the popular cry was, "It is the Frate's deception that has brought on all our misfortunes; let him be burned, and all things right will be done, and our evils will cease."

The next day it is well certified that there was fresh and fresh torture of the shattered sensitive frame; and now, at the first threat and first sight of the horrible implements, Savonarola, in convulsed agitation, fell on his knees, and in brief, passionate words, retracted his confession, declared that he had spoken falsely in denying his prophetic gift, and that if he suffered he

of the old vehement self-assertion, "Look at my | the completion of Savonarola's trial. They enwork, for it is good, and those who set their tered amidst the acclamations of the people, faces against it are the children of the devil!" | calling for the death of the Frate. For now The voice of Sadness tells him, "God placed thee in the midst of the people even as if thou hadst been one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast cured others: and thou thyself hast been still diseased. Thy heart was lifted up at the beauty of thy own deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing...... After so many benefits with which God has honored thee, thou art fallen into the depths of the sea; and after so many gifts bestowed on thee, thou, by thy pride and vain-glory, hast scandal-would suffer for the truth-" The things that I ized all the world." And when Hope speaks and argues that the divine love has not forsaken him, it says nothing now of a great work to be done, but only says, "Thou art not forsaken, else why is thy heart bowed in penitence? That too is a gift."

There is no jot of worthy evidence that from the time of his imprisonment to the supreme moment Savonarola thought or spoke of himself as a martyr. The idea of martyrdom had been to him a passion dividing the dream of the future with the triumph of beholding his work achieved. And now, in place of both, had come a resignation which he called by no glorifying

name.

But therefore he may the more fitly be called a martyr by his fellow-men to all time. For power rose against him not because of his sins, but because of his greatness-not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble. And through that greatness of his he endured a double agony: not only the reviling, and the torture, and the death-throe, but the agony of sinking from the vision of glorious achievement into that deep shadow where he could only say, "I count as nothing: darkness encompasses me: yet the light I saw was the true light.'

CHAPTER LXXII.

THE LAST SILENCE.

ROMOLA had seemed to hear, as if they had been a cry, the words repeated to her by many lips-the words uttered by Savonarola when he took leave of those brethren of San Marco who had come to witness his signature of the confession: "Pray for me, for God has withdrawn from me the spirit of prophecy."

Those words had shaken her with new doubts as to the mode in which he looked back at the past in moments of complete self-possession. And the doubts were strengthened by more piteous things still, which soon reached her

ears.

The nineteenth of May had come, and by that day's sunshine there had entered into Florence the two Papal Commissaries, charged with

have spoken I had them from God."

But not the less the torture was laid upon him, and when he was under it he was asked why he had uttered those retracting words. Men were not demons in those days, and yet nothing but confessions of guilt were held a reason for release from torture. The answer came: "I said it that I might seem good; tear me no more, I will tell you the truth."

There were Florentine assessors at this new trial, and those words of twofold retractation had soon spread. They filled Romola with dismayed uncertainty.

"But"-it flashed across her-"there will come a moment when he may speak. When there is no dread hanging over him but the dread of falsehood, when they have brought him into the presence of death, when he is lifted above the people, and looks on them for the last time, they can not hinder him from speaking a last decisive word. I will be there."

Three days after, on the 23d of May, 1498, there was again a long narrow platform stretching across the great piazza, from the Palazzo Vecchio toward the Tetta de' Pisani. But there was no grove of fuel as before: instead of that, there was one great heap of fuel placed on the circular area which made the termination of the long narrow platform. And above this heap of fuel rose a gibbet with three halters on it--a gibbet which, having two arms, still looked so much like a cross as to make some beholders uncomfortable, though one arm had been truncated to avoid the resemblance.

On the marble terrace of the Palazzo were three tribunals: one near the door for the Bishop, who was to perform the ceremony of degradation of Fra Girolamo and the two brethren who were to suffer as his followers and accomplices; another for the Papal Commissaries, who were to pronounce them heretics and schismatics, and deliver them over to the secular arm; and a third, close to Marzocco, at the corner of the terrace where the platform began, for the Gonfaloniere, and the Eight who were to pronounce the sentence of death.

