dexterous, the most fortunate of politicians,' the embodiment of that Old Régime strangely interpolated in the nineteenth century. Knowing him, we shall know the nature of the resistance which checked every patriotic impulse, every effort towards progress in Italy, between 1815 and 1848. Few names have been hated as his was hated, or feared as his was feared. The Italians pictured to themselves a monster, a worse than Herod, who gloated over human suffering, and spent his time in inventing new tortures for his victims. He regarded them, and all liberals, as natural enemies to the order in which he flourished; and he had no more mercy for them than the Spanish Inquisitors had for heretics." _W. R. Thayer, The Dawn of Italian Independence, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1)._ HOLY BROTHERHOOD, OR HERMANDAD, The. Before the close of the 13th century, there first arose in Spain "an anomalous institution peculiar to Castile, which sought to secure the public tranquillity by means scarcely compatible themselves with civil subordination. I refer to the celebrated Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, as the association was sometimes called,—a name familiar to most readers in the lively fictions of Le Sage, though conveying there no very adequate idea of the extraordinary functions which it assumed at the period under review [13th-14th centuries]. Instead of a regularly organized police, it then consisted of a confederation of the principal cities, bound together by a solemn league and covenant for the defence of their liberties in seasons of civil anarchy. Its affairs were conducted by deputies, who assembled at stated intervals for this purpose, transacting their business under a common seal, enacting laws which they were careful to transmit to the nobles and even the sovereign himself, and enforcing their measures by an armed force. … One hundred cities associated in the Hermandad of 1315. In that of 1295, were thirty-four. The knights and inferior nobility frequently made part of the association. … In one of [the articles of confederation] it is declared that if any noble shall deprive a member of the association of his property, and refuse restitution, his house shall be razed to the ground. In another, that if any one, by command of the king, shall attempt to collect an unlawful tax, he shall be put to death on the spot." Under the government of Ferdinand and Isabella, among the measures adopted for checking the license and disorder which had become prevalent in Castile, and restoring a more effective administration of justice, was one for a reorganization of the Santa Hermandad. "The project for the reorganization of this institution was introduced into the cortes held, the year after Isabella's accession, at Madrigal, 1476. … The new institution differed essentially