guides, the soldiery had now a key to the mysteries and recesses of the mountains and forests.

Thus deprived of the protection of Piccolomini, pressed by Aldobrandini on the one side and by Conversano on the other, Marco Sciarra was fain to reflect on the tender made to him by the Venetian Senators, and finally to accept the rank and service they offered him. They must still have thought him and those he could bring with him well worth having, for they despatched two galleys of the Republic for their conveyance. In these ships Marco Sciarra embarked with sixty of his bravest and most attached followers, and, turning his back on his native mountains, sailed up the Adriatic to Venice.

As soon as the Count of Conversano was informed of the robber-chief's departure, he blessed his stars that the kingdom was quit of so dangerous a subject, and, thinking now his business was over, returned to Naples, where the Viceroy received him in triumph.

But the expatriating bandit left a brother behind him in the mountains of the Abruzzi; and Luca Sciarra, in due time, gathered together the scattered bands, and commenced operations anew with considerable vigour. Meanwhile Marco and his men, who in their quality of subsidiaries served the Venetian Republic very much to its satisfaction, corresponded with their former comrades at home. Marco's glory could not be forgotten! The soul of their body was at Venice-every thing of importance was fomented by him, and he frequently employed his "leave of absence" in visiting them, and leading them, as of yore, in the more hazardous of their enterprises.

He had now been heard of so long-his deeds had been so desperate but successful, he had escaped so many dangers, that people concluded he must bear a "charmed life." His long impunity might almost have made him think so himself, when, landing one day in the marches of Ancona, between the mountains of the Abruzzi and that town, where the Pope's Commissary Aldobrandini still remained, he was met by a certain Battimello, to whom, as to an old follower, his heart warmed with

open arms he rushed to embrace him-and received a traitor's dagger in that heart.

Battimello had sold himself to Aldobrandini, and received for himself and thirteen of his friends, a free pardon from the Papal Government for his treachery.

For some years after the death of Marco Sciarra, there was a pause in his profession, whose spirit had expired with him. Other times brought other robbers, but his fame has scarcely ever been equalled-never surpassed.

THE BRIGANDS OF CALABRIA.

THE French, with the vigour and unscrupulousness of a Military Government, might, at a later period, and indeed did, materially put down brigandism in Italy; but one of the fruits of their first invasion was a temporary state of society.particularly well adapted to the renewal and increase of those associations.

The Republican armies spread themselves over the Piedmontese and Milanese territories, preaching liberty and equality. The enviable equality in the eyes of the poor and ignorant orders of the Italians, was that of property; and when they saw their instructors the French frequently confounding the meum and tuum in public matters, they were too apt to follow their example in private ones. Many of these men, moreover, were shamefully used by the invaders-and driven to desperation. Many, perhaps, in the north of Italy as in the south, detested the French and the French system generally. Among the northern Italians there was, indeed, considerable national spirit, and in the absence of energy in their own Government, certain daring individuals thought, by throwing themselves into the mountains and deep valleys, they might check the invaders by a species of Guerilla warfare; and proving too weak for such an operation, they were still strong enough to turn brigands, and these supported themselves for a while on the plunder of the foreigners, and of such as had meanly submitted to their

sway, forgetful of their religion and their lawful sovereign Several trials at the period prove that men thus found an excuse for, or justified, their offences. Such a defence could hardly obtain in any court of justice, but among the simple mountaineers and peasantry the plea seemed reasonable and almost honourable. It is worth while to remark, in passing, that the French, with their new Republican doctrines in Italy, were generally well received by the superior class of burgesses, lawyers, physicians, &c. of the great cities, and even by many of the nobility, whose importance and rights their system was to annihilate; but from the mass of the populace, properly so called, even of the great towns, and from the peasantry, the oppressed classes, according to their creed, whose condition they were to improve, and whom they were to admit to the Droits de l'homme, they never found favour. The French, I am aware, attributed this to their brutal ignorance and superstition; but they themselves showed a woful ignorance of human nature when they expected the poor Italians would take an interest in what they did not understand, and at once throw off all the feelings and prejudices of ages, and renounce their nationality, at the apparition of a novel and unsightly idol-the red cap of Liberty.

