degenerate career in the ante-chambers of the Vatican, as the Pope's guards; for the Holy Office, when they are too old for more active service, no longer takes any care of them, nor does it allow them the smallest pension. Many Roman institutions have in the same manner flourished and fallen away; others, although useless, still continue, through a difficulty in getting rid of them. It is now about four centuries since Rome instituted monkish and knightly orders for the service of the Inquisition. The necessity for them was first found out after the Council of Constance, and increased after that of Trent. Martin V. was too dissipated to trouble himself much about it, but his successor, Pius II., who had witnessed the death of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, and who clearly saw the danger that threatened the Church of Rome, in the spirit and the voice that arose from the ashes of those holy men, felt himself called upon, in the year 1459, to institute an order of knighthood to be called after the name of Jesus, whose employment should be to war against the Turks, for in those days all were so called, who did not venerate the Church of Rome. Accordingly under such pretext they undertook to wage war against heretics of every description, whom, according to the Christian charity of the popes, it was their duty to exterminate. This order was not pleasing to Paul II. and was consequently abolished: but Alexander VI., that well-known monster of profligacy and crime, raised up a fresh body of knights, for the service of the Inquisition, which he placed under the protection of St. George, in the year 1492. These heroes could do no less than imitate the example of their unprincipled founder, and, in a very short time, gained for themselves an undesirable renown, for their deeds of the most abominable licentiousness. The succeeding Pope, however, laid them on the shelf. Leo X., in the year 1520, came forward with a new order of knights, under the patronage of St. Peter. It is well known that this pope lost no opportunity of putting this favourite saint of his forward, on all occasions where money was to be made of him. It was for the building of the church that bears his name that indulgences were sent for sale, into Germany and Switzerland. The new knights limited their services to the collecting of money for St. Peter, that is to say, for the Pope; this degraded order, however, soon died of decline. Paul III. felt more than any one the evils that were likely to arise from the Council of Trent, and the danger of what was called "reviving heresy:" in order therefore, to give greater activity to the Inquisition, he founded an order of chivalry, under the title of St. George of Ravenna, in the year 1538, the nominal duty of which was to war against heretics, but its real object was to renew the sanguinary scenes acted under Innocent III., and to repeat in Germany the slaughters of Dauphiny, Languedoc and Navarre. Fortunately,