glowing and joyful fire of youth, which seeks to achieve for itself a bright futurity, was extinguished; and egotism poured the freezing poison of suspicion, envy, and self-interest, into the warm and youthful veins. We felt as if we were all enveloped for eternity in one impenetrable shroud, and as if doleful spirits were singing to us burial songs throughout the gloomy night. The despotism of the Roman hierarchy glared at me like an awful monster--a monster which digs graves for the burial of living youth--graves which engulf the freedom and the happiness of nations. The young man who wishes to become a teacher of the people, must witness his open and upright manliness ruined; he must blindly obey, and submit himself to the most degrading oppression, for the _first_ injunction laid on him is _unconditional obedience_. He sees that the arrangements and decrees of the hierarchy are contrived for the degradation, not the improvement of his country, and that he himself, as the servant of a foreign power, is expected to assist in the oppression of the land which gave him birth. He is also doomed to bear the weight of infamy which accompanies every state of slavery, and the disgrace which now attaches to the entire priesthood, from the immorality of many among them, whose celibacy is a false profession. Can glittering coin, wrung from starving poverty and pious fanaticism, or wines and dainty viands, make amends? Yes, if he prefer the life of a gluttonous animal to that of a man. What _can_ sustain him? The hope alone that he may one day aid in breaking the chains which, bind his native country! That thought it was which animated _me_, and kept me upright under the pressure of my fearful servitude. But must not the nature and the disposition suffer from the depression, and will the moral vigour take no scathe? Ah! What if one were to give way to the pressure--to settle down into a hypocrite--to become an object of contempt to one's self and the rest of mankind. All these doubts and apprehensions forced themselves _even at the first_ before my mind, and filled my spirit with ineffable sadness,--and they were and are justified--but too well justified.