graceful letter, saying that he was ashamed to have caused me the labour of transcribing it. I had the book choicely bound in green morocco. I sent it together with my transcript to Luis, inserting the following slipshod stanza :—

"Go, little volume, on thy destined way

To a far country, to a distant clime;

Learn thou to speak a foreign tongue, and say

I send thee as a gift for future time,

Its literature to grace, and to convey

Knowledge of useful deeds, and thoughts sublime.
Say this, and add, I was sent here to speak

Hope to the fainting heart, and solace to the meek.

I sent it by the hands of William Forster, a Quaker minister, who was going to Spain, in order to remonstrate with the authorities on their continuance of that abomination, the slave trade-the purpose that had led my friend G. W. Alexander and myself to that country. The messenger whom I used on this occasion afterwards laid down his life, as a martyr to his labours for the slave, in the State of Tennessee, America.

While searching for the letters of Francisco de Enzinas (Dryander), I found unpublished letters by Juan Diaz himself, addressed to Ochino, to Enzinas, and Calvin, with other letters making mention of him, and I procured an excellent portrait of him, engraved on wood, after the one in Beza's Icones, 1580. A later copy of the book, we found from Enzinas' letters, to have been edited, if not composed, by Enzinas; Senarclæus (Claude Senarcle) might have

furnished him with the details of the tragedy, he having particulars about Diaz, with whom he was a personal friend, from other sources. Luis, translated the Historia, into Spanish, the letters, etc., he printed in Latin and Spanish; he wrote observations of about forty pages upon them, adding an index. He printed the volume handsomely in 1865, a few months before his death it forms No. 20 of the "Reformistas." He died on the 17th August, in that year, and with this event terminated the course of our interesting labours, expressed by the mutual services of an endeared friendship. With the exception of one of them, the twenty volumes of the series were executed solely at his cost, but were prepared by our joint labours. His was the first conception of the project. It was carried out, not by any plan or scheme of arrangement, but simply as circumstances arose, to favour its develop

ment.

The learning was his, the talent, the expense were his; mine, the advantages of liberty and free action, and residence in a country which furnished the readiest means for the acquisition of this kind of knowledge. We both were favoured with leisure, we both had the simple and independent means of livelihood; we wanted no more. We both repudiated the thought of accepting assistance from any society or association, for our views were not mercenary, neither were they directed to immediate, but future results, because we firmly believed that these results, would manifest themselves, long after we had ceased to live.

The reprint of the original Italian, of the "CX. Considerations," was executed at Halle, and did not itself form one of the series of the "Reformistas." The translation was the work of John T. Betts. Wiffen wrote the life of Valdés, prefixed to the translation, and added thirteen titles in fac simile of the "CX. Considerations," and an index, and had a portrait of Giulia Gonzaga, executed on wood, for private copies. Mr. Betts, took the responsibility of publishing the joint work. It was published at the close of the year 1865.

The second volume of the "Reformistas Antiguos Españoles" had appeared in 1848, privately printed by Wiffen. It also contains a list of the works of Spanish Reformers, then known to Wiffen, with indications of the places where they might be found. The Religious Tract Society of London printed in 1866, for circulation in Spain, from this second volume, the " Epistola Consolatoria," of Juan Perez.

B.

CHAPTER VI.

JUAN VALDÉS.

"O fruitful past! exhaustless treasure-house
Of untold wealth! prolific soil, in which
The present sows itself, and out of which
There comes not one brief harvest, but a long
And blessed reaping for the sons of men !"

H. BONAR

B. WIFFEN continued to occupy himself in seeking diligently, by correspondence with learned men and booksellers throughout Europe, to obtain any writings of Spanish Reformers, that might have escaped the flames of the Inquisition. The ruthless completeness of the persecution, by which they, and the cause, were destroyed in Spain, extended to their writings. The latter had to be rediscovered, to be ferreted out, from the forgotten corners of Libraries, in distant countries. It was this task, then still difficult, as well as dangerous, which was undertaken by Don Luis, and his English sympathiser, and correspondent, Wiffen. The ardour required for such a pursuit, was something far beyond the love of fame, or of contemporary applause. It was eminently a work of faith; it had "respect unto

the recompence of reward;" its motives were altogether in the unseen world. In the year 1843, he again. accompanied G. W. Alexander on a mission to Spain, on the errand of Slave Emancipation; he pursued his Spanish studies, and sought everywhere for his hidden favourites.

These researches were not undertaken from antiquarian motives, nor from mere admiration of the great men, whose writings were thus brought to light, but from true sympathy with a cause, which, however subject to hindrances, and even apparent extinction, is immortal, and must be ultimately victorious over all opposition and evil. There lay the conviction, too, in the mind of Don Luis and Wiffen, that the present is irrevocably linked with the past, and that even the darkest days of modern Spain, were thus ministering to a glorious Future, by the bringing forward the transactions of the heroic, but well-nigh forgotten, men of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They toiled under pressure of the loftiest and most unselfish motives, and their good work will be held in higher esteem as time advances.

In the year 1851, Mr. Wiffen found, in the collection of a bookseller at Brighton, the "Alfabeto Christiano," a work of Juan Valdés, unknown to modern times. It details the subject of conversation between Valdes and Giulia Gonzaga. He made a translation of this interesting volume, and by the aid of a few friends, he published, in 1861, a hundred copies for private circulation. An extract from the