There are 300 palaces at Rome, of which 65 only are worth seeing, and these are defined to be houses which have arched gateways into which carriages can drive.  Some of these palaces contain pictures and statues worth 130 or 160,000_l_., but with scarce a window whose panes are all whole, or a clean staircase.

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HORRORS OF THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN.

Endless was the catalogue of most pious men and eminent scholars who underwent purification, as it is termed, in this den of superstition and tyranny.  The culprit was not permitted to speak with his attorney, except in the presence of the inquisitor and a notary, who took notes, and certified what passed; and so far from the names of the informer or of the witnesses being supplied, every thing that could facilitate the explanation of them was expunged from the declarations; and the prisoners, one and all, in these dungeons might truly exclaim, with Fray Luis de Leon, “I feel the pain, but see not the hand which inflicts it.”  Even in the early days of the inquisition, torture was carried to such an extent, that Sextus IV., in a brief published Jan. 29, 1482, could not refrain from deploring the wellknown truth, in lamentations which were re-echoed from all parts of Christendom.  The formula of the sentence of torture began thus, Christo nomine invocato; and it was therein expressed, that the torture should endure as long as it pleased the inquisitors; and a protest was added, that, if during the torture the culprit should die, or be maimed, or if effusion of blood or mutilation of limb should ensue, the fault should be chargeable to the culprit, and not to the inquisitors.  The culprit was bound by an oath of secresy, strengthened by fearful penalties, not to divulge any thing that he had seen, known, or heard, in the dismal precincts of that unholy tribunal—­a secresy illegal and tyrannical, but which constituted the soul of that monstrous association, and by which its judges were sheltered against all responsibility.—­For.  Rev.

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COLONIZATION.

In the colonization of the West Indies, “when a city was to be founded, the first form prescribed was, with all solemnity, to erect a gallows, as the first thing needful; and in laying out the ground, a site was marked for the prison as well as for the church.”

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“An attempt to handle the English law of evidence, in its former state,” says the Edinburgh Review, “was like taking up a hedgehog—­all points!”

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Man is not quite so manageable in the hands of science as boiling water or a fixed star.

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PICTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

(From the French of Lebrun.)