But that which distinguishes this Church still further, is, that it is the place where the famous Council of Trent was held, concerning the Reformation, at which four thousand persons of a public character, Laymen and Ecclesiastics, assisted. This Council sat eighteen years before it did any thing: but at last the Pope contrived to get the ascendant; and, after debating and deliberating so long, not only the Protestants, but even the German and French Nations, refused to receive its decrees. Certain of the Clergy, finding the ascendancy that the negociation of the Pope was getting in this council, said that the Holy Ghost had been sent there from Rome in a cloakbag!
Trent once boasted a curiosity——which indeed still remains, though out of use——that, I think, would be found serviceable in most towns in Christendom, and elsewhere too, and particularly at Bath, and such places. It was a tower on the river Adige, into which the stream was conducted, for the purpose of drowning such of the Clergy as were convicted of having been too familiar with their neighbours’ wives and daughters!
The People of Trent speak promiscuously, and indifferently, both the German and Italian languages; but whether well or not, I was not adept enough to discover.
My next stage was Bassano, a town in the territory of Vincenza in Italy, situated at the end of a very long narrow valley. It is watered by the river Brenta, which washes that very rich, fertile, serene, healthy and plentiful district of Italy, so celebrated for its admirable wines, as well as for its fine pasture-grounds, rich corn-fields, and prodigious abundance of game, cattle, and mulberry-trees; from all which it is called the Garden and Shambles of Venice.
The next day I arrived at an early hour at Venice, the description of which I shall not injure by commencing it with the mutilated fragment of a Letter, and shall therefore postpone it to my next.
Thus, my dear Frederick, have I, in order to preserve the unity and order of my progress, brought you through Germany with a precise regularity, that, if I was not wishing for your improvement, might be dispensed with——yet have left much, very much indeed, untouched, in the confidence that you will yourself have the industry to find it out.
I confess, my dear boy, that I have often, as I wrote, detected myself in excursions from the road into moral reflection——but I could not stop: your improvement was my object in undertaking the business; and I could not refrain from endeavouring to inculcate such lessons as the progress of the work suggested, and as impressed my mind with a conviction of their truth and utility.
You must have observed, that there are two topics on which I dwell very much——one, Liberty——the other, an abhorrence of Bigotry and Superstition. But, before I proceed further, I must call to your remembrance what I have often said, that by Liberty I do not mean that which some people now give that name to——nor do I mean Religion when I speak of Bigotry; for true Liberty is still more incompatible with Anarchy than with Despotism, and Superstition is the greatest enemy of Religion. Let the first object of your heart and soul be true Morality——the next, rational Liberty: but remember, that the one is not to be found independent of Religion, nor the other ever to be enjoyed but under the restraining hands of wholesome laws and good government——such as England now boasts.
In these times, when human opinion is actually polled on the two extremes of political judgment, I know, that to speak rationally, is to incur the censure of both, or to be, as Pope somewhere says, “by Tories called a Whig, by Whigs a Tory:” But I care not——I speak my opinion with the fair face of independence; nor would scruple to tell the King of Prussia my hatred of Despotism, or the Convention of France my abhorrence of Anarchy——between both of which the true and genuine point of Liberty lies; and England, thank God! draws the line.