FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.
In his latest historical work, (Isabelle de Castille. Grandeur et Décadence de l'Espagne,) the distinguished historian, M. Capefigue, says that, besides other debts to Isabella of Castile, Spaniards also owe an association that saved Spain from disorder and anarchy—La Santa Hermandad, the holy brotherhood, whose law was that of absolute solidarity. Cervantes, in Don Quixote, never lets an occasion pass of praising the brotherhood, with which Isabella also introduced the holy office—the Inquisition. It is our habit, says M. Capefigue, in matters historical, to avoid the adoption of ready-made opinions, and more especially declamations. We must examine with judgment the customs, the institutions, of a period—the necessities of an epoch. Then, frequently, every thing is justified and explained. Power is not inflexible through pleasure or caprice, but through necessity. Ogres only exist in fairy tales. In political history there are no men who from mere caprice eat human flesh. There are two periods in the history of the Inquisition. In the first, it rendered immense services. Ferdinand and Isabella had just delivered Spain. But the Moors still covered the land, and had to be watched. In constant communication with the Arabs in Africa, they ceased not to invoke the aid of their brethren across the strait. Together they conspired to reconquer Andalusia, the promised land of the Arabs, who never ceased longing for the lovely countries watered by the Guadalquivir. Theirs it was to hope and to plot. Spain's it was to detect and punish them. In times of peril for a state, exceptional powers are given, extraordinary tribunals created. At a period exclusively religious, the sign of Spanish nationality was Catholicity. Christian was the synonym of citizen, and the holy office was charged with the police of the state against those who accepted not the law of the land. Not only France but other countries have had their committees of public safety and their revolutionary tribunals. In the second period, the Inquisition—no longer useful to the state—became a tribunal of theology. It pursued heresy, which in societies based on religious principles is always a danger. Most remarkable is it that even in its decline the Inquisition preserved its popularity so largely among the great men of Spain. Lope de Vega was the chief of familiars of the holy office. Calderon was one of its most ardent members, bearing its banners at autos da fe. Velasquez gloried in the title. Murillo paints the flowers—the saints that ornament the san benito—and Zurbaran takes his grandest heads from the Dominican fathers of the santa fide. Without the guard and protection of the Inquisition, Spain would not have effected the great things in her history. Torn by interior dissensions, she would not have had the Americas; the reign of Charles V. would not have been so glorious, nor would she have gained the battle of Lepanto and saved Christian Europe.
The French publisher, V. Palmé, announces as in press the celebrated work of Cardinal Jacobatius, De Concilio, forming the introduction to the grand collection of councils.
The 14th, 15th, and 16th volumes of the Bullarum, diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum Romanorum pontificum Taurinensi editio have just been published at Turin. The 14th volume includes the years from the sixth to the sixteenth of the pontificate of Urban VIII. (1628-39;) the 15th terminates that pontificate and contains that of Innocent X. (1639-54;) and the 16th embraces the first seven years of Alexander VII. (1655-62.) The bulls and constitutions are published in chronological order. Some idea of their number may be formed from the fact that of Urban VIII. there are 829, of Innocent X. 199, of Alexander VII. 385. Each volume has index nominum et rerum præcipuarum, index initialis, index rubricarum.
Late French papers announce the death of the Baron de Croze, formerly deputy from the department of Charente Inférieure, father-in-law of Count Anatole Lemercier, and for some years Cameriere of his holiness Pius IX. The holy father was much attached to Baron de Croze, and frequently held with him long and familiar conversations on politics and history. Some ten years ago, the Baron addressed a memorial to Pius IX., strongly urging his holiness to restore the Coliseum and to appeal to the entire world for the immense sums necessary for so great a work as the restoration of the noblest monument of the antique grandeur of the Romans. "My dear son," replied Pius IX., "I have seen your memorial, and thank you for it; but do you not know that there are two kinds of vandalism, the one of destruction, the other of restoration? Never has the Coliseum been more beautiful than in the moving contrast of the splendor of its past and the magnificence of its ruins. To restore them would, it seems to me, be an artistic sacrilege, and would annihilate the work of ages only to produce a poor and colorless counterfeit. Think no more of it, caro mio." And the baron thought no more of it.