The tender mercies of the Inquisition were cruel, and could not allow so notable a victim to escape their vengeance. Whether to burn a man is the surest way to convert him, is a question open to argument. Vanini disguised his insidious teaching carefully, but it required a thick veil to deceive the eyes of Inquisitors, who were wonderfully clever in spying out heresy, and sometimes thought they had discovered it even when it was not there. Vanini and many other authors would have been wiser if they had not committed their ideas to writing, and contented themselves with words only. _Litera scripta manet_; and disguise it, twist it, explain it, as you will, there it stands, a witness for your acquittal or your condemnation. This thought stays the course of the most restless pen, though the racks and fires of the Inquisition no longer threaten the incautious scribe. We must not omit a French philosopher who died just before the outbreak of the First French Revolution, Jean Jacques Rousseau. It is well known that his work _Emile, ou de l'Education, par J.J. Rousseau, Citoyen de Genève_ (_à Amsterdam_, 1762, 4 vols., in-12), obliged him to fly from France and Switzerland, in both of which countries he was adjudged to prison. For many years he passed a wandering, anxious life, ever imagining that his best friends wished to betray him. Of his virtues and failings as an author, or of the vast influence he exercised over the minds of his countrymen, it is needless to write. This has already been done by many authors in many works. CHAPTER V. HISTORY. Antonius Palearius--Caesar Baronius--John Michael Bruto--Isaac Berruyer--Louis Elias Dupin--Noel Alexandre--Peter Giannone--Joseph Sanfelicius (Eusebius Philopater)--Arlotto--Bonfadio--De Thou--Gilbert Génébrard--Joseph Audra--Beaumelle--John Mariana--John B. Primi--John Christopher Rüdiger--Rudbeck--François Haudicquer--François de Rosières--Anthony Urseus. Braver far than the heroes of Horace was he who first dared to attack the terrible Inquisition, and voluntarily to incur the wrath of that dread tribunal. Such did Antonius Palearius, who was styled _Inquisitionis Detractator_, and in consequence was either beheaded (as some say) in 1570, or hanged, strangled, and burnt at Rome in 1566. This author was Professor of Greek and Latin at Sienna and Milan, where he was arrested by order of Pope Pius V. and conducted to Rome. He stated the truth very plainly when he said that the Inquisition was a dagger pointed at the throats of literary men. As an instance of the foolishness of the method of discovering the guilt of the accused, we may observe that Palearius was adjudged a heretic because he preferred to sign his name _Aonius_, instead of _Antonius_, his accuser alleging that he abhorred the sign of the cross in the letter T, and therefore abridged his name. By such absurd arguments were men doomed to death.