him is unconditional obedience. He sees that the arrangements and decrees of the hierarchy are contrived for the degradation, not the improvement of his country, and that he himself, as the servant of a foreign power, is expected to assist in the oppression of the land which gave him birth. He is also doomed to bear the weight of infamy which accompanies every state of slavery, and the disgrace which now attaches to the entire priesthood, from the immorality of many among them, whose celibacy is a false profession.

Can glittering coin, wrung from starving poverty and pious fanaticism, or wines and dainty viands, make amends? Yes, if he prefer the life of a gluttonous animal to that of a man. What can sustain him? The hope alone that he may one day aid in breaking the chains which bind his native country! That thought it was which animated me, and kept me upright under the pressure of my fearful servitude. But must not the nature and the disposition suffer from the depression, and will the moral vigour take no scathe? Ah! What if one were to give way to the pressure-to settle down into a hypocrite-to become an object of contempt to one's self and the rest of mankind! All these doubts and apprehensions forced themselves even at the first before my mind, and filled my spirit with ineffable sadness, and they were and are justified-but too well justified.

Then the time was skilfully divided between attendance at ceremonies, and the repetition of lip

prayers, for from five to six hours daily (including the breviary prayers.*) Five hours of prayer daily, and such prayer! for young men of twentyfour years, designed to be the salt of the earth! Rome uses devotion as a means of enslaving men. I tried by every means to escape from the debasing feeling, from the reproach of conscience that I had done nothing. After the breviary prayers were concluded, there were only about three hours left daily for private study; and the spiritual work was to be performed in the midst of twenty youths who had no farther examination for office to un

The time was divided in the following manner :-Morning, From 5 to 6, matins; from 6 to 7, breviary; 7 to 7, mass; from 7 to 8, breakfast; from 8 to 10, lectures; from 10 to 10, free; from 10 to 11, study; from 11 to 12, breviary. Afternoon,—Before and after dinner, prayers in the chapel-altogether about of an hour; then or an hour breviary; from 2 to 4, lectures; from 4 to 44, free; from 4 to 7, study. After supper, about an hour of prayer in the chapel and an hour breviary. The prayers are Latin, and always the same; a larger number on Sundays and feast days. It is the duty of every ecclesiastic to pray through the breviary once each day; the vicars go through these prayers for the canons as a sort of feudal service. The pupils are allowed, twice a week, to cross the threshold of the institution for a few hours only. No speaking is allowed during meals. The treatment is degrading. Two rooms for study are allotted to each twenty individuals. The sleeping places, without stoves, are arranged for three, six, eight, and fifteen. The largest was called The Menagerie.

+ One of the Prebendaries themselves, at the time of our departure, called the Seminary a little hell."

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dergo, and who besides were otherwise finished! It was with horror that I contemplated the possibility that my moral strength might be weakened by the influence of idleness and dissimulation. My case was therefore often desperate, and many a time in fever heat have I outwatched the night, and prayed in spirit "If it be possible, let the bitter cup pass from me." I was forced to drink it ; but a gleam of prophetic brightness lighted me through the night, and showed me in my dreams the day of my emancipation. Miserably diseased in mind and disposition, I left the seminary in 1840.

THE WARNING.

I ENTREAT you, German parents, permit not one of your sons to enter this grave of moral freedom and independence; you draw upon yourselves a heavier weight of blame than if you took their lives-for the moral death is worse and more painful than that of the body! German mothers preferred in former times to put their children to death, rather than that they should be Roman slaves; while now-a-days it is esteemed the highest honour which can be conferred upon a German youth, that he should become the slave-the consecrated slave, forsooth-of the Roman bishop!

But the yoke is not acknowledged, for it is imposed under the holy name of religion.

And you, my youthful friends, who choose for yourselves the profession of teachers, let me conjure you to retire from this grave of moral strength, and independence-from the seminary! You will be losers there in mind and body, were you even giants in both! You will become slaves! You will become hypocrites! Attractive though the office of a teacher be, and enlarged his sphere of working, it is rendered a dangerous one for manly dignity for truth and freedom, by the disgraceful ignominious fetters imposed on it by Rome. Choose, therefore, rather a hard couch and a laborious life than the degraded indolence of a polluted exist

ence.

MY DEPARTURE FROM THE SEMINARY.

THE gates of the Institution, which we were only permitted twice in the week to pass, to visit our fellow-men, at length were opened-the gates of that martyr-seminary for soul and body, that grave of independence the proscribed threshold was crossed, and I beheld once more before me the free and lovely world; I inhaled long draughts of the fresh air, as I gazed on the free blue sky in all the brightness of the glorious sun. But the sun and the heavens were changed to me-the

world itself seemed narrow and contracted, for my soul and spirit were in bonds, disgraceful bonds! I hastened to my native place-there, I fondly hoped, to lose my burden-there, where I dreamed the dreams of youth-there, in my mountain home! The kindly eyes of my brethren, said I to myself, will revive and warm this heart, which has been frozen by the hypocritical and piety-feigning glances of the domineering creatures of Rome.

And the kindly eyes of my brethren did revive me, and the joy of meeting again did scare away the inworn pain of servitude; but before long the feeling returned with redoubled force. Dishonouring marks of reverence awoke me from my shortlived dream. An aged man approached, wellknown to me, and dear from boyish years. I extended my hand to him-he fain would kiss it, the aged man! Is it not sufficient, I exclaimed within myself, that I should be a slave? Must I also be a tool to work the degradation of my fellow-men! O Rome, thou hast mixed poison in thy consecrated oil, to kill the dignity of man. I was regarded by all with timidity and reserve, as if I had all at once become a higher, a superhuman being! And how? By the fiat of the Pope? Oh, not a more exalted being; but a slave, who, by the practice of holy hypocritical pretence, was intended to deceive his fellow citizens! So passed the first period, in dead stupefaction of soul, while I, adorned like a victim, was installed in the ceremonial service of the Romish Church. The thought of my father