vision of a coming evil still more terrible than any which had yet oppressed them.  As across the bright plains of Sicily, when the sun is rising, the vast pyramidal shadow of Mount Etna is definitely and visibly projected—­the phantom of that ever-present enemy, which holds fire and devastation in its bosom—­so, in the morning hour of Philip’s reign, the shadow of the inquisition was cast from afar across those warm and smiling provinces—­a spectre menacing fiercer flames and wider desolation than those which mere physical agencies could ever compass.

There has been a good deal of somewhat superfluous discussion concerning the different kinds of inquisition.  The distinction drawn between the papal, the episcopal, and the Spanish inquisitions, did not, in the sixteenth century, convince many unsophisticated minds of the merits of the establishment in any of its shapes.  However classified or entitled, it was a machine for inquiring into a man’s thoughts, and for burning him if the result was not satisfactory.

The Spanish inquisition, strictly so called, that is to say, the modern or later institution established by Pope Alexander the Sixth and Ferdinand the Catholic, was doubtless invested with a more complete apparatus for inflicting human misery, and for appalling human imagination, than any of the other less artfully arranged inquisitions, whether papal or episcopal.  It had been originally devised for Jews or Moors, whom the Christianity of the age did not regard as human beings, but who could not be banished without depopulating certain districts.  It was soon, however, extended from pagans to heretics.  The Dominican Torquemada was the first Moloch to be placed upon this pedestal of blood and fire, and from that day forward the “holy office” was almost exclusively in the hands of that band of brothers.  In the eighteen years of Torquemada’s administration; ten thousand two hundred and twenty individuals were burned alive, and ninety-seven thousand three hundred and twenty-one punished with infamy, confiscation of property, or perpetual imprisonment, so that the total number of families destroyed by this one friar alone amounted to one hundred and fourteen thousand four hundred and one.  In course of time the jurisdiction of the office was extended.  It taught the savages of India and America to shudder at the name of Christianity.  The fear of its introduction froze the earlier heretics of Italy, France, and Ger many into orthodoxy.  It was a court owning allegiance to no temporal authority, superior to all other tribunals.  It was a bench of monks without appeal, having its familiars in every house, diving into the secrets of every fireside, judging, and executing its horrible decrees without responsibility.  It condemned not deeds, but thoughts.  It affected to descend into individual conscience, and to punish the crimes which it pretended to discover.  Its process was reduced to a horrible simplicity.