[Footnote A:  There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who consecrate “to themselves and their servants” the sepulchres they erect in their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from those who had served them faithfully.  An instance of affectionate regard to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, “his best servant” (servo optimo).  Fabretti has preserved an inscription which records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and who is also styled in the epitaph “his sweetest freedman” (liberto dulcissimo).—­ED.]

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PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.

Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern who obtruded such formless things on public attention.  I conjectured that, whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his knavery.  My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct.  Nothing less than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of being the first who published Italian letters.  Aretino had the hardihood to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope Julius Third—­evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be read by the royal and the noble.

Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary catalogue of the ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church.  It is indeed impossible to translate into Protestant English the multiplied nomenclature of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service.  As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this amazing contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of the human mind, I present the reader with an accurate translation of it:—­

  “Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England.

“The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath of Epistles, and the Spirit of Gospels, had need unloose the language of my words in congratulating your superhuman Majesty on having not only restored conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and taken deceitful heresy away from them, but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped for, that charity and faith were again born and raised up in them; on which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, the College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems in Rome as if the shades of the old Caesars with visible effect showed it in their very statues; meanwhile the pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes you, and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets, and dedicates you,” &c.