that had he been at the trial of Christ he would have prevented his crucifixion. He summoned and dismissed a council of Gaulic bishops; and then deliberately assassinated all the princes belonging to his family. After having removed, by violence or treachery, the princes of the different Frankish tribes, incorporated their government into his own, stained the soil with the blood of its proprietors and defenders, bowed in abject reverence before the clergy, and committed the most fiendish and heartrending atrocities, the pope of Rome, in consideration of his piety and usefulness, bestowed upon him the title of "The most Christian King and Eldest Son of the Church." While the pope professed to be the humble successor of St. Peter, the fisherman, he was secretly laboring to become the successor of the Cæsars, the masters of the world. With this end in view he had scattered his monks throughout Europe to preach the doctrines of humility, of passive obedience, of reverence for the clergy, and of absolute submission to himself. The support which these doctrines gave to despotism rendered them acceptable to kings, and the conveniency with which they supplied the want of morality made them popular with the multitude. The arts and miracles of the holy brotherhood excited the wonder, and commanded the reverence of the crowd; and their tact and sycophancy enabled them to become the companions of kings, the instructors of princes, the confessors of all classes, and the spies upon the most secret recesses of their thoughts. The avaricious character of their religious principles enabled them to accept without scruple the spoils of plundering expeditions, and to augment the stores of their wealth by artful tricks and pious frauds. The success of their missionary rapacity enabled them to build spacious convents, sufficiently sumptuous for the accommodation of pious kings who wished to abdicate their thrones. The dungeons of these sanctuaries sometimes contained a monarch, an heir to a throne, or some distinguished personage whom usurpation, jealousy, ambition or tyranny had there confined; and sometimes their halls afforded a hospitable asylum for the sick, the indigent, or the refugee from oppression.