARRAGOSSA.

THE following incident affords an instance, unfortunately of rare occurrence, in which the rulers and agents of that all powerful and oppressive body, the Inquisition, have sometimes been checked in their infamy.

In 1706, after the battle of Almanza, the Spanish army being divided into two bodies, one of them advanced through Valencia, towards the confines of Catalonia, under the command of the Duke of Berwick, and the other composed of fourteen thousand French auxiliaries, commanded by the Duke of Orleans, proceeded to the conquest of Arragon, whose inhabitants had declared themselves for king Charles III. Before the duke arrived at the city of Sarragossa, the magistrates went to meet him, and to offer him the keys of the town, but he refused them, and preferred rather to enter through a breach, according to the customs of war, which he did, treating the people as rebels to their lawful king. After regulating the affairs of the city he departed for Catalonia, and in a short time, Monsieur de Legal was sent to command in his place.

The city was ordered to pay a thousand crowns a month for the duke's table, and every house a pistole and besides this, the convents were to pay a donatrice proportioned to their rents. The college of Jesuits was charged with two thousand pistoles: the Dominicans with one thousand, the Augustins with one thousand, and so the rest.

M. de Legal sent first to the Jesuits, who refused to pay, alleging their ecclesiastical immunity, but Legal, not acquainted with this sort of excuse, sent four companies of grenadiers to be quartered on the convent at discretion, so that the fathers, fearful for their treasure, were soon glad to pay the donatrice required.

He next sent to the Dominicans. The friars of this order are all familiars of the holy office and dependent on it; they declined paying, under the pretence that they had no money, and said it was impossible to satisfy his demands, unless they should send the silver bodies of the saints. They did this in order to terrify Legal with the apprehension of popular violence upon this insult to the sacred

images; but he, equally politic with themselves, immediately commanded four companies more of his grenadiers to line the streets, holding out his musket in one hand, and a lighted candle in the other, to receive with all possible devotion, the procession of the priests, who advanced bearing the images. Having received the saints, he sent them to the mint, promising the father prior to send him what remained above the thousand pistoles. The friars, being disappointed in their design of raising the people, went to the inquisitors to desire them to release their saints out of the mint, by excommunicating M. Legal, which the inquisitors did upon the spot; and as soon as the excommunication was drawn up, they sent it by the hands of their secretary to be read to him. The governor mildly replied that he would reply to the inquisitors the next morning, and so disinissed the secretary perfectly satisfied. At the same moment, without reflecting upon any consequence, he called his own secretary, and bid him draw up a copy of the excommunication, putting out the name of Legal, and inserting that of the holy inquisitors.

The next morning he gave orders for four regiments to be ready, and sent them, along with his secretary, to the inquisition, with commands to read the excommunication to the inquisitors themselves, and if they made the least remonstrance, to turn them forth, open all the prisons, and quarter two regiments there. The inquisitors, as was natural, exclaimed violently against such treatment, and denouncing the most terrible threats against its author, the secretary placed them under a strong guard and conveyed them to a house prepared for the purpose, from which they shortly set off for Madrid to complain to the king; but, although he affected to be very sorry for what had happened, he told them that, as his crown was in the greatest danger, and as the affront was offered by the troops of his grandfather, who defended it, they must wait with patience, until his affairs should take a more prosperous turn.

The secretary of Monsieur Legal, according to his order, next opened the doors of all the prisons, and then the profligate wickedness of these inquisitors was detected. hundred prisoners obtained their liberty on that day, among them were found one hundred and fifty young women,

who belonged to the seraglio of the three inquisitors, as some of them afterwards confessed! This discovery, so dangerous to the holy tribunal, was in some measure prevented by the archbishop, who went to M. Legal, to request him to send these young women to his palace, that he might take care of them; and in the mean time, he proclaimed an ecclesiastical censure against such as should venture to defame the sacred inquisition by groundless reports upon the subject; thus confirming the universal belief of its iniquity! The governor answered, that he should be happy to oblige his grace in any thing within his power, but for these young women, the French officers had succeeded in hurrying them away.

"As I travelled in France some time after," says the narrator, "I met with one of these women at the inn at which I lodged, who had been brought there by the son of the innkeeper, formerly a lieutenant in the French service in Spain, and whom he afterwards married for her great merit and beauty. She was daughter of the counsellor Balabriga; I had known her before she had been seized by the inquisitors' orders; her father died of grief, without the consolation of revealing the cause of his distress, even to his confessor, so extreme was the terror of the inquisition in every mind."

