692 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTHLT. 



ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 



Spanish Enterprise. Peter Bayle holds that it is sufficient for the glory 



: i nation to have produced one superlative man in every department of human 

 merit, and by that rule the Spaniards can hardly be charged with a want of en- 

 terprise. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the autos-da-fe of the 

 Infallible Church had turned Southern Europe into a moral cinder-heap, a Spanish 

 _._:.eman. by the name of B edra, and possibly a relative of the immortal 

 I _ ir".. resolved to profit by the prevailing tendency of the age and graft his fort- 

 une upon the one flourishing branch of human industry. After devoting a few 

 ura to the art of counterfeiting handwritings and the selection of discreet ac- 

 complices, he suddenly appeared at Lisbon with a train of a hundred and twenty 

 foil: i ~-.-r. and presented his credentials as a papal plenipotentiary. The spread 

 : heresy, he informed the astonished king, called for extraordinary measures, 

 and his Holiness had resolved to invest the Cass. Santa with discretionary pow 

 and had sent him as a special legate with instructions to institute immediate pro- 

 EmgB igainst the prominent heretics, Moslem and Jews, of the kingdom. 

 S me three thousand persons were summoned before the new tribunal, and, while 

 the bewildered authorities prepared a protest against the threatened innovation, 

 the bailiffs of the legate had arrested six hundred suspects, and forcibly collected 

 two hundred thousand crowns as fines for contempt of court. When the rela- 

 :s of the prisoners expostulated in rather emphatic terms, the legate expressed 

 his regret at the necessity : fining them too; and, when the discontent threat- 

 ened to assume the form of a general revolt, the plenipotentiary considered it 

 - painful duty to arrest the ringleader? is abettors of heresy, and, after a formal 

 trial and the confiscation of their property, three hundred of the malcontents 

 " tally burned at the stake, June. 1539. The tribunal was just preparing 

 to fine the entire city of Lisbon, when by some indiscretion of a tax-collector 

 the imj store was discovered, but, when the citizens flew to arms, the man of 

 God had disappeared. He was afterward captured near Seville and sent to the 

 galleys, but, in consideration of his zeal in behalf of the holy faith, he was soon 

 loned, and the Pope, moreover, confirmed the decrees of the extemporized 

 tribunal, and, as Voltaire remarks, thus rendered sacred what before was merely 

 human. 



Had the Ancients Cheap Boolcst* Mr. S. E. Dawson remarks, in his 



tare on copyright, that it is a very common error to suppose that the ancient 

 world was very badly supplied with books to transfer to the times of Greek, 

 Roman, and Egyptian civilization the darkness and dearth of mediaeval Europe. 

 7 : : - in those da; ry gentleman's house had its library and every 



y had its public library. In every wealthy household was a servant to read 

 id and another to copy books. Atticus, Cicero's friend, kept a large number 

 - and made a good deal of money by the sale of the books 

 - manufactured. In those days a publisher or bookseller kept a staff of skilled 

 slaves. When a book was to be published one of these read and the others 

 wrote, and in that manner, by the means of cheap slave-labor, large editions of 

 books were published. The literary activity of the countries round the Medi- 

 terranean was very great, and we underestimate it. Horace has preserved for us 



