SUCH is the name that was given to one of the most diabolical institutions ever invented by the brain of man. By a bull of 21st July 1542, Pope Paul III. set on foot the Holy Office which is better known in history as the Inquisition. If there could be joy felt in hell it must have been felt when the Arch-Enemy so influenced the mind of the so-called Vicar of Christ to sanction an instrument which for its satanic work has rightly been execrated by men. We quote Motley, the historian of the “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” whose description gives a faint idea of some of the kind of work it did. “The torture,” he says, “took place at midnight in a gloomy dungeon, dimly lighted by torches. The victim—whether man, matron, or tender virgin—was stripped naked, and stretched upon the wooden bench, water, weights, fires, pulleys, screws—all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained, without cracking, the bones bruised without breaking, the body racked exquisitely without giving up the ghost—were now put into operation. The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring at his victims through holes cut in the hood which muffled his face, practised successively all the forms of torture which the devilish ingenuity of the monks had invented. The imagination sickens when trying to keep pace with these dreadful realities.”