And now was the full weight of Napoleon's wrath to fall upon unhappy Venice, which, like so many other Italian states, had delayed to strike for safety till the opportunity was lost. At Leoben the situation of the French was so precarious, that considerable forbearance towards Austria had to be observed; but, relieved of apprehension from that quarter, the haughty victor could now give way to all the arrogance so natural to little minds, when placed in stations of high and controlling power. Conscious that he had intrigued against the very existence of the Venetian government, that he had officially corresponded with the Directory as to its future fate and duration, and had only delayed to attack it "openly because the proper time was not thought to have arrived," he now affected to consider France the aggrieved party, and refused to hear of any accommodation: and, unfortunately, the base massacre of Verona blackened the Venetian cause so much, as almost to gloss over the unprincipled violence of their adversaries. "If you could offer me the treasures of Peru," said Napoleon to the terrified deputies who came to sue for pardon and offer reparation, "if you could cover your whole dominions with gold, the atonement would be insufficient. French blood has been treacherously shed, and the Lion of St. Mark must bite the dust."

On the 3d of May, he declared war against the republic, and French troops immediately advanced to the shores of the lagunes. Here, however, the waves of the Adriatic arrested their progress, for they had not a single boat at command, whereas the Venetians had a good fleet in the harbour, and an army of 10,000 or 15,000 soldiers in the capital: they only wanted the courage to use them. Instead of fighting, however, they deliberated; and tried to purchase safety by gold, instead of maintaining it by arms. Finding the enemy relentless, the Great Council proposed to modify their government,-to render it more democratic, in order to please the French commander,-to lay their very institutions at the feet of the conqueror; and, strange to say, only 21 patricians out of 690 dissented from this act of national

degradation. The democratic party, supported by the intrigues of Vittelan, the French secretary of legation, exerted themselves to the utmost. The Slavonian troops were disbanded, or embarked for Dalmatia; the fleet was dismantled, and the Senate were rapidly divesting themselves of every privilege, when, on the 31st of May, a popular tumult broke out in the capital.

The

The Great Council were in deliberation when shots were fired beneath the windows of the ducal palace. The trembling senators thought that the rising was directed against them, and that their lives were in danger, and hastened to divest themselves of every remnant of power and authority at the very moment when the populace were taking arms in their favour. 66 Long live St. Mark, and down with foreign dominion!" was the cry of the insurgents, but nothing could communicate one spark of gallant fire to the Venetian aristocracy. In the midst of the general confusion, while the adverse parties were firing on each other, and the disbanded Slavonians threatening to plunder the city, these unhappy legislators could only delegate their power to a hastily assembled provisional government, and then separate in shame and for ever. democratic government commenced their career in a manner as dishonourable as that of the aristocracy had been closed. Slaves in soul, they hastened to be so in person also, and immediately despatched the flotilla to bring over the French troops. A brigade under Baraguai d'Hilliers soon landed at the place of St. Mark; and Venice, which had braved the thunders of the Vatican, the power of the emperors, and the arms of the Othmans, which had covered the Archipelago with victorious fleets, deliberated on removing the scat of sovereignty to conquered Byzantium, and re-establishing the empire of the East, and which had seen the standards of three subjugated kingdoms wave before the palace of its doge, now sunk for ever, and without striking one manly blow or firing one single shot for honour and fame! Venice counted 1300 years of independence, centuries of power and renown, and many also of greatness and glory, but ended in a manner

more dishonourable than any state of which history makes mention.

The French went through the form of acknowledging the new democratic government, but retained the power in their own hands.* Heavy contributions were levied, all the naval and miltitary stores were taken possession of, and the fleet, having conveyed French troops to the Ionian islands, was sent to Toulon. Public property thus seized upon, a blow was next struck at the fortunes of individuals. It had for centuries been the practice to allow nobles, when holding high official situations, to help themselves pretty freely out of the public treasury. The sums so taken were denominated loans, and regularly entered in registers kept for the purpose; but they were never repaid, nor expected to be repaid, patrician families claiming under certain circumstances a right to such sums: so that, in the course of centuries, the whole patrician order had become indebted to the state. To the French the register of these debts was literally a treasure; they claimed the immediate repayment of all the sums thus due to the public; remonstrance was vain, though the demand amounted, in fact, to a decree of bankruptcy issued against the whole patrician order. Few could command sufficient ready money to comply with this heavy exaction, so that palaces, pictures, books, furniture, valuables and rarities of every description, found their way into the hands of Jews, money-lenders, and French commissioners: the higher

orders have never recovered the blow, and poverty now reigns where once was the very emporium of wealth.