ASTROLOGIGAL PREDICTIONS.

DRYDEN married the lady Elizabeth Howard, sister to the Earl of Berkshire, who survived him eight years; though for the last four of them she was a lunatic, having been deprived of her senses by a nervous fever. By this lady he had three sons: Charles, John, and Henry. Of the eldest of these, there is a circumstance related by Charles Wilson, Esq. in his life of Congreve, which seems so well attested, and is itself of so very extraordinary a nature, that we cannot avoid giving it a place.

Dryden, with all his understanding, was weak enough to be fond of judicial astrology, and used to calculate the nativity of his children. When his lady was in labor with his

son Charles, he being told it was decent to withdraw, laid his watch on the table, begging one of the ladies then present, in a most solemn manner, to take exact notice of the very minute that the child was born; which she did, and acquainted him with it. About a week after, when his lady was pretty well recovered, Mr. Dryden took occasion to tell her, that he had been calculating the child's nativity; and observed, with grief, that he was born in an evil hour, for Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun, were all under the earth, and the lord of his ascendant afflicted with a hateful square of Mars and Saturn. "If he lives to arrive at the eighth year," says he, "he will go near to die a violent death on his very birth-day but if he should escape, as I see but small hopes, he will, in the twenty-third year, be under the very same evil direction; and if he should escape that also, the thirty-third or thirty-fourth year is, I fear" Here he was interrupted by the immoderate grief of his lady, who could no longer hear calamity prophesied to befall her

son.

The time at last came, and August was the inauspicious month in which young Dryden was to enter into the eighth year of his age. The court being in progress, and Mr. Dryden at leisure, he was invited to the country-seat of the Earl of Berkshire, his brother-in-law, to keep the long vacation with him at Charleton, in Wilts; his lady was invited to her uncle Mordaunt's, to pass the remainder of the summer. When they caine to divide the children, lady Elizabeth would have him take John, and suffer her to take Charles; but Mr. Dryden was too absolute, and they parted in anger; he took Charles with him, and she was obliged to be contented with John. When the fatal day came, the anxiety of the lady's spirits occasioned such an effervescence of blood, as threw her into so violent a fever, that her life was despaired of, till a letter came from Mr. Dryden, reproving her for her womanish credulity, and assuring her that her child was well: this recovered her spirits, and in six weeks after she received an eclaircissement of the whole affair.

Mr. Dryden, either through fear of being reckoned superstitious, or thinking it a science beneath his study, was extremely cautious of letting any one know that he was a

dealer in astrology; therefore could not excuse his absence, on his son's anniversary, from a general hunting match which lord Berkshire had made, to which all the neighboring gentlemen were invited. When he went out, he took care to set the boy a double exercise in the Latin tongue, which he taught his children himself, with a strict charge not to stir out of the room till his return; well knowing the task he had set him would take up longer time. Charles was performing his duty in obedience to his father; but, as ill fate would have it, the stag made towards the house; and the noise alarming the servants, they hastened out to see the sport. One of them took young Dryden by the hand, and led him out to see it also; when, just as they came to the gate, the stag being at bay with the dogs, made a bold push, and leaped over the court wall, which was very low and very old; and the dogs following, threw down a part of the wall ten yards in length, under which Charles Dryden lay buried. He was immediately dug out; and after six weeks languishing in a dangerous way, he recovered. So far Dryden's prediction was fulfilled. In the twenty third year of his age, Charles fell from the top of an old tower belonging to the Vatican at Rome, occasioned by a swimming in his head with which he was seized, the heat of the day being excessive. He again recovered, but was ever after in a languishing sickly state. In the thirty third year of his age, being returned to England, he was unhappily drowned at Windsor. He had, with another gentleman, swam twice over the Thames, but returning a third time, it was supposed he was taken with the cramp, because he called out for help, though too late. Thus the father's calculation proved but too prophetical.

CONFLICT WITH A RATTLESNAKE.

THE ship Prosperity, from London, reached one of the West India islands in May, 1806.

One of the men named Jervas, having left the ship, wandered about the island on a sultry day, such as are frequent in that country. Being oppressed with the heat of the day