any quarter, and left in the grasp of two | determined villains disappointed of a rich booty, one of whom had twice attempted his life, what could he expect from such hands but death, and in all probability a death of the most appalling description? In a short time his person was again subjected to rigid examination, which proving as fruitless as before, the comrades with drew to a short distance from their prisoner, having previously warned him not to stir on peril of his life. Louder and louder grew the echoes of the stranger's footsteps as he sauntered slowly up the street; but having reached the entrance to the dark passage where the victim and his gaolers stood secreted, the new-comer made a short pause, and having drawn his sword, a very common and necessary precaution in similar situations, he entered the very passage where the robbers and their charge lay perdu. Although the figures of the party that first entered, owing to the extreme darkness, were invisible to the stranger, yet as he advanced, and necessarily closed up the aperture of the entrance, the outline of his form might well be traced against the uncertain lights without; and as he paced onwards, his sword extended at arm's length, it may be readily surmised what were the feelings of the captive at finding aid so near, that the stranger passing onward almost brushed the victim with his cloak, and yet so utterly impossible was it for the prisoner to claim the assistance placed as it were within his grasp, that his heart sank within him, as, undiscovered by the intruder, the sound of his departure was momentarily lessened in the distance. The dreadful gag which had been forced within his mouth occasioned intolerable anguish; his neck yet smarted from the effect of the divided skin, and the murderous grasp of the robber felt fresh upon his throat, his arms were pinioned behind, and as his persecutors stood but a few paces away in deep and earnest consultation, the impracticability of accomplishing his escape by flight was too great, and the certainty of death, if overtaken, too undoubted, to induce him to dare the risk. Presently a sound as of a distant footstep fell on his ear, and eagerly the poor wretch listened in the faint hope that deliverance was at hand. Neither was the noise unheeded by his captors; for, bending to the ground, That the passage in which they stood they endeavoured to ascertain the direction possessed another outlet exclusive of that from whence the unwelcome arrival might by which it had been entered by them did approach. Steadily, and at measured in- not now admit of question; but to attempt tervals, the steps drew nigh, and at the same escape by flight was even more impracticamoment the clang of sabre trailing on the ble in that dismal vault than might have ground proclaimed the owner of the weap-been the case, had he subjected himself to on to be armed. the trial in the open street. "Demonio!" suddenly muttered the smaller ruffian, as rising from his recumbent posture he made a thrust with his knife at the unarmed prisoner, which, fortunately glancing by a button of his coat, saved him from further danger than the infliction of a slight wound only on the breast. The dreadful gag, and many though not dangerous wounds which the prisoner had received, caused him excessive pain, and the agony of mind necessarily attendant on such an awful situation proved nearly beyond what nature could sustain. It was now full two hours since his capture, and during the whole of that long and At that moment the other robber, seizing awful period he had existed in expectation their prize by the arm with considerable of suffering an immediate and cruel death; violence, thrust him before them towards and as the last echoes of the stranger's footone of the many dark passages abounding falls died away in the distance, and the on the spot, and where the bright influence brigands, breathing more freely, gave indiof the sun even at mid-day could scarcely cation that they considered their danger lend a straggling beam to illumine the al- past, my unhappy friend, firmly conceiving most pitchy darkness. To what exit could that his last hour had arrived, mentally ofso dismal a place lead? Was it possible fered up his prayers for aid to that Being that an outlet beyond what the eye could whose power he was confident could prescan, might place the adventurous explor- serve his life, and confound the machinaers on the broad quay? or was it merely tions of his enemies even in an instant. the entrance to one of those dreary and ill- | Once again the smaller savage approachventilated vaults, pointing to the accumu-ed his fast-sinking victim, and, with a most lated stores of some affluent merchant diabolical exclamation, would unquestionstowed below? Of what extent the passage ably have sheathed his knife in his prisonmight have been, the captive had not the er's breast, when at that most critical momeans of ascertaining; for, on proceeding ment a noise of a person entering by the about a dozen paces in the gloom, the ruf-way the other had departed, stopped him fians stopped, and having placed my friend ere his bloody purpose could be accombetween them, and posted his back against plished. the wall, each drew his abominable knife, and holding one of the instruments at his throat and the other at his breast, they enjoined the deepest silence. The vile intention of the wretch being thus frustrated, the two ruffians, not caring to take a second chance of detection, skulked stealthily towards the entrance of the passage, and treading noiselessly on the comment on