the eulogiums of a certain celebrated and beautiful princess. Excited to vengeance by a series of outrages and injustice, one evening when it was known that he was to pass some hours at the residence of the Countess Rusponi, he was watched and waited for near the gate of the court of the Palazzo Rusponi; and when the carriage entered and was approaching the house, fire-arms were discharged at him. The Cardinal Rivarola escaped unhurt, owing to his having, by accident, not occupied his usual seat in the carriage; but the Canonico Muti of Ravenna, who filled it, received the wound, which was at first believed to be mortal, but from which he recovered. The Cardinal renounced the agreeable soirée he had anticipated, returned to his palace, and the would-be assassin fled, and remained undiscovered, though it was declared that two men were seen to rush from the spot when the shot was fired.

The Pope, irritated by this scandalous affair, recalled the Cardinal, and, as a punishment to Ravenna, sent a commission there, to which Monsignore Invernizzi was named president. This commission was all-powerful, holding in its hands the destinies, nay, the lives of the people.

Soon did it yield to the baneful influence of the fanatic sect opposed to the Carbonari, and thirsting for vengeance on its opponents.

The inhabitants of Ravenna shuddered with dread at the arrival of the commission; the first act of which was to command a vigorous pursuit of the actors in the last crime aimed against the person of the Cardinal. Among the individuals who were arrested and cast into prison, were Gambelli, Spadoni, and two others, all the sons of respectable artisans in easy circumstances, and who had received a good education.

The public opinion, if it pronounced them not innocent, was little disposed to consider them all guilty; and the inquisitorial, mysterious, and irregular mode in which the proceedings were carried on, revolted the people. The accused were all condemned to death, with the exception of a young man named Frignani, who escaped by feigning to be insane, and who enacted the part of a lunatic so well as to impose on Monsignore Invernizzi.

The unhappy culprits received not even the honor of the sentence to the guillotine, but were condemned to the last insult, that of being hanged (a mode of death considered by the Italians to be the most ignominious of all), to serve as an example to strike terror. Ravenna received the lesson with

indignation, and public opinion manifested itself as strongly against the sentence as was consistent with the want of power to resist its execution; and more perhaps than was prudent with regard to the safety of those who gave utterance to their reprobation. Powerless to save the lives of the innocent, mixed up perhaps with the guilty, the whole population, including all ranks, of both sexes, and of all ages, quitted Ravenna before the break of the day fixed for the execution. The noble and the rich retired to their country houses, and the poor left their humble roofs and sought shelter beneath the lofty pine trees of the old forest in the neighbourhood, leaving the completion of the tragedy to be witnessed only by the vile actors in it, and the strangers who by chance arrived at the spot on so inauspicious a day.

The blue and cloudless sky, and the genial warmth of as lovely a day as Italy affords, formed a striking contrast to that horrific scene of death from which we turned shocked and disgusted, pondering on the madness that urges men to wage war against their fellow men, as if the afflictions to which flesh is heir are not sufficient, without adding to them.

In the inn where I now write, did Byron sojourn when he left Venice, to follow to her natal town the lady of his love. He had heard she was ill, danger

ously ill, and he knew that a passion deep and impetuous as those only of sunny climes experience, was struggling in her young heart against the still, small voice of conscience that opposed, but opposed it in vain. He had vanquished his own ardent desire to behold her; nay, he had determined to seek safety from temptation, by a flight from Venice to England. His preparations for the journey were made, his very gondola was at his door, and himself equipped for departure, when tidings came of her increased illness; and he forgot every thing but her danger, and the dread of adding to it by his leaving Italy. In this very room was it, that, trembling with emotion, he ventured to enquire about her health, and was told that the doctors said she could not live; when, in violent perturbation, and regardless that he spoke to strangers that which should not be said, as implicating the fame of her he loved, he vowed that if she died he wished not to live.

Poor Byron! that wildly throbbing heart is now at rest, those impetuous passions are stilled in the grave, yet I cannot gaze on the objects around me, objects which probably occupy precisely the same places, and wear the same aspect, as when you beheld them, without pitying the anxiety you here

endured, and the genuine affection that led you to exclaim, "If she dies, I wish not to live." How well I remember his declaration to me of the fervor and devotion of his attachment, at that period. “I do assure you," would he say, "that I thought of nothing but her; and had she ceased to exist, I believe that I should not have survived."

We questioned our hosts about Byron, and they spoke of him with affection and veneration. "He was so charitable," they said, "and so full of pity for the unfortunate."

I went over the Palazzo Guiccioli to-day, paused in the apartments in it so long occupied by Byron, and in the one in which he wrote "Sardanapalus," the generous "Defence of Pope," the fifth canto of "Don Juan," which he told me he discontinued at the request of the Countess Guiccioli, and various other productions. I could not have looked at rooms once occupied by such a brilliant genius, even though I had never seen him, without emotion; but how is this feeling increased by having been well acquainted with him, and being enabled, by a perfect recollection, to bring back to the mind's eye the exact image of the man, in the local habitation in which he spent many a day. Strange, that in that habitation I could recall his person to memory much