zeal and charity until his death. This year was more fatal to two men, who are celebrated in the literary history of Spain--Juan de Vergara, and Bernardin de Tobar, his brother: they were arrested by the Inquisition of Toledo, and were not released from its dungeons, until they had been subjected to the abjuration (_de levi_) of the Lutheran heresy, to receive the absolution of censures _ad cautelam_, and to several penances. Juan de Vergara was a canon of Toledo, and had been secretary to Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, and to Don Alphonso de Fonseca, his successor in the see of that city. Nicholas Antonio has inserted, in his library, a notice of the literary productions of this Spaniard, and does justice to his virtue and merit. His profound knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew languages was the cause of his misfortune; he had remarked some faults in the translation of the Vulgate, and thus gave the signal for persecution to some monks who had only studied Latin and the jargon of the schools. The chapter of Toledo honoured his memory in placing on his tomb an epitaph, which is preserved by the author I have cited. Vergara had a claim on the gratitude of this community, for having composed the inscriptions which decorate the choir of their church. Bernardin de Tobar is less known, but Peter Martyr d'Angleria mentions him among the learned men of the sixteenth century, and John Louis Vives, a learned man of that age, says, in writing to Erasmus: "We live in a difficult time; it is dangerous either to speak or be silent; Vergara, his brother Bernardin de Tobar, and several other learned men, have been arrested in Spain[7]." Among this number was one of whom Vives could not give a particular account. I speak of Alphonso Virues, a Benedictine, born at Olmedo, and one of the best theologians of his time. He had a profound knowledge of the oriental languages, and had composed several works. He was a member of the commission which judged the works of Erasmus in 1527, and preacher to Charles V., who listened to his discourses with so much pleasure that he took him to Germany, and on his return to Spain would not hear any other person. These distinctions excited the envy of the monks, and they would have succeeded in their endeavours to ruin him, but for the firmness and constancy of the emperor in protecting him.