States, with the exception of Bavaria, ought to rouse the jealousy of every one of the powers concerned. Without respect to persons, the designs of inordinate cupidity should be checked; the career of excessive encroachments should be arrested.

To advert, for a moment, to the invasion of Spain by France. With what grace can England interfere in behalf either of Spain or her colonies, if she refuse to assist in the rescue of Piedmont and Naples from the grasp of Austria? But, expediency is the politician's plea; and "expediency" is certainly a very imposing expression. It is irresistibly urgent; and every way competent, in its bearings on the stage of ambition, to make the actors oppose or submit, advance or recede, assist or abandon. It can palliate crimes, however atrocious. It can blur the virtue of heroes. It can on one day perpetrate deeds the most foul and ignominious; and, on another, perform achievements the most noble and praiseworthy.

Call upon politicians to perform their promises on the morrow,-and a future indefinite period is fixed on. Indeed, I may venture to say, from sad experience, that the moment of performance will never arrive. For, if they really intended to put their promises into execution,

hope, the medicine of the miserable, would not be uniformly administered; or, at all events, the accomplishment would follow close upon the heels of the promise. When, too, the service is actually rendered, it bears no proportion with the expectations raised, and will have resulted from intermediate causes, novel and unlooked-for at the time of the flattering proffer. Politicians delude but too frequently. The sweets of idle words are generally as fatal to the hungry expectant, as honey is to flies. But, besides this, there is a blunt and rude demeanour, which craft can assumea vinegar calculated to render palatable the nauseous food-a sort of sham ignorance, a pretended want of experience, an affected aukwardness, the sharper in the peasant's frock, the hyena in the fable;-a mode of deception this, the most pernicious to the world at large.

CHAPTER II.

VENICE.

Transactions relating to Venice at Campo Formio......Fall of the Venetian Republic.......Its Causes......Buonaparte's burning Decrees against British Merchandize...... Consequences of the Prohibitory System.

WHILE the Venetian noble Giusti, and the late Secretary Orazio Lavezzari, were engaged at Campo Formio, for the restoration of the affairs of the Venetian Republic, and during the residence of Grimani at Vienna as her accredited ambassador, under the sanction of Buonaparte, transactions involving her total ruin were in preparation. A variety of specious pretences, usual on such occasions, were resorted to, to gloss over and extenuate the disgraceful negociation. Amongst other things, it was intimated, that Austria was to give up Italy at the general peace; and especially, that the Venetian power was to be re-established. And, in this manner, through the mingled guile and ferocity exerted on the one hand, and the hardened inveteracy of a depraved appetite on the other, the venerable Venetian Republic

expired without a groan. A paralysis seized on the whole fabric of her government. No blood was shed, not a wound was inflicted, at her last struggle. The people and the senate were alike benumbed by the force of their terrors; and, spaniel-like, they fawned at the feet of the Gallic tiger. It was a spectacle at once calculated to excite contempt and pity; and strikingly evinced the close contiguity that sometimes exists between the two extremes. One tyrant, Attila, the foe to tranquillity and happiness, forced the ancient Heneti, or Veneti, to take refuge in the Lagunes: another tyrant, many centuries after, crushes them in his fiendlike embraces. Out of the sensation of alarm, the Venetian power first started; and, from a similar lapse into consternation, and a supine abandonment of the ordinary resources of a government, it at last fell.

Several individuals have, I am aware, been suspected of treachery; but, imputations of this kind will, I am confident, have no weight with persons accustomed to reflect, and to judge for themselves. Is it at all probable, that the Venetian Senate, whose boasted policy it uniformly was to invest no individual with extraordinary responsibility, would, at a crisis so momentous, deposit an extreme plenitude of power in the

hands of any particular delegate? That Buonaparte endeavoured to win over to his side some of the nobles is highly probable; but, that a single man among them was sincerely his friend, I can never believe. No, no! the excellent Venetians had no traitors among them, but sluggishness and moral prostration, at a period of considerable excitement in the world of intellect, and when the fires of revolution were blazing throughout Europe. Closing their eyes against the impending tempest-for a Venetian seldom looked into a book-they were at a loss how to act, when it at length reached their sea-girt city.

On the arrival of foreigners at Venice, a voluptuous train of diversions, unaccompanied with any remarkable tokens of manly energy, Had a principally attracted their attention. well-appointed army of brave and faithful Sclavonians-a race at all times strongly attached to the Republic-been kept up and occasionally reviewed; had but a small sprinkling of the martial elements obtained a footing amidst the Paphian amusements of the city, a far different fate would, in all probability, have befallen the Venetians.

Presaging, from the decrepitude of the Republic, and its sluggish aversion to every thing