Again the piazza was thronged with expectant faces: again there was to be a great fire kindled. In the majority of the crowd that pressed around the gibbet the expectation was that of ferocious

The baser part of the multitude delight in For that mother was not very clever at weav degradations, apart from any hatred; it is the ing flowers or at any other work. Tessa's finsatire they best understand. There was a fresh gers had not become more adroit with the years hoot of triumph as the three degraded Breth--only very much fatter. She got on slowly, ren passed on to the tribunal of the Papal Commissaries, who were to pronounce them schismatics and heretics. Did not the prophet look like a schismatic and heretic now? It is easy to believe in the damnable state of a man who stands stripped and degraded.

Monna Brigida was asleep at this moment, in a straight-backed arm-chair, a couple of yards He was off. Her hair, parting backward under her

black hood, had that soft whiteness which is not like snow or any thing else, but is simply the lovely whiteness of aged hair. Her chin had sunk on her bosom, and her hands rested on the elbow of her chair. She had not been weaving flowers or doing any thing else: she had only been looking on as usual, and as usual had fallen asleep.

The other two figures were seated farther off, at the wide doorway that opened on to the loggia. Lillo sat on the ground, with his back against the angle of the door-post, and his long legs stretched out, while he held a large book open on his knee, and occasionally made a dash with his hand at an inquisitive fly, with an air of interest stronger than that excited by the finely-printed copy of Petrarch which he kept open at one place, as if he were learning some thing by heart.

become a monk; and after that my father, being blind and lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his learning of greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in his works after he was in his grave."

"I should not like that sort of life," said Lillo. "I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides-something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure." It is only a

Romola sat nearly opposite Lillo, but she was not observing him. Her hands were crossed on her lap, and her eyes were fixed absently on the distant mountains: she was evidently unconscious of any thing around her. An eager life had left its marks upon her: the finelymoulded cheek had sunk a little; the golden crown was less massive; but there was a placid-ful. ity in Romola's face which had never belonged to it in youth. It is but once that we can know our worst sorrows, and Romola had known them while life was new.

Absorbed in this way, she was not at first aware that Lillo had ceased to look at his book, and was watching her with a slightly impatient air, which meant that he wanted to talk to her, but was not quite sure whether she would like that entertainment just now. But persevering looks make themselves felt at last. Romola did presently turn away her eyes from the distance and meet Lillo's impatient dark gaze with a brighter and brighter smile. He shuffled along the floor, still keeping the book on his lap, till he got close to her and lodged his chin on her knee.

"What is it, Lillo?" said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more massive and less regular than his father's. The blood of the Tuscan peasant was

in his veins.

"Mamma Romola, what am I to be?" he said, well contented that there was a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con "Spirto gentil" any longer.

"What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason why I can teach you." "Yes," said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. "But he is old and blind in the picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?"

"That is not easy, my Lillo. poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before every thing else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that no man can be great-he can hardly keep himself from wickedness-unless he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painMy father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo-you know why I keep to-morrow sacred he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I will tell you something, Lillo."

Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers.

"There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of doing any thing cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from every thing that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the "Not much, Lillo. The world was not al- basest deeds-such as make men infamous. He ways very kind to him, and he saw meaner men denied his father, and left him to misery; he than himself put into higher places because they betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, could flatter and say what was false. And then that he might keep himself safe and get rich and his dear son thought it right to leave him and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him."

Again Romola paused. Her voice was unsteady, and Lillo was looking up at her with awed wonder.

sorts. Every "ism," "ology," and "pathy," has had its orators, its rostrum, and a fair chance for its life. But the dear children-the little, "Another time, my Dillo-I will tell you an- precious, troublesome, good-for-nothing darlings other time. See, there are our old Piero di-have no advocates! Legally they are classed Cosimo and Nello coming up the Borgo Pinti, with the insane, the married women, the idiots, bringing us their flowers. Let us go and wave and negroes. If that isn't enough to make a our hands to them, that they may know we see baby sorry and ashamed to think he started at all, I don't know what is. Socially, in a general way, they are quietly voted nuisances by the majority of people.

them."

"How queer old Piero is!" said Lillo, as they stood at the corner of the loggia, watching the advancing figures. "He abuses you for dressing the altar, and thinking so much of Fra Gi-nonsense that is printed upon the subject, how rolamo, and yet he brings you the flowers."