On the capture of Constantinople, a number of articles of great value, the plunder of the imperial palace, fell into the hands of the victors, and of these the Venetians obtained their share; but though long preserved in the treasury of St. Mark, no one can now say where they are to be found.

Genoa was not long destined to enjoy the triumph of surviving its ancient and victorious rival. On

the 22d of May, a revolution broke out in the city. "This time also," says Norvins, with singular candour, "the French legation had, as at Venice, prepared the insurrection." In the contest which took place between the popular and patrician parties, some Frenchmen were slain by the carbonari, as the champions of aristocracy were then termed; and Napoleon, disregarding the fact, of his countrymen having been the instigators of the revolt, demanded satisfaction for the insult offered to France. The end was, that French troops were called in to settle the differences; a democratic government was then formed, and Genoa, metamorphosed with the Ligurian Re public, ceased to exist as an indepen dent state.

On the 9th of June, the Cisalpine Republic was proclaimed. It was composed of the states of Lombardy, Bologna, Ferrara, Modena, and the portion of the Romagna which had constituted themselves into the socalled Emilian Republic. Norvins tells us "that 30,000 National Guards took the oath of fidelity to this belle création of genius." The enthusiasm displayed on the occasion was evi dently, however, of a very ephemeral character; for when Suvaroff invaded Italy in 1799, this belle création forgot its very existence, the Republican authorities invariably leading the van in the retreat of the French armies; and of the thousands who had so gallantly sworn to uphold the constitution, not one was found to pull a trigger in its defence: all who took arms joined the allies. The first act of the new government was to declare war against the pope, who had refused to acknowledge their independence; but the frogs and the mice were not then allowed to come to blows.

This was the last great act of these celebrated campaigns which placed Napoleon on the pinnacle of fame, and constituted the very foundation on which his subsequent throne was raised. Dazzled by so splendid a succession of victories, the world

as it is characteristic of the class, deserves to be recorded. When the Republican *One act this revolutionary government was, however, permitted to execute, and liberators demanded a war contribution of 3,000,000 of livres, the new senate immediately proceeded to plunder the unhappy Duke of Modena, who had sought shelter in

their city, of his remaining treasures, amounting to 190,000 sequins!

readily ascribed them to the talents and genius of the conqueror, without perceiving that the fair chances of success were, from the first outset, so much in his favour as to render his task comparatively easy. They forgot that during eight months his victories produced only negative results, brought only moral advantages, and that the success of the whole campaign had to be risked on the fate of every battle fought to maintain the blockade of Mantua: a single defeat would, even at the last moment, have driven the Republicans back beyond the maritime Alps. The extravagancies advanced by his worshippers, who so shamefully exaggerate the strength as well as the losses of the vanquished, shew that they did not think their idol could stand on a plain pedestal of historical truth. These writers tell us on every occasion of the great talents and brilliant genius displayed by Napoleon, but the proofs of these high qualities are constantly wanting; for the merit of victories gained in bold front-to-front onsets by soldiers placed to no particular advantage by their general, may, with more justice, be claimed for the troops than for the commander. The vastly superior composition of the French army greatly outbalanced the small numerical superiority of their adversaries, and the impulse which the French troops had acquired by the conquests of Holland, Belgium, and the left bank of the Rhine, had, of course, extended to the army of Italy. The French general was altogether independent in his actions, and had all the resources of the conquered countries completely at his disposal; and used them, indeed, with the most ruthless and robberlike profusion.

Beaulieu, Wurmser, and Alvinzy, the Austrian commanders vanquished by Napoleon, though no doubt brave, zealous, and honourable men, had never been distinguished for talents, and had only risen to command by family influence and length of service. Time has laid many of their errors fairly open to inspection, and it is now clear that a moderate degree of energy was alone wanting to have rendered them victorious at Castiglione, Arcole,

and Rivoli.

When, shortly before the termination of the contest, the Archduke

Charles assumed the command, the Austrian army was so feeble in numbers, the morale of the soldiers so greatly broken, as to leave little prospect of success till reinforced by troops not yet depressed by so many disasters. What forces the imperial commander could have assembled for the defence of Vienna we are unable to state, but all the best-informed writers seem now to agree in the belief, that if the Austrian government had persevered at the moment instead of consenting to the truce of Leoben, the outset of Napoleon's career would already have exhibited a catastrophe little short of what the rout of Leipzig displayed sixteen years afterwards.

