There is a collection of horrible, though admirably executed etchings, by the “noble Jacques Callott,” extant, called Les Saincts et Sainctes de l’Année. It is a complete pictorial calendar of the Romish martyrology. No amount of indigestion, caused by suppers of underdone pork-chops; no nightmares, piled one on another; no distempered imaginings of topers in the worst state of delirium tremens; no visions of men with guilt-laden consciences; could culminate into a tenth part of the horrors that the noble Jacques has perpetuated with his immortal graver. All the refinements of torture, invented by the ruthless and cruel pagans, and inflicted by them on the early confessors, are here set down in chiaro oscuro; not a dislocated limb is omitted, not a lacerated muscle is passed over. The whole work is a vast dissecting-room--a fasciculus of scarifications, maimings, and dismemberments--of red-hot pincers, scalding oil, molten lead, gridirons, wire scourges, jagged knives, crowns of spikes, hatchets, poisoned daggers, tarred shirts, and wild beasts. The blessed saints had a bad time of it for certain. How should we, I wonder, with our pluralities, our Easter-offerings, and regium donum, our scarlet hats and stockings, and dwellings in the gate of Flam; our Exeter Hall meetings and buttered muffins afterwards; our first-class missionary passages to the South Seas, and grants of land and fat hogs from King Wabashongo; our dean and chapter dinners, and semi-military chaplains’ uniforms (Oh, last-invented, but not least scorn-worthy of humbugs!); how should we confront the stake, the shambles, and the carnifex, the scourge, the rack, and the amphitheatre? Surely the faith must have been strong, or the legends untrue!