Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/185

 was professed, and found proselytes among the mountains of Corsica and Sardinia. The laws of the Carbonari were, they declared, founded on the equality of the gospel, and on the traditions of Freemasonry. The initiated swore to take terrible vengeance for the Lamb, sacrificed by the Wolves. The religion of Christ was the lamb; kings were typified in the wolves. They said that Jesus, who was the Word of God, had been the first who proclaimed upon earth the abolition of ancient servitude, and taught brotherhood and equality among men. He was therefore crucified by the wolves of his age, and died an illustrious victim of tyranny. The Carbonari swore to vindicate the death of Christ, and to exterminate the race of wolves, that is of kings, who inherited the guilt and infamy of the assassins of the Son of God. To strike the vulgar eye, fearful representations were made in their ceremonies, apt to excite the imaginations of a southern people of a highly religious temperament, and the proselytes pronounced tremendous oaths upon the cross and the dagger. The initiation was accompanied by various circumstances calculated to test the moral and physical courage of the novices; and the slightest sign of shrinking, caused them to be irrevocably rejected.

The Carbonari had, like the Freemasons,