the matter, he joined the party pavement without, crept into the silent to which he was attached, and his first and street, and were seen no more. most energetic recommendation which he uttered to each individual was-carefully to avoid dozing on the Alameda until midnight. Steadily the person approached, whose providential coming had in all probability saved my friend's life; yet, as it was fully as objectionable to be put to death in mistake by a stranger as purposely by the robbers, he judged it the wiser plan to remain passive until the man had passed, when, dreading the reappearance of his persecutors, he fled as rapidly as his declining strength would permit towards the place where he well knew some egress must be found; nor was he mistaken, for hardly had he traversed twenty yards when a sudden rush of fresh air convinced him that the portal was at hand, and in a few seconds he emerged from the lonesome avenue upon the quay, and within a few doors of the mansion where he dwelt. Weeks had passed into months ere the evil consequences of the harsh treatment he had received were obliterated from his person; and though promises of reward were liberally offered for the detection of the parties implicated in the foul and cowardly attack, not a clue towards discovering the perpetrators could be gained; all remained a mystery, in as far as any disclosure was effected relative to the delinquents, and as time wore on, the sufferer allowed the affair to pass from his mind, and the transaction, when by accident it was recalled to his memory, bore relation but as an adventure which occurred in the distant days of auld lang syne. ITALY. BY AN EXILE. FIRST PERIOD. MIDDLE AGES. An historical ethnographical view of the modern Fall of the Roman Empire-The Lombards-The THE history of Rome and the history of modern Italy are no more related to each other than a tragedy is to an afterpiece. Not only the nations and their language, not only manners and morals, laws and gods, have given place to others; not only the monuments of men have been swept from the face of the land; but the land itself, its general aspect, and its very climate, are changed. The full of the Roman empire under the invasion of the northern nations was, for Time, with the usual rapidity of pace, Italy not less than the rest of the world, an rolled onward on his course, and the even- event as desirable as it was inevitable. ing of a beautiful summer-day saw the hero Rome and Roman Italy had ceased to live of my tale landing from a well-appointed long before any foreign nation even ventured yacht, in which he had accompanied some across the Alps. It was a superannuated friends to point out the beauties of Malaga. body, which, in the last struggle against im"Buenas dias, caballeros," uttered some minent dissolution, by an animal instinct half-dozen and half-apparelled ragamuffins summoned all its vital principles to the to the party on stepping ashore; and, ex- heart, only to witness the fate of its members, actly similar to the good old custom in Eng- and prepare for its own. Rome, as is relatland, each of the polite welcomers proceeded of a few fortunate pirates and robbers, ed to appropriate to himself certain particles of the baggage for the nominal purpose of conveying the articles to the domicile of the right owner, or, failing to discover his abode, appropriating the property to themselves. seize. 66 "I know your face to a certainty," exclaimed our friend of midnight suffering, to a long bony fellow, who, among the others, was laying his hands on any article he could 'Surely I've seen you before now." "No, senor, no es possibile," calmly replied the lathy mendicant; but my friend could not be mistaken in the man, for it was he who, although ruffian as he proved himself on the night of the adventure, more than twice preserved his life from the dagger of his companion. Under these circumstances, would it have been just to have seized him on suspicion of the crime? and even had he ventured so far, what proof had he of the man's identity, saving his own bare word? None; so passing onward without further after escaping all dangers of a life of struggle and violence, ended by inanition, and died of old age. The barbaric invasion had then the effect of an inundation of the Nile. It found a land exhausted with its own efforts, burning and withering under the rays of the same tropical sun which had called into action its productive virtues, and languishing into a slow decay, from which no reaction could ever redeem it. Then, from the bosom of unexplored mountains, prepared in the silence of untrodden regions, the flood roared from above-the overwhelming element washed away the last pale remnants of a faded vegetation; but the seasons had their own course. Gardens and fields smiled again on those desolate marshes, palms and cedars again waved their crest to the skies in all the pride of youth, as if singing the praises of the Creator, and attesting that man alone perishes, and his works-but Nature is eternal. The slow process of depopulation, by which the corruption of the capital had wasted the fairest provinces, was hurried for the worst by the ruthless rage of the conquerors. What still remained cultivated and inhabited was trampled under the hoofs of the horses of Alaric. They came: they enjoyed all the voluptuousness of destruction, but they and their myriads vanished among the ruins of the country, like a river lost among the sands which it heaps up at its mouth. Until the age of Odoacer and Theodoric, there was nothing but ravage and ruin. But by this time the