To the men whose hatred of a foreign invader and whose political feelings led them at this time to brigandism, must of course be added, what was probably a still more numerous class, those men naturally bad, who availed themselves of the disordered state of the country and other things incidental to war, and those whom that war deprived of their habitual means of existence.

At a later period the introduction of the tyrannical conscription was another source of lawless adventure. Desperate deserters not unfrequently took to the mountains, and preferred living by robbing in their own country, to following the French eagle to rob in Germany, Spain, or Russia. These bands had generally but a short duration, and though I have heard of the exploits of their leaders on the spot, in the pass of the Bocchetta behind Genoa, about Gavi, in the mountains of the Riviere, and

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other points of the Apennines, I retain nothing very peculiar or striking, except the Evan Dhu-like remark of one of them when placed before the French military tribunal at Turin. He had been addressed in what he considered an insulting tone; he raised his arm, made a step forward with his fettered leg, and darting a glance of fire on the officers he said, “Per Dio! se fosse nelle mie montagne non parlareste così!" "By Heavens! if I were in my mountains again, you would not speak to me in this manner!" But it was in the south of Italy, where men have always been more fiery and lawless; it was in the Abruzzi, and still more particularly in Calabria, that "land of the mountain and the" - brigand, where the French did what Pompey boasted he could do by a stamp of his foot-raise whole legions.

These regenerating conquerors had penetrated as far as Naples; the army had run away, the king and court had run away, only the poor despised lazzaroni of the capital had made anything like a bold resistance to the entrance of the invaders into the capital, and a puppet, by some degrees more ridiculous than the national Ponchinello, had been got up under the title of "La Republica Partenopea." King Ferdinand, however, for that time, had not resigned himself to a long sojourn in Sicily. He knew the antipathy of the populace of his dominions to the French, which was much more vehement than what existed in the north of the Peninsula; he was aware also, that though his soldiers had proved cowards, there were plentiful elements of bravery and daring, especially among the mountaineers of Calabria and the Abruzzi, which the breath of fanaticism could kindle to a flame; and he sent over to them, not a general but a priest-the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo, who effected one of the most extraordinary counter-revolutions of modern times.

No sooner had the Cardinal raised the Bourbon banner at the extremity of the Calabrias, than at the call of legitimacy and holy faith, (Ferdinando e la Santa Fede!) thousands flocked to it, and swore to purge the kingdom of Frenchmen and Jacobins, and restore their lawful sovereign. Among these multitudes were some who were

already nothing more nor less than brigands; but they had arms in their hands, were daring, active, and better acquainted with the country than any other class, and these were not times for the Cardinal to be very particular in the choice of his instruments. He enrolled them, and marched forward, gradually swelling his bands with tributary streams, that dropped in from the mountains. Some of these were pure enough, and only propelled by a simple spirit of loyalty; but it is too notorious to be denied, that many of these Calabrians were banditti, or now acted as such, favoured by the state of things, and afterwards became robbers en règle. The march of this most irregular army, headed by a priest-a prince of the holy empire, was signalized by blood and plunder. Wherever a town' had shown any attachment or subserviency to the Republicans, the Santa-fedisti made it run with blood, and murder and plunder were not always confined to such sinful or obnoxious places. Soon their shouts of "Viva la Santa Fede!" (Long live the Holy Faith!) were heard before the Neapolitan capital, where it was echoed by the lazzaroni, and the rest of the populace, who rushed out with enthusiasm, that amounted to madness, to join the Cardinal's standard. The French retreated, and shut themselves up in the castle of Sant' Elmo, where they soon capitulated; but the city became one scene of plunder, destruction, and butchery. Calabrians and lazzaroni were absolute masters of it for many days. They did not leave a palace or a house, whose owners were suspected of jacobinism or republicanism, (they knew no distinction between these two,) unplundered. Unhappy the man in those days, that did not wear a pig-tail! for a tail was their political criterion. King Ferdinand wore a tail, all the Santa-fedisti wore tails; but the French did not, and all the Neapolitans, who had cut off theirs, were unredeemable revolutionists, who deserved to have their heads cut off. The madness and ferocity of their hate, in some instances, went to such horrid extremes, that I have been informed on good authority, they were seen to tear out their victims' hearts, and eat them in the public square, before the Royal