Jerome of Prague has been already mentioned as the most distinguished among Huss’s followers, and his coadjutor in preaching. He also was summoned to Constance in the spring of 1415, before Huss had suffered martyrdom; and it was probably in consequence of witnessing his companion’s sufferings that he was induced to retract, to condemn in the strongest terms, as blasphemous and seditious, the tenets which in his heart he still continued to hold, and to profess his entire adherence to all the doctrines of the Roman church. Fortunately he was not left to endure through life the reproaches of conscience; for the continued enmity and mistaken persecution of his adversaries conferred a benefit on him which they were far from intending. He was still retained in confinement, and harassed with fresh charges, though his retractation had been ample and complete: for there were many who thought that hostility to the hierarchy could not be expiated except by blood. At last he obtained a public audience before the Council, on the 23rd of May, 1416; when he recalled his former recantation, confessing that it had been dictated only by the fear of a painful death. There is a close coincidence between the history of Jerome, and that of the father of our English church, Cranmer, who suffered a similar death in the following century. Both swerved through the influence of fear from the path of duty: both were punished for their weakness by being treacherously deprived of that temporal advantage which was the price of their apostacy; and, being recalled by that mistaken malice to their duty, both redeemed their virtue, and have obtained eternal honour in exchange for a short and shameful breathing–time on earth. Poggio the Florentine, who was a witness of the whole course of Jerome’s trial, has left a long and interesting account of it in a letter to Leonardo Aretino, from which it appears that his sympathy had been strongly excited by the constancy of the sufferer. Though connected with the highest dignitaries of the church, he writes in such a strain of admiration, that his friend thought it necessary to warn him of the danger which he might incur by speaking of a condemned heretic in such terms. The letter will be found entirely translated in Mr. Shepherd’s Life of Poggio Bracciolini, from which the following description of Jerome’s final sufferings is extracted:—“No stoic ever suffered death with such constancy of mind; when he arrived at the place of execution he stripped himself of his garments, and knelt down before the stake, to which he was soon after tied with ropes and a chain. Then great pieces of wood, intermixed with straw, where piled as high as his breast. When fire was set to the pile, he began to sing a hymn, which was scarcely interrupted by the smoke and flame. I must not omit a striking circumstance, which shows the firmness of his mind. When the executioner was going to apply the fire behind him, in order that he