of a work by which great men won enduring fame,
written in a great cause, for which they struggled and for which they
suffered, seems to efface the lapse of centuries. We feel present before
them. They are before us as living witnesses. Thus we see Servetus as,
alone and on foot, he arrived at Geneva in 1553; the lake and the little
inn, the "Auberge de la Rose," at which he stopped, reappear pictured by
the influence of local memory and imagination. From his confinement in
the old prison near St. Peter's, to the court where he was accused,
during the long and cruel trial, until the fatal eminence of Champel,
every event arises before us, and the air is peopled with thick coming
visions of the actors and sufferer in the dreadful scene. Who that has
read the account of his death has not heard, or seemed to hear, that
shriek, so high, so wild, alike for mercy and of dread despair, which
when the fire was kindled burst above through smoke and flame,--"that
the crowd fell back with a shudder!" Now it strikes me, an original MS.
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