place ours. He hath at once enjoined it upon us by way of command with peculiar force; and by his example, as having undertaken the work of our salvation out of pure love and good will to mankind. The endeavor to set home this example upon our minds is a very proper employment of this season, which is bringing on the festival of his birth; which, as it may teach us many excellent lessons of humility, resignation, and obedience to the will of God, so there is none it recommends with greater authority, force, and advantage, than this of love and charity; since it was "for us men, and for our salvation," that "he came down from heaven, and was incarnate, and was made man; that he might teach us our duty, and more especially that he might enforce the practice of it, reform mankind, and finally bring us to that "eternal salvation," of which "he is the Author to all those that obey him."

163.-SUFFERINGS OF WILLIAM LITHGOW.

THERE is a remarkable book of travels printed in 1640, entitled "The total Discourse of the rare Adventures and painful Peregrinations of long Nineteen Years' Travels from Scotland to the most famous Kingdoms in Europe, Asia, and Africa, &c. &c., by William Lithgow." Mr. De Quincey, in a note to his "Confessions of an Opium-eater," says that William Lithgow's book or travels" is ill and pedantically written, but the account of his sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly affecting." He was arrested at Malaga as a spy, being accused of giving information to the English ships respecting the return of the Plate fleet. In his imprisonment he underwent the extraordinary sufferings of which he lived to publish this minute account. His horrible situation became known to the English merchants at Malaga, and he was finally released. When he arrived in England, he was carried upon a bed to Theobalds, to gratify the curiosity of James I., and the king sent him to Bath, where he gradually recovered his strength. No redress was ever obtained from the Spanish government; and Lithgow himself was put into the Marshalsea for threatening the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar.]

The day following the governor entered my prison alone, entreating me to confess I was a spy, and he would be my friend, and procure my pardon, neither should I lack (interim) any needful

thing; but, I still attesting my innocency, he wrathfully swore I should see his face no more, till grievous torments should make me do it; and, leaving me in a rage, he observed too well his condition.

But withal, in my audience, he commanded Areta that none should come near me except the slave, nor no food should be given me but three ounces of moosted brown bread every second day, and a fuleto or English pint of water; neither any bed, pillow, or coverlet to be allowed me: and close up, said he, this window in his room, with lime and stone, stop the holes of the door with double mats, hanging another locking to it; and, to withdraw all visible and sensible comfort from him, let no tongue nor feet be heard near him till I have my designs accomplished: and thou, Hargior, I charge thee, at thy incomings to have no conference with him, nor at thy outgoings abroad to discover him to the English factors, as thou wilt answer upon thy life, and the highest torments can be devised.

These directions delivered, and, alas! too accessary to me in the performance, my room was made a dark-drawn dungeon, my belly the anatomy of merciless hunger, my comfortless hearing the receptacle of sounding bells, my eyes wanting light, a loathsome languishing in despair, and my ground-lying body, the woful mirror of misfortunes, every hour wishing another's coming, every day the night, and every night the morning.

And now, being every second or third day attended with the twinkling of an eye, and my sustenance agreeable to my attendance, my body grew exceeding debile and infirm, insomuch that the governor (after his answers received from Madrid) made haste to put in execution his bloody and mercilous purpose before Christmas holidays, lest the expiring of the twelfth day I should be utterly famished, and unable to undergo my trial, without present perishing, yet unknown to me, save only in this knowledge, that I was confined to die a fearful and unacquainted death; for it is a current custom with the Spaniard, that if a stranger be apprehended upon any suspicion, he is never brought to open trial and common jail, but clapped up in a dungeon, and there tortured, imprisoned, or starved to death. Such meritorious deeds accom. pany these only titular Christians.

In end, by God's permission, the scourge of my fiery trial approaching; upon the forty-seventh day after my first imprisonment, and five days before Christmas, about two of clock in the morning I heard the noise of a coach in the fore street, marvelling much what it might mean.

Within a pretty while I heard the locks of my prison door in opening; whereupon, bequeathing my soul to God, I humbly implored his gracious mercy and pardon for my sins; for neither in the former night, nor this, could I get any sleep, such was the force of gnawing hunger, and the portending heaviness of my presaging soul.

Meanwhile the former nine sergeants, accompanied with the scrivan, entered the room without word speaking, and carrying me thence, with irons and all, on their arms through the house to the street, they laid me on my back in the coach, where two of them sat up beside me, the rest, using great silence, went softly along by the coach-side.

