religious, appeared to be settling down with a new and portentous weight on the whole country. All men felt it. It seemed as if the very principle of life in the atmosphere they breathed had become tainted and unwholesome. But they felt, too, that the same atmosphere was charged with the spirit of a great revolution; and the boldest walked warily and were hushed, while they waited for changes the shock of whose fierce elements none could willingly encounter. [390] The last Index Expurgatorius is that of Madrid, 1790, (4to, pp. 305,) to which should be added a Supplement of 55 pages, dated 1805; both very meagre, compared with the vast folios of the two preceding centuries, of which that of 1667 fills, with its Supplement, above 1200 pages. But the last of the race is as bitter as its predecessors, and, by the great number of French books it includes, shows the quarter from which danger was chiefly apprehended. To prevent any of this class from escaping, it is ordered that “all papers, tracts, and books, on the disturbances in France, which can inspire a spirit of seduction, shall be delivered to some servant of the Holy Office.” Supplement of 1805, p. 3. Burke’s “Reflections” are forbidden in the same Index. At last the convulsion came. In 1807, the heir apparent was brought into direct collision with the Prince of the Peace, and took measures to defend his personal rights. The affair of the Escurial followed; darker than the dark cells in which it was conceived. Ferdinand was accused, under the influence of the favorite, with a design to dethrone and murder his own father and mother; and, for a moment, Europe seemed threatened with a crime which even the unscrupulous despotism of Philip the Second had not ventured to commit. This was prevented by the manly boldness and constancy of Escoiquiz. But things could not long remain in the uneasy and treacherous position in which such a rash attempt at convulsion had left them. The great revolution broke out at Aranjuez in March, 1808; Charles the Fourth abdicated in shame and terror; and Ferdinand the Seventh ascended the tottering throne of his ancestors amidst the exultation of his people. But Napoleon, then at the summit of his vast power, interfered in the troubles he had not been unwilling to foster. Under the pretext, that such fatal differences as had arisen between the father and son would disturb the affairs of Europe, he drew the royal family of Spain into his toils at Bayonne; and there, on the soil of France, the crown of the Bourbon race in Spain was ignominiously surrendered into his hands, and by him placed on the head of his brother, already king of Naples.