children call them), all set forth, when the aforesaid discourses came to be printed, in corresponding variations of type.” After a lengthy exordium, one Sunday evening, a preacher divided his subject into twenty heads, each of which he purposed D.V. considering in all its bearings. On hearing this, a man in the congregation started up and proceeded to leave the church, when the preacher called to him, “Wherefore leave, friend?” “I am going for my nightcap,” replied the man; “for I plainly see that we shall have to pass the night in church.” The conclusion in an old sermon of the three centuries under review, is short, pithy, and to the purpose. It consists in a vehement appeal to the consciences of the hearers, in the application of a parable or a Scriptural illustration, in a rapturous exclamation to God in the form of a brief extempore prayer, or in a string of anecdotes and examples. The following is a conclusion by Guevara, Bishop of Mondoneda:— “Tell me, O good Jesu, tell me, is there any thing in a rotten sepulchre which is not in my sorrowful soul and unhappy life? In me more than in any shall be found hard stones of obstinacy, a painted sepulchre of hypocrisy, dry bones of old sins, unprofitable ashes of works without fruit, gnawing worms of great concupiscence, and an ill odour of an evil conscience. What, then, will become of me, O good Jesu! if Thou do not break the stones of my faults, throw down the sepulchre of my hypocrisy, reform the bones of my sins, and sift the ashes of my unruly desires? Raise me up, then, O good Jesu! raise me now up: not from among the dead which sleep, but from among sins which stink, for that the justification of a wicked man is a far greater matter than the raising up of a dead man; because that in the one Thou dost use Thy power, and in the other Thou dost exert Thy clemency.” Many of Paoletti’s sermons conclude with a string of incidents and stories, from which I presume any preacher using the sermon might select that which seemed to him most appropriate.