Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Julius II. completed what Alexander VI. had beun. Louis XII., born to become the dupe of all his neighbours, assisted Julius in seizing upon Bologna and Perouse. That unfortunate monarch, in return for his services, was driven out of Italy, and excommunicated by the very pope whom the archbishop of Auch, the king's ambassador at Rome, addressed with the words your wickedness instead of your holiness. To complete his mortification, Anne of Bretagne, his wife, a woman as devout as she was imperious, told him in plain terms, that he would be damned for going to war with the pope. If. Leo X. and Clement VII. lost so many states which withdrew from the papal communion, their power continued no less absolute than before over the provinces which still adhered to the catholic faith. The court of Rome excommunicated the emperor Henry III. and declared Henry IV. unworthy to reign. It still draws large sums from all the catholic states of Germany, from Hungary, Poland, Spain, and France. Its ambassadors take precedence of all others; it is no longer sufficiently powerful to carry on war; and its weakness is in fact its happiness. The ecclesiastical state is the only one that has regularly enjoyed the advantages of peace since the sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles V. It appears, that the popes have been often treated like the gods of the Japanese, who are sometimes presented with offerings of gold, and sometimes thrown into the river. SAMMONOCODOM. If I remember right, Sammonocodom, the god of the Siamese, was born of a young virgin, and reared on a flower. In like manner, the grandmother of Genghis was pregnant by a ray of the sun. The emperor of China also, Kien Long, now gloriously reigning, assures us positively, in his fine poem of' Moukden, ' that his great gr...