advantage of a superior culture, and the influence of a purer religion, had softened the iron hearts of the north, and, under the auspices of these two monarchs, the first stone was laid of the new social edifice. Latin nation, already reduced to atoms, was either dispersed or assimilated. But the Lombards did not subdue the whole country. The maritime cities of the Adriatic and of the Mediterranean, garrisoned by the Eastern emperors, and defended by the hunted down Latins, who came to them for a refuge, offered a long and not unsuccessful resistance. But Rome, which, though nominally acknowledging the sovereignty of the Cæsars of Constantinople, already, in fact, obeyed the influence of the pontiffs, proved a more insurmountable obstacle to the Lombard ambition. The Franks, always restless neighbours during the whole period of the Lombard dominion, now invited by the popes, marched twice to their rescue, and finally relieved them from all fear, by putting an end to the dynasty of Alboin. fact, already usurped. The whole nation laid down their arms, either through treason or surprise. Those who could fight would not, those who would could not. The French king, having opened an unknown road across the Alps, arrived in the heart of the kingdom without unsheathing his sword. Having thus reassured the pope, threatened by the Lombards, and settled in haste his new conquest, he led his host to the accomplishment of his most christian vow of baptizing the Saxons in blood, and left the national body of the Lombards safe and untouched, with nothing changed but the royal dynasty. But this last convulsion had not the same But the fates of Italy were not fulfilled. effects which the preceding inroads had upThat last citadel of the ancient empire could on the country. Charlemagne led an army not be taken before the ditches were filled with him, not a nation. He found a settled up and the entrenchments paved with the and a flourishing state, which he had no bodies of the brave, who devoted themselves wish, or no interest, to disturb. The Lomfor their followers. The reign of Theodoric bard dukes had long since, by their feudal stands alone, in those ages of darkness, like rivalries, been disposed to defection. The a beautiful star in a retired spot of the heav- cause of the crown was no longer their cause. ens; but his successors, harassed by civil They favoured a conquest that was to sancdiscords, and engaged in long struggles tion that independence which they had, in against the Greeks of Belisarius and Narses, lay finally at the mercy of a new enemy, who, invited as a mediator in the contest between Greeks and Goths, ended by possessing himself, without resistance, of the prize. The crowning of Alboin, king of the Lombards, in Italy, about the year 568, must be considered as the epoch of the great crisis which divided ancient from modern Italy. Here we lose the traces of the old religion and language: since then Rome, and all the charm of her name, belong to the past. The Lombards were in Italy what the Saxons were in England. They were considered as the bravest, the freest, as well as the most The subjection of Italy to Charlemagne barbarous of all barbaric races. Their ranks and his successors was little more than a had been thinned in their long struggles on nominal vassalage. The Lombard dukes the other side of the Alps, but they were fol- and marquises, already absolute masters of lowed by innumerable allies and subjects; their own estates under their national dynasand the conquest of Italy having not cost ty, increased their powers without limit unthem a drop of blood, the whole host settled der the French dominion, whose conquest on the land, rather as new tenants than con- they boasted to have favoured by their ignoquerors. They carried along with them minious desertion. Some of them, such as their wives and families-all they held dear the dukes of Benevento, were never definiin life. They left nothing behind them to tively subdued by the conqueror himself; regret. Long since a tribe of wanderers, they but no sooner had his vast empire fallen into cherished their adopted home with that fatal the hands of his degenerate descendants, enthusiasm with which fair Italy is but too than the independence of the Italian lords apt to inspire all foreigners. They shared became more and more unquestionable, and the land with the conquered, or rather they the princes of the house of France, invited seized upon the lands the conquered had and expelled by turns by the factions of their abandoned. They adopted the religion of unruly vassals, were forced to abdicate their Italy-Italy adopted their morals; laws and precarious dignity. The sceptre of Italy, language were mixed, and the opposite ele- thus fallen from their hands, successively ments were cemented by a long and com- passed from one to another of the Italian paratively peaceful contact of nearly two dukes, until, exhausted by their national centuries. The scattered remains of the feuds, and harassed by the Hungarians in Vandals and Goths of the previous invasions the north and the Saracens in the south, were easily adopted as sons by the conquer- they were compelled to resign their claims ing tribe by right of consanguinity, and the into the hands of the German, Otho the VOL. VIII. 35 Great, who by his virtues and firmness restored peace to the best part of the Peninsula. (A. D. 961.) but the contagious spirit of insubordination of which that system had set the first example, turned against the system itself; and democracy rose against feudalism with that same success with which