We pass over the ages between the Roman commonwealth and our own times. The Romans, much more wise than the Greeks, never persecuted a philosopher for his opinions. Not so the barbarous nations which succeeded the Roman Empire. No sooner did the Emperor Frederick II. begin to quarrel with the popes, than he was accused of being an atheist, and being the author of the book of "The Three Impostors," conjointly with his chancellor De Vincis. Does our high-chancellor, de l'Hôpital, declare against persecution? He is immediately charged with atheism--_"Homo doctus, sed vetus atheus."_ There was a Jesuit, as much beneath Aristophanes as Aristophanes is beneath Homer--a wretch, whose name has become ridiculous even among fanatics--the Jesuit Garasse, who found atheists everywhere. He bestows the name upon all who are the objects of his virulence. He calls Theodore Beza an atheist. It was he, too, that led the public into error concerning Vanini. The unfortunate end of Vanini does not excite our pity and indignation like that of Socrates, because Vanini was only a foreign pedant, without merit; however, Vanini was not, as was pretended, an atheist; he was quite the contrary. He was a poor Neapolitan priest, a theologian and preacher by trade, an outrageous disputer on quiddities and universals, and _"utrum chimæra bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones."_ But there was nothing in him tending to atheism. His notion of God is that of the soundest and most approved theology: "God is the beginning and the end, the father of both, without need of either, eternal without time, in no one place, yet present everywhere. To him there is neither past nor future; he is within and without everything; he has created all, and governs all; he is immutable, infinite without parts; his power is his will." This is not very philosophical, but it is the most approved theology. Vanini prided himself on reviving Plato's fine idea, adopted by Averroës, that God had created a chain of beings from the smallest to the greatest, the last link of which was attached to his eternal throne; an idea more sublime than true, but as distant from atheism as being from nothing. He travelled to seek his fortune and to dispute; but, unfortunately, disputation leads not to fortune; a man makes himself as many irreconcilable enemies as he finds men of learning or of pedantry to argue against. Vanini's ill-fortune had no other source. His heat and rudeness in disputation procured him the hatred of some theologians; and having quarrelled with one Franconi, this Franconi, the friend of his enemies, charged him with being an atheist and teaching atheism.