ecclesiastical government, and erected a Roman republic (1798). In Ge noa, Bonaparte occasioned a revolution, by which a democratic repuolie was formed after the model of the French under the name of the Ligurian republic. The French had, meanwhile, penetrated into Austria, through the Venetian territory. The Venetians now made common cause with the brave Tyrolese, who gained advantages over the French in the Alps. Bonaparte, therefore, occupied Venice without striking a blow, and gave the republic a democratic constitution; but, by the peace of Campo-Formio (17th October, 1797), the Venetian territory, as far as the Adige, was relinquished to Austria, and the rest incorporated with the Cisalpine republic. The king of Sardinia concluded a treaty of alliance and subsidy with France, October 25; but, in 1798, the directory, assailed in Rome from Naples, deemed it expedient to compel him to resign his territories on the main land.

Notwithstanding its treaty of amity with France, Naples concluded an alliance, in 1798, with Britain and Russia. The French, therefore, occupied Naples, and erected there the Parthenopean republic. The grand duke of Tuscany had likewise formed an alliance with Naples and Britain, and his country was, in return, compelled by the French to receive, like Piedmont, a military administration. After the congress of Radstadt was broken off, Austria and the German empire, under Russian support, renewed the war against the French, who again left Naples and Rome to the British, Russians and Turks. The king and the pope returned to their capitals in Lombardy; the French were defeated by the Austrians, under Kray and Melas, and by the Russians, under Suwarrof, and lost all their fortresses, except Genoa, where Massena sustained a vigorous siege, while his countrymen had to evacuate all Italy. But in the meanwhile, Bonaparte was made first consul after his return from Egypt. He marched with a new army to Italy, defeated, the Austrians at the memorable battle of Marengo (1800), and compelled them to capitulation, by which all the Italian fortresses were again evacuated. By the peace of Luneville, Feb. 9, 1801, the possession of Venice was confirmed to Austria, which was to indemnify the duke of Modena, by the cession of Brisgau The duke of Parma received Tuscany, and afterwards, from Bonaparte, the title of king of Etruria. Parma was united to France. The Cisalpine and Ligurian republics were guaranteed by Austria and France, and with the Ligurian territories were united the imperial fiefs included withir. their limits. The king of Naples, who had occupied the states of the church, was obliged to conclude peace at Florence. By Russian medi ation, he escaped with the cession of Piombino, the Stato degli Presidj, and his half of the island of Elba, together with the promise of closing his harbours against the British. The other half of Elba, Tuscany had already relinquished to France. But the whole island was obstinately defended by the British and Corsicans, with the armed inhabitants, and not evacuated until autumn. The Stato degli Presidj France ceded to Etruria, September 19; but strong detachments of French troops remained both in Naples and Tuscany, and their support cost immense sums. To the republics of Genoa and Lucca the first consul gave new constitutions in 1801. But, in January, 1802, the Cisalpine republic was transformed into the Italian republic, in imitation of the new French constitution, and Bonaparte became president. Genoa also received a new constitution, and Girolamo Durazzo for doge. Piedmont, however, was united with France.

After Bonaparte had become emperor, in 1804, he attached (March 17, 1805) the royal crown of Italy to the new imperial crown; he promised, however, never to unite the new monarchy with France, and even to give a king of its own. The new constitution was similar to that of the French empire. Napoleon founded the order of the iron crown, and hav

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ing placed the crown on his own head, at Milan, he appointed his stepson, Eugene Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, who laboured with great zeal for the improvement of all branches of the government, of industry, and the arts. Circumstances, however, rendered the new government oppressive, as the public expenses, during peace, amounted to 100,000,000 francs, which were all to be contributed by less than 4,000,000 people. No European power recognized, expressly, the Italian kingdom of Napoleon The emperor continued to strengthen his power against the active enemies of the new order of things, and gave to his sister Eliza the principality of Piombino, and to her husband, Pasquale Bacciocchi, the republic of Lucca, as a principality, both as French fiefs. Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla were incorporated with the French empire, July 21st. The pope was obliged to sanction the imperial coronation by his presence. Austria now acceded to the alliance of Russia and Britain against France. Naples, also, again suffered the British and Russians to land. But the success of the Austrian arms was frustrated by the defeats at Ulm and Austerlitz; after which the peace of Presburg completed the French supremacy in Italy. Austrian Venice, with Istria and Dalmatia, were united to the kingdom of Italy; and this, with all the French institutions, Italy recognized.

The kingdom had now an extent of 35,450 square miles, with 5,657,000 inhabitants. Naples was evacuated by its auxiliaries, and occupied by the French, notwithstanding the attempts of the queen to excite an uni versal insurrection. Napoleon then gave the crown of Naples to his brother Joseph. In 1808, the widow of the king of Etruria, who conducted the regency in behalf of her minor son, was deprived of her kingdom, which was united with France. Napoleon, moreover, appointed his brother-in-law, the prince Borghese, governor-general of the departments beyond the Alps, and he took up his residence at Turin. As Napoleon had, meanwhile, given his brother Joseph the crown of Spain, he filled the throne of Naples with his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, until that period grand-duke of Berg, who entered Naples Sept. 6, 1808. In 1809, the emperor gave Tuscany to his sister Eliza, of Piombino, with the title of grand-duchess. In the same year, Austria made new exertions to break the excessive power of France but Napoleon again drove her troops from the field, and appeared once more victorious in Vienna, where he proclaimed (May 17) the end of the secular authority of the popes, and the union of the states of the church with France. Rome became the second city of the empire, and a pension of 2,000,000 of francs was assigned to the pope.

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After the peace of Vienna, by which Napoleon acquired the Illyrian provinces, Istria and Dalmatia were separated from the kingdom of Italy, and attached to them. On the other, hand, Bavaria ceded to Italy the circle of the Adige, a part of Eisach, and the jurisdiction of Clausen. The power of the French emperor was now, to all appearances, firmly established in Italy. While the Italian people were supporting French armies, sacrificing their own