Then Baptista, the coachman, an Indian negro, driving out at the sea gate, the way to the shore side, I was brought westward almost a league from the town, to a vine-press house, standing alone amongst vineyards, where they inclosed me in a room till daylight, for hither was the rack brought the night before, and privily placed in the end of a trance.

And all this secrecy was used, that neither English, French, or Flemings, should see or get any knowledge of my trial, my grievous tortures, and dreadful dispatch, because of their treacherous and cruel proceedings.

At the break of day, the governor Don Francisco, and the alcade, came forth in another coach; where, when arrived, and I invited to their presence, I pleaded for a trenchman, being against their law to accuse or condemn a stranger without a sufficient interpreter. The which they absolutely refused, neither would they suffer or grant me an appellation to Madrid.

And now, after long and new examinations from morning to dark night, they finding my first and second confession so run in one, that the governor swore I had learned the art of memory; saying, further, is it possible he can in such distress, and so long

a time, observe so strictly, in every manner, the points of his first confession, and I so often shifting him to and fro ?

Well, the governor's interrogation and my confession being mutually subscribed, he and Don Francisco besought me earnestly to acknowledge and confess my guiltiness in time; if not, he would deliver me in the alcade's hands there present; saying, moreover, thou art as yet in my power, and I may spare or pardon thee, providing thou wilt confess thyself a spy and a traitor against our nation.

But, finding me stand fast to the mark of my spotless innocency, he, invective, and malicious he, after many tremendous threatenings, commanded the scrivan to draw up a warrant for the chief justice, and, done, he set his hand to it, and taking me by the hands, delivered me and the warrant in the alcade major's hands, to cause me to be tortured, broken, and cruelly tormented.

Whence, being carried along on the sergeant's arms, to the end of a trance, or stone gallery, where the pottaro, or rack, was placed, the encarnador, or tormentor, began to disburden me of my irons, which being very hard inbolted, he could not ramverse the wedges for a long time; whereat the chief justice being offended, the malicious villain, with the hammer which he had in his hand, stroke away above an inch of my left heel with the bolt. Whereupon I grievously groaning, being exceeding faint, and without my three ounces of bread, and a little water for three days together, the alcade said, O traitor, all this is nothing but the earnest of a greater bargain you have in hand.

Now the irons being dissolved, and my torments approaching, I fell prostrate on my knees crying to the heavens:

"O great and gracious God, it is truly known to thy all-seeing eye that I am innocent of these false and fearful accusations, and since, therefore, it is thy good will and pleasure that I must suffer now by the scelerate hands of merciless men, Lord, furnish me with courage, strength and patience, least, by an impatient mind, and feeble spirit, I become my own murderer, in confessing myself guilty of death, to shun present punishment. And according to the multitude of thy mercies, O Lord, be merciful to my sinful soul, and that for Jesus thy Son and my Redeemer his sake."

After this, the alcade and scrivan being both chair-set, the one to examining, the other to write down my confession and tortures, I was by the executioner stripped to the skin, brought to the rack, and then mounted by him on the top of it; where eftsoons I was hung by the bare shoulders with two small cords which went under both my arms, running on two rings of iron that were fixed in the wall above my head.

This being hoised to the appointed height, the tormentor descended below, and drawing down my legs through the two sides of the three planked rack, he tied a cord about each of my ancles, and then ascending upon the rack, he drew the cords upward, and bending forward with main force, my two knees against the two planks; the sinews of my hams burst asunder, and the lids of my' knees being crushed, and the cords made fast, I hung so demained for a large hour.

At last, the encarnador informing the governor that I had the mark of Jerusalem on my right arm, joined with the name and crown of King James, and done upon the holy grave, the corridigor came out of his adjoining stance, and gave direction to tear asunder the name and crown (as he said) of that heretic king, an arch enemy to the holy Catholic church; then the tormentor, laying the right arm above the left, and the crown upmost, did cast a cord over both arms seven distant times; and then lying down his back, and setting both his feet on my hollow pinched belly, he charged and drew violently, with his hands, making my womb support the force of his feet till the seven several cords combined in one place of my arm (and cutting the crown, sinews and flesh to the bare bones) did pull in my fingers close to the palm of my hands; the left hand of which is lame so still, and will be for

ever.

Now mine eyes began to startle, my mouth to foam and froth, and my eyes to chatter like to the doubling of drummer's sticks. O strange inhumanity of men, monster manglers! I surpassing the limits of their national law; threescore tortures being the trial of treason, which I had and was to endure; yet thus to inflict a seven-fold surplusage of more intolerable cruelties; and, notwithstanding of my shivering lips in this fiery passion, my vehement groaning, and blood springing fonts, from arms, broken