We know that it is easy to defeat armies by the aid of buts and ifs, and that it was long the fashion to ridicule those who vanquished Napoleon by such auxiliaries. "Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram, might all," we are all told, "have ended in disasters instead of triumph, if the vanquished had persevered, and if Napoleon had been an ordinary commander; but he was a man of great genius, well able to foil such contingencies." Time, however, brought a change; the hypothetical particle rose into mighty reality; gallant nations and resolute commanders appeared in the field against him; the moral force acquired by so many previous victories lent him great strength; French armies fought with their usual bravery; but of the boasted talents and lauded genius, not a single spark could be discovered. Then it was, when extravagant exaggerations were no longer deemed sufficient, that barefaced romance was called in to supplant history; then we had the St. Helena Memoirs, the Victoires et Conquêtes, the fabricated Memoirs of Fouché, Coulincourt, and others of the same class, appealed to as legitimate sources of history; till in the end, the world actually received the fabulous versions of the burning of Moscow, of the destruction of the bridge of Leipzig, the tales of Marmont's treason, and the celebrated "sauve qui peut" of Waterloo, not only as established facts, but as great leading events, which had alone marred the splendid conceptions of Napoleon; and thus influenced the destinies of mighty empires! And all this in the nineteenth century!

AN ANECDOTE ABOUT AN OLD HOUSE.

Nor many seasons ago I was enjoying the summer-tide in the pleasant county of Kent; and as autumn ripened around me, I almost forgot that its maturity would usher in that wintry period which always recalls me to my metropolitan manacles. I do not mean to give the real names of the seaside town in which I had pitched my tent-of the old house near it, of which my anecdote treats -nor of the family to which that house belonged. There are tragedies consummating yearly in pleasant places at this very moment; but it is for the future to exhibit them to the public scrutiny; and there are few actors in such scenes who court the notoriety of a legitimate name. And in truth it was a pleasant place where that old mansion, half castle, half manor-house, had its site. Standing, or rather, when I saw it, falling into gradual decay, amidst rich cornfields, on a gentle acclivity that looked upon the wide sea, it had subsided into a rambling, ruinous farmhouse, with high gables, and a couple of projecting parapets, which told their tale of better days in the olden time. But it is not of the olden time our tale tells, or we might have spared ourselves the delicacy of veiling the true name of the place.

gle sat a grim-looking old gipsy woman, busily shelling a quantity of peas- no doubt her personal booty, reft from some neighbouring field.

She no sooner saw me than beginning the usual whine of solicitation, she offered to read my fortune; and willing to have a little chat with her I crossed her hand with the "sesame silver;" but soon tired of her twaddle, I asked her the name of the old farm-house which I had just passed, and to whom it belonged.

"Rosebourne, my gentleman, has belonged to many," said she; "but the old folk are not there. It was a black deed that brought an ill name on the house, and evil things will walk about it as long as one stone stands upon another."

This reply led to further question-
ing;
and a few additional sixpences
elicited the facts I am about to re-

late.

Almost a hundred years ago the house of Rosebourne was the residence of the Chesterton family, then reduced in numbers and in wealth from what it had been in former times. Gilbert Chesterton, the master of Rosebourne, was a fine, handsome young fellow, whose personal advantages were unfortunately ac companied, as is too frequently the case, by a weak head and a feeble intellect. He was, however, free fron vicious propensities; and, luckily, his mother, a lady of great prudence and judgment, resided with him, continuing in truth to exercise the judicious control of a parent over a silly child, to his great advantage as well as to the satisfaction of all belonging to them. She was his able and willing counsellor in every emergency; preserving him from the imposition of crafty and mercenary advisers, as well as from the influence of pernicious example, and the evils into which his natural credulity and good nature might He was her only have led him. living child, but the three orphan daughters of a brother of her late husband shared the hospitalities of Rosebourne, and to one of these

It was during one of my first rambles through a part of the country to which I was a stranger, that I was struck by the anomalous appearance of the "Old House;" but there was no person in sight of whom I could make inquiries regarding it; so I strolled on and on, until at length I reached a bottom or narrow dell, entirely shut in by the small trees and large shrubs which surrounded it, forming a dense thicket. A limited space at the very lowest part of this bottom remained clear from the redundant wilderness of sloe-bushes, wild roses, and brambles, that formed a safe shelter for the hedgehogs, in which this part of the country abounds. As I reached this clear space I became aware that I was not alone; amongst the long grass in the very middle of the din