feudalism had overthrown monarchy. This was a slow and indefinite work, the different periods and progress of which it would not be easy to trace. It was not a conspiracy and not an insurrection; it was the fruit of sad experience, a long school of disasters and sufferings; it was a general tendency to association and brotherhood, an imperceptible but uninterrupted series of concessions and encroachments, a gentle spirit of resistance, at first faint and passive, but which was to end by carrying everything before it. It was one of the many wonders which Providence matures under its shade of mystery, and commits to the slow magistery of time. From Otho and the princes of his family, but much more from their successors of the houses of Franconia and Swabia, date those long and envenomed quarrels between papal arrogance and imperial ambition, which shook the social order in Germany and Italy to its very foundation. We are now approaching the great crisis, during which the long faults and misdeeds of the rulers opened the eyes of the astonished multitude, and awoke them from their torpor. Till now the Italians had been silent and passive, but not blind spectators of amazing scenes. They had seen, during the Carlovingian dominion, emperors and monarchs, whose persons they were used to deem sacred and inviolable, deposed, imprisoned, and put to death by their rebellious vassals. They had seen, during the German dynasty, the descendant As early as the beginning of the eleventh of the Cæsars kneeling to the successor of century, the people, especially in LombarSt. Peter, and the haughty priest trampling dy, acknowledged no rule. Only their under his foot the head of the anointed of fondest reminiscences of the past still the Lord. They had seen two and more bound them to the name of the Roman empopes at one time styling all their rivals false prophets and antichrists, and, at the end of the contest the conqueror received as the chosen of God. Nothing was any longer sacred in the eyes of the people; they knew no power but from the evils it inflicted-they acknowledged no law but the right of the stronger, and it was not long before they perceived that they themselves were the stronger. The frequent inroads of so many differ ent armies had placed the whole country in a state of continual alarm. The feudal lords, secure in their eyries reared in the fastnesses of the Alps and Apennines, in hours of danger left the plain utterly unprotected. In progress of time the cities abandoned to themselves, claimed the right to provide for their own safety by raising their walls which lay prostrate ever since they had been level. led to the ground by the barbaric invasions. The youth of the cities were bred up to the use of arms, and this practice inspired them with a boldness springing from a consciousness of their own strength. Respected from without, the cities became reluctant to all submission within. In proportion as they rose in wealth and prosperity, they became warmly and obstinately attached to those municipal privileges and immunities which since the age of Otho I. were granted to all the imperial cities. Their feudal lords, whom the policy of the German emperors had always conspired to weaken by division, were obliged to give way to their mutinous subjects, and retired to their manors, where they were soon in their turn to receive laws from the cities. Thus that feudal system which, though imperfectly, was first introduced into Italy by the Lombard Kings, and proved fatal to its institutors, improved and enlarged by the successors of Charlemagne, ended by snatching the sceptre from their hands; pire, to which they referred all their hopes for the unity and greatness of their country. The imperial crown, revived after long oblivion to be laid on the brows of French, and more lately of German monarchs, still preserved all the prestiges that the earliest associations of the national glories had attached to it. But the repeated usurpations of feudalism, a succession of stormy elections in Germany, and the long contests between the altar and throne in Italy, had long since undermined the foundations of the imperial power in the same measure as it had stripped the imperial purple of all its splendour and dignity. That last shade of power and dignity Italy would never have attempted to shake off, but for the ambition of a man who, by calling the rights of the people into question, was to give those rights a sacred, indisputable sanction. Frederick Barbarossa, a young emperor distinguished by eminent political talents, not less than by chivalrous valour, and by a generous and steady temper, having succeeded in captivating all spirits in Germany, beheld with an indignant look the free air of the emancipated townships of Italy. Seconded by a rare occurrence, by the unanimous efforts of Germany, he recrossed the Alps to recall the rebels to their allegiance. There was a long and calamitous struggle. The flower of the German youth were called to find their tomb on the Lombard plain. The most flourishing cities of Italy were burned and razed to the ground. But the hand of the Lord of hosts was with the champions of liberty. The scourges of God conspired to thin the ranks of the invaders. The Roman pontiffs, for once the friends and allies of the country, made the national contest the cause of heaven. Prodigies of more than Roman heroism were performed before the walls of Cremo na, Tortona, and Milan. Finally, hardened | ous existence was the queen of the Adriatic, by long trials, and glowing with the fire of Venice. This glorious and