its close. He perceives the toils thickening around him; but he is courageous, and makes manly Christian warfare to the end. He is excommunicated as a heretic, though no saint of the Roman calendar ever held more faithfully to all the dogmas of the Church. But the Pope, he knows, and all the world knows, is not that Church's lawful head. His tiara has been purchased by open and shameless bribery. And Savonarola, as his last grand stand for truth and righteousness, has written letters summoning the crowned heads of Christendom to unite in calling a general council to depose this pretended pope, and heal the wounds of the Church. One of his messengers is assassinated on his journey, and a letter found upon him. It is sent to Alexander, whose ill-will is now inflamed to the pitch of ferocity, the friar's doom is inevitably sealed. While this has been going on, however, a strange thing has occurred in Florence, which sharply turns the popular feeling against the man who has been, till now, the object of their love and veneration.

A monk of another order, jealous of Savonarola's good name, has offered to test the question of his orthodoxy by appealing to the ordeal of fire. Savonarola believes in no such nonsense; but one of his devoted monks insists upon accepting the challenge in his behalf. The fire is kindled, and the two parties are ready to walk through it. A petty discussion arises about accessories, and is kept up until it amounts almost to a public riot. All Florence is upon the scene, the dispute lasts till nightfall, and neither party has yet entered the flames, and a heavy rain closes the day and extinguishes the fire. The populace have been disappointed of their treat, and the whole

weight of their indignation falls upon Savonarola. What mattered their accessories to him if he were a true prophet? They accuse him of being an impostor, him the best and truest friend that Florence ever had. Plainly his career is drawing to a close. Alexander will find slight barriers interposing now between him and his victim. The prior is seized, with two of his monks who have been his most faithful and loving disciples, and made a prisoner until it shall be decided whether he shall be tried in Florence, or sent to Rome to be dealt with immediately by the Pope. It is settled at last that he shall be tried at home, on the charge of being an impostor. Florence, whose brightest crown has been his life of glorious self-sacrifice, shall have for her deepest infamy that his death was within her gates, and by her own faithless hand. Day after day, for six successive days, he is dragged forth from his dungeon and examined, as the phrase is, by torture. Six days in succession, he is raised by his wrists strapped together behind his back, until his muscles are lacerated and his bones disjointed. He faints and raves alternately under the agony, but clings to the truth, he has not taught of himself, but has striven to be God's faithful messenger. That is all that examination can get out of him, and upon that he is sentenced to be hanged and burned. Hanged and burned he is forthwith, his last words, as he goes checrfully up to the gibbet and the flame, "My Lord was pleased to die for my sins, why should I not be glad to give up my poor life for love to Him?" And with some little faint flickerings of the liberty he had sought to give to his beloved people, Florence and Italy sank back once more into the old and indolent slavery of the medieval centuries.

V.

LATIMER.

A. D. 1480-1555.

In all ages, more or less, there is a new school of thought rising up under the eyes of an older school of thought. And probably in all ages the men of the old school regard with some little anxiety the ways of the men of the new school. - FRED. SEEBOHM.