COMPLUTEN'SIAN POL'YGLOT, the edition of the Scriptures issued under the patronage of cardinal Ximenes at a very great cost to himself. It was in six volumes, printed at Aicala in Spain, between 1502 and 1517. The first four volumes contain the Old Testament, with the Hebrew, Latin, and Greek in three columns, the Targum, and a Latin version of the same. The fifth volume contains the Greek New Testament and the Latin vulgate: and the last volume has the vocabularies and indexes. Only 600 copies were printed. And yet, while this great and learned cardinal was expending a large fortune in producing this most valuable polyglot of the Scriptures, he made a wanton and wicked destruction of a vast amount of most valuable literature. This was in consequence of his fiery zeal for the extirpation of heresy. To effect such extirpation and to preclude the possibility of converts returning to their former errors, he caused all procurable Arabic manuscripts to be piled together and burned, in one of the great squares of the city, so as to exterminate the very characters in which the teachings of the infidels were recorded. But from thousands of manuscripts destined to the fire he
did reserve about three hundred, all of which related to medical science. His conduct was in strict keeping with that of the Roman Catholic conquerors of Mexico, who destroyed every Aztec manuscript, and as far as possible defaced every inscription that fell under their notice. The modern scholar, groping in tile dark for information con cerning ancient religions and primitive nations, may well paraphrase Mme. Roland's bitter aphorism: "0 religion! what crimes are committed in thy