unfortunate repatriotism, the bare breasts of undisciplined public, whose origin is coeval with the first burghers stood all the shock of the heavy calamities of Rome, founded by a few illuschivalry and of the scythed chariots of trious exiles of the neighbouring shores, Frederick-the proud host was routed and from the times of the first inroads of Alaric scattered, and its leader learnt, for the first and Attila, received into its walls the victime, the "bitter steps of flight." tims of all the successive disasters. Arising, as it were, from the ashes of ancient Italy, Venice was destined to be the first lustre of modern Italy. Her efforts, however, were early turned towards her native element, and for a long time she preserved herself neutral and stranger to the inces The contest of the Lombard league was among those few in which right and wrong were not, as usual, indiscriminately blended. The battle of Legnano was one of those combats which all humanity applaud -for which, as for Morat and Morgarten, we are prompted to thank and praise Pro-sant convulsions of the mainland. vidence that men were taught to unravel On the other side, Pisa and Genoa, from the iron from the bowels of the earth to the beginning of the eleventh century, free plunge it into each other's bosoms-one of and independent states, already appear these few fields in which human blood fell manfully struggling against the Saracens sacred and holy, like Christ's own blessed of Sicily and Spain, subduing Sardinia and blood, which was also shed for the univer- Corsica, and rivalling Venice in her eastern sal emancipation of mankind. The peace emprises. The origin of the three republics, of Constance, signed in 1183, and guaran-as indeed of all the free states of the middle teeing the independent rights of the Italian cities, thus ended a contest that had continued nearly thirty years-the_first and noblest struggle in modern Europe between liberty and despotism. The peace of Constance closed the middle ages in Italy, and gave her for a long time the lead Far different were the destinies of the among the civilized nations. The emanci- south. The southern towns of Magna Grepation of the Helvetian and Hanseatic cia, and Sicily, from immemorial time setleague followed at a later period, nor were tled by Greek colonies, clung with more they of so general and so great importance, fondness to the eastern empire, and their nor was the resistance so long and so sub-|nominal allegiance to the throne of Conlime, nor was independence bought at so high a price. Six armies successively drawn from the most warlike nation of Europe, led by an Emperor than whom there But, as early as the first period of the was never one wiser or mightier from Otho Carlovingian dynasty, the Saracens of Af1. to Charles V., failed in subduing the un-rica, who longed for an opportunity to cardisciplined militia of unorganized towns, a ry their ravages on the plains of green Italy, great number of which sided by the impe-led by Euphemio di Messina, landed in Sirial standard. ages in Italy, is buried amid the darkness of ages; the fame of their victories is but imperfectly preserved in their annals, and the very names of many of the heroes that led them to their daring achievements are utterly lost to posterity. stantinople was never entirely shaken off, though they enjoyed long since an almost uncontrolled independence. cily, and inflicted upon that fairest of islands a havoc and slaughter from which it never recovered. By this work of destruction the Africans having secured their conquest, they turned their arms to Sardinia and Corsica, and granted no truce to the But even before the largest and most compact part of the nation had arrived at such a happy result, the maritime cities had preceded the inland towns in assuring their own independence. The sea-ports, secure in their impregnable situation, re-adjacent shores of the mainland. mained under the protection of the Greek emperors, and had in many instances sheltered the last relics of the Latin population from the rage of the barbaric invasions. The Cæsars of Constantinople, however, generally a wicked and feeble race, were obliged, for self defence, to withdraw, from what they called their province of Italy, the protecting garrisons to the centre of the empire, and the Italian towns, left to their own resources, obtained or usurped the power of raising armies and fleets; and in proportion as they began to suffice, they also felt that they belonged to themselves. In process of time religious persecutions excited among the Italians hatred against a power which had hitherto been borne with contempt, and every bond to Constantinople was broken. First to spring into her young and vigor It was among the hostilities between these new barbarians, the Lombards of Benevento and Salerno and their Grecian rulers, that the cities of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta, set up their independent standards, and, secure in the strength of their walls and the skill of their vessels, they bore a long struggle, gallantly riding from one end to the other of the Mediterranean, free as the waves which they furrowed, and the winds which waved their standards. But towards the end of the tenth century a new people, or rather a handful of pious Norman adventurers, settling at first merely as private knights and auxiliaries, by a rare valour and a more rare policy, ended by subduing the last remains of the ancient Lombard principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, as well as the Greeks and Saracens; and the free cities them |