The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 36, October, 1860. Various

molten masses, or aëriform or nebulous masses, or with a fluid revolving mass of vast extent, from which the specific existing worlds have been developed one by one. What theist doubts that the actual results of the development in the inorganic worlds are not merely compatible with design, but are in the truest sense designed results? Not Mr. Agassiz, certainly, who adopts a remarkable illustration of design directly founded on the nebular hypothesis, drawing from the position and times of revolution of the worlds so originated "direct evidence that the physical world has been ordained in conformity with laws which obtain also among living beings." But the reader of the interesting exposition19 will notice that the designed result has been brought to pass through what, speaking after the manner of men, might be called a chapter of accidents. A natural corollary of this demonstration would seem to be, that a material connection between a series of created things—such as the development of one of them from another, or of all from a common stock—is highly compatible with their intellectual connection, namely, with their being designed and directed by one mind. Yet, upon some ground, which is not explained, and which we are unable to conjecture, Mr. Agassiz concludes to the contrary in the organic kingdoms, and insists, that, because the members of such a series have an intellectual connection, "they cannot be the result of a material differentiation of the objects themselves,"20 that is, they cannot have had a genealogical connection. But is there not as much intellectual connection between successive generations of any species as there is between the several species of a genus or the several genera of an order? As the intellectual connection here is realized through the material connection, why may it not be so in the case of species and genera? On all sides, therefore, the implication seems to be quite the other way.

      1

      Bernini, being asked what was the most beautiful statue in Rome, replied, "That of Pasquin." This reply the sensible Milizia taxes with affectation,—saying, that, although an artist may discover in the work some marks of good design, it is now too maimed to pass for a beautiful statue. Possibly Bernini was thinking of his own works in comparison with it.

      2

      Andreas Schott,—who published an Itinerary of Italy about the beginning of the seventeenth century, copies this account, and adds,—"At present this custom is prohibited under the heaviest penalties."

1

Bernini, being asked what was the most beautiful statue in Rome, replied, "That of Pasquin." This reply the sensible Milizia taxes with affectation,—saying, that, although an artist may discover in the work some marks of good design, it is now too maimed to pass for a beautiful statue. Possibly Bernini was thinking of his own works in comparison with it.

2

Andreas Schott,—who published an Itinerary of Italy about the beginning of the seventeenth century, copies this account, and adds,—"At present this custom is prohibited under the heaviest penalties."

3

Mrs. Piozzi, in her amusing Journey through Italy, ii. 113, quotes these verses and gives a translation of them which shows that she quite mistook their point. In spite of her quoting Latin, Greek, and even on occasion Hebrew, her scholarship was not very accurate or deep.

4

The Historie of Guicciardin, reduced into English by Geffray Fenton. 1579. p. 308. Another epigram of barbarous bitterness against Alexander refers, if we understand it aright, to one of the gloomiest events of his pontificate, the murder of his son Giovanni, Duca di Gandia, by his other son, Caesar Borgia. Giovanni was killed at night, and his body was thrown into the Tiber, from which it was recovered the next morning.

Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,Piscaris natum retibus ecce tuum."

"Lest we should not fancy you, O Sextus, a fisher of men, you fish for your own son with nets."

5

Vasari relates, that Michel Angelo, when he was making the bronze statue of Julius, at Bologna, having asked the Pope if he should put a book in his left hand,—"No," replied the fiery old man, "put a sword in it, for I know not letters": "Mettivi una spada, che io non so lettere."

6

At the beginning of his pontificate, upon occasion of Leo's taking possession of the Lateran with a solemn procession, an arch of triumph was erected at the bridge of Sant' Angelo, which bore an inscription worthy of the tailor's successor:—

"Olim habuit Cypria sua tempera, tempora MavorsOlim habuit, sua nunc tempora Pallas habet.""Venus once had her time, Mars also hashad his, but now Minerva rules."

7

In Murray's Handbook for Rome, a book for the most part of great accuracy, there is a curious blunder in the account of Pasquin. It is said, that, "on the election of Pope Leo X., in 1440, the following satirical acrostic appeared, to mark the date MCCCCXL:—'Multi caeci cardinales creaverunt caecum decimum (X) Leonem: 'Many blind cardinals have created a tenth blind Lion.'" Now in 1440 Leo was not born, and no Pope was chosen in that year. Leo was not made Pope till 1513, and the acrostic has apparently nothing to do with the date of his accession to the pontificate.

8

One of those copies was formerly in the Royal Library at Munich, and sold as a duplicate. The other has the bookplate of the Baron de Warenghien. Colonel Stanley's copy sold for £11 lls. The book was printed at Basle, by Jean Oporin. See Clément, Bibl. Cur. Hist, et Crit., vii. 371. See also, for an account of it, Salleugre, M.m. de Litt., ii. 6, 203; and Schelhorn, Amoen. Lit., iii. 151.

9

An entertaining and curious account of Curio and his family is to be found in a commemorative oration delivered in 1570 before the Academy of Basle by Stupanus, and printed by Schelhorn in Amoen. Lit., Tom. xiv.

10

In two or three of the dialogues Hutten is introduced as one of the speakers; and several of the poetic epigrams are ascribed to him by name.

11

In Luther's Table-Talk, he says, "Whoso in Rome is heard to speak one word against the Pope received either a Strappecordo or is punished with death, for his name is Noli me tangere." Pasquin himself has hardly said a shrewder saying than this. Noli me tangere is the name under which Pius IX. pleads against the diminution of his temporal power, while he threatens his opponents with the Strappecorde.

12

Lectures upon Shakespeare and other Dramatists, ii. 90.

13

Novaes, x. 56. Artaud de Montor, Hist. des Pont. Rom., v. 523.

14

Vita d' Innocenzio X., dal Cav. Ant. Bagatta.

15

Whatever it may be, it is not "the homoeopathic form of the transmutative hypothesis," as Darwin's is said to be, (p. 252, Amer. reprint,) so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p. 259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on

19

In Contributions to the Nat. Hist. of U. S., Vol. i. pp. 128, 129.

20

Contr. Nat. Hist. U.S., Vol. i. p. 130; and Amer.

Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.