of repose, and security, and freedom. Witness the Bourbons, and his own brother Lucien, and many others.

Napoleon, therefore, fearlessly ascended the Bellerophon. But it turned out a monster to devour him. It was no chimera! All, alas, was sad reality; both as it regarded the remainder of his brief existence, as well as its awfully instructive termination

"Mors sola fatetur,

Quantula sint hominum corpuscula !"

CHAPTER XIV.

VENICE.

The Subject continued......The Holy Alliance described...... Return to the Condition of Italy under the Austrian yoke ......Impracticability of assimilating the German and Italian

character.

HAVING said thus much with regard to the policy of Napoleon, it will naturally be expected that I should next touch upon the conduct of those who have succeeded him in the government of the affairs of Europe. The reader must not, however, expect me to enter too minutely into a subject, which, at every turn, is

fraught with so much inconvenience,-disclaiming, as I do, certain personalities. Let the base reptiles remain in their lurking holes, for the present only the ostensible personages shall be now noticed by me.

"THE HOLY ALLIANCE!" How awful, how presumptuous, the appellation! Trenching closely on the attributes of Divinity itself; and thereby challenging inquiry, how far they deserve the assumed Vicegerency.

As far as my limited faculties enable me to form a judgment, the labours of this alliance have tended, hitherto, to rivet more closely the chains forged for the sufferers by their Corsican oppressor. The "holy" copartnership proclaim, that their prerogatives do not emanate from the people, but come down upon them, like the mantle of Elijah, from the Godhead itself! Good. And therefore am I the more completely justified in balancing against the divine attributes which they assume, the actual conduct of the several potentates who are parties to the said holy-most holy-alliance!

But, where should I find language sufficiently powerful to convey to my reader the actual result of such an inquiry? On one hand, the arrogance of the creature, and his feeble and imperfect and confined and variable notions of

things the most simple! On the other hand, the God of Nature, who

Though chang'd in all, is still in all the same,
Great in the earth as in th' ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent;
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all."

These sublunary monarchs, with their hundred eyes, are incessantly on the watch, prying about, lest any of their bondsmen should escape their vigilance, and devising innumerable projects to shut out the rays of truth; whereas, the Almighty lives in light—

"for God is light;

And never but in unapproached light,
Dwelt from eternity."

The most artful impediments have been thrown, by these monarchs, in the way of every individual who may, at any time, have been anxious to promote the genuine happiness of mankind. Every such individual has been

branded as a jacobin, a demagogue, a ruffian, a rebel. The foulest slanders have been heaped upon his head. He trembles at the atrocious injustice which he experiences at the hands of mortals who have usurped to themselves the characteristics of divinity; and, though feeling a consciousness of his ability to re-invigorate the fallen energies of his countrymen, and to restore to them the blessings which they have forfeited, as much by feebleness as by direct corruption— such a phalanx of demons uprear their furious crests in terrific array before him - such innumerable difficulties and dangers beset him in his path-that he stops short appalled; and, without giving a free utterance to his indignant feelings, he leaves it to God, in his own good time, to speed the righteous work, through the operation of his Almighty power.

After reflections like these, the mind involuntarily turns to the condition of Italy, as I have pourtrayed that condition in the early pages of this volume; and, if I were to confine myself to the present state of the Venetian territory, the observations which it would be my duty to make thereon would apply equally to the rest of the newly acquired German dominions. The same unfeeling schemes of plunder are every where pursued; many of them introduced by the

French, those ministers of rapine, and continued since their defeat, under various pretextsexactions, grievous in point of substance, and galling beyond measure to the feelings; treachery; a false representation of things; expressions replete with the semblance of compassion, but, in reality, altogether hollow and delusive.

Instead of genuine sympathy, accompanied with positive redress, some new device is constantly resorted to, to increase the sufferings of the miserable Italians; absolutely forcing upon their memories the language of Scripture. The German tyrants seem to be aware that their power can be but of short duration; and therefore are they striving to make the most of it. Be that as it may, the wretched sufferers exclaim, that "Satan has overtaken them in great wrath." Venice, once the emporium of all Europe, is become a "waste howling wilderness."

The rapid disappearance, within the space of a few years, of the immense treasures of that city, announces an entire dislocation of society and a total defacement of her beautiful edifices, at no very distant period, if her present masters should persevere in the harsh and unfeeling conduct towards her, which they have hitherto adopted. It is unmanly and base, it is cruel and infamous, to trample thus on the prostrate