"Never mind," said Romola. "There are many good people who did not love Fra Girolamo. Perhaps I should never have learned to love him if he had not helped me when I was in great need."

W

ANTI-HERODISM.

By-the-by, isn't it odd, with all the pleasant

few true mother-hearts one finds, even among pretty good sort of women? I mean the grand, yearning love of the antique woman-like Hannah, with her agonizing prayer, "Give me children, O Lord, or I die!" of Sarah, of Rachel, of others, down to poor Katharine of Aragon of modern times. The women who welcome languor, suffering, torture, every thing which insures the joyful promise that "the shadow of ́HENEVER a fit of pious gratitude over- things hoped for, the substance of things not takes me, among all my other manifold seen," is to be fulfilled in the soft, sweet reality, blessings I never fail to first enumerate the one whose frail existence is as yet but a hope and a of being "grown up." My well-authenticated possibility. How many, out of the millions of maturity may not especially interest the public, mothers, love and pray for this dear unknown, but it is a subject of unceasing thankfulness to with a genuine mother-love, before faith is lost myself that I am no longer a child. The hor-in sight? If you have seen a dozen such glori ribly false doctrine of "Childhood, happiest fied women among your hundreds of friends days of life; free from care and free from strife," you have been blessed. I have known six. But is beginning to be exploded since it has been the to only two was the precious boon granted in its fashion to dare to call things by their right perfection, and one was a posthumous child. names, and speak of them as they really are, divested of all the moonshine and nonsense with which writers of an earlier time thought necessary to invest every subject they honored with a pen-touch.

"Free from strife!" Oh, good old poet, where were your eyes and ears? Where did you ever see such desperate fights as among small boys? such bitter heart-burnings and jealous rivalry as among little girls? Clearly you must have been the youngest of a large family, who all left home young; you alone remained to the indulgent care of grandma, who brought you up on raspberry jam and cocoa-nut candy! But, even then, did you never go to school? never wear an old-fashioned jacket? never play truant and feel the ferule? never get called ugly names? never be imposed on by big boys? never get scared out of all your small wits by the hideous tales of Bugaboo and the Black Man in the Cellar, who would devour you if you did not go instantly to sleep? Never be refused permission to attend the juvenile party, the circus, the "muster," or the picnic, by a cruel parent or aunt? Never lie awake, quaking like a tertian ague, thinking that the frogs in yonder marsh were hideous demons, or robbers and murderers at the very least?

Pleasant, merry, happy time of life indeed! At every body's beck and call, with no more will of your own than a bound 'prentice!

Of all people under the light of the sun I pity children most. We have had reforms of all

"Was it not sad," I asked of the poor widow, in her shabby, second-hand mourning, as she, weeping bitterly, told of her great sorrow; "was it not terrible to you that your baby should be born while your husband lay dying?"

"Oh no!" said she, while her faded eyes brightened for a moment. "Oh no! It was the last thing he gave me; and it seems like as if I had my husband back again."

Simple creature! there was no thought of poverty, toil, care, or privation; just the pure delight in the child, that it was the last gift of the dear, lost husband, and the unadulterated love of the baby itself.

"Mamına," said a four-year-old curly head, creeping up into his widowed mother's lap, "what is a keepsake ?"

"Something which one who is going away gives to friends. Something to remember one by."

"Well, mamma, I'm papa's keepsake to you, ain't I?"

And the straining clasp and showering tears rendered other assurance needless.

But all women do not feel like this, nor most women even. I say so confidently, for I know. To most it is a shock, a surprise, an inconvenience, a hindrance to plans of comfort or pleasure, an upsetting of one's notions generally, which is any thing but welcome. The quacks know this; old women and nurses know it; physicians know it; every body knows it who has no business knowing it-and most of such

It is all wrong, of course; but it is true, for all that, and Herod was merciful and wise compared to these women; for he only aimed at destroying an enemy and a rival, while they de-him for brotherly pennies and paternal visits to stroy the heirs of their own body-the hopes of their own race.

Yes; and thank God there is no animal but man who so persists in misunderstanding himself. We can learn much wisdom from a brood-"the worst children in the world." It is hard ing dove if we will but watch.