The cells of the inquisition are square apartments, each side being about I u feet in superficial measurement. There is usually one row of them built over another. The cells of the upper row are lighted by means of a small iron grate placed in the cell : those of the under row are sunk beneath the level ot the ex. ernal surface, and are per fectly dark. Each apartment has two doors, one exterior to the other. The inner one is of a massy thickness, and faced with iron, having a grate on the under part of it, and in the upper part an opening, through which his victuals and other necessaries are delivered to the prisoner. The outer door is entire, without grate or opening, and, like the inner one, is exceedingl strong. The walls are com monly about seven or eight feet in thickness. In each apartment there is placed a bed of rushes, together with two pots of water, one to wash in, and the other for drink. There is likewise a larger vessel, which is emptied every third or fourth day. The treatment of the-prisoners va ries according to their rank or fortune. Those who are poor have half a rial for their daily support allowed them by the king ; out of this pittance, however, the provision buyer, or dispenser, as he is called, the cook, and the jail keeper, must all be paid ; and the proportion claimed by each of these functionaries amounts to nearly one-tenth of the whole. Dr. Geddes mentions a prisoner in the Inqui sition at Lisbon, who was allowed no more than three 017: tons a day, or threepence-halfpenny of English money.
The obstinate heretic is consigned to the apartments or the under row. There he sits upon his bed of rushes, in darkness, solitude, and silence, without ever seeing the face of a human creature excepting that of his keeper, or hearing the sound of any voice but his. He is forbidden to make the slightest noise, even to cough or to stir. It were a mockery to allow him the use of books ; for, being shut up in total darkness, he could not peruse them. The morning, and the evening, the day, the week;and the month, pass over him, in the same stillness and seclusion. Some times the prisoner is doomed to spend whole years in this situation ; hot and feverish, amidst the miasmata proceed ing from his own body, or putrefying alive in the accumu lating filth of his apartment, which, through weakness or disease, he is unable to remove. "As liberty," says the author of the Letters on the, Inquisition, "is sweet upon any terms, and even the galleys themselves are a paradise when compared with the dreary cells of the inquisition, where every kind of rigour is put in practice which can render life a burden, without any interval, or the least alle viation, nothing is more natural than for one, confined to such a prison, to wish, with the utmost anxiety, for the next auto da fe, which, though a bitter remedy, is the only one that can afford him any prospect of relief. But even this miserable comfort is denied him. The wretch sits sighing and pining away within his gloomy dungeon, in expectation of the solemn day when lie shall be permitted to behold once more the light of the sun, to breathe the flesh air, and cheer his eyes with the sight of his friends and relations. The long wished-for day at length
arrives ; it passes and the unhappy individual still remains in the same doleful situation!' Sometimes, how ever, the strength of his noble mind is broken ; and, worn out by unmitigated and hopeless suffering, he belies his own consciousness of innocence, declares himself guilty, i and subscribes any confession which the inquisitors may choose to put in his mouth.
There is nothing in the history of the inquisitorial pro cedure which has called forth such universal reprobation as the fact, that the prisoner is never either with the informer or the witnesses. He is not even told who they are. If the evidence is given to him in writing, as is sometimes the case, it is prepared in such a way that he can by no means learn froth it, how the information against him was communicated, or the proofs of his delin quency have been obtained. The evil of these practices was long ago perceived. In the beginning of the 16th centu ry, the Moors and Jews rosidiug in Spain offered Son,o00 pieces of gold to Charles V., who had just succeeded his grand father Ferdinand, King of Castile, provided he would introduce a law. ordaining that thell3MCS ot the witnesses in the inquisitorial courts should be regularly published. Charles, wno was only eighteen yearsol age,e as very strong ly tempted to accept of the money ; but Cardinal Xime nes, at that time inquisitor-general, represented to the king that irreparable injury would be done to the church. if he permitted tile practice, and by reminning him of his grand father Ferdinand, surnamed the Catholic, he prevailed upon him to refuse the offer. It was mis same Cardinal who objected to the translation ot the Scriptures into the vul,;ar tongue, saying, "that the hooks of the Old and New Testament ought to remain shut up in the three lan guages which God, not without the greatest mystery, had directed to be placed over the head of his dear Son as he hung upon the cross." Cases, however, have occurred, when it was necessary that the witnesses fhould see the prisoner, in order to ascertain his personal identity. But even in these cases, the business has been so conducted, that the prisoner was never able to discover who the wit nesses were. Tht usual method has been to introduce the prisoner into the company of several other persons in the same dress with himself, and to permit the informer, or the witnesses, to inspect the whole party, through a small opening, or crevice in the door. And though it has some times happened that they have mistaken the guilty individual, and made a wrong choice, even after repeated trials, yet such is the nature of these courts, and so necessary is it that informations, of whatever description, should be com municated, that those false accusers, and deliberate and perjured destroyers of the innocent and the unwary, have been allowed to escape with little more than a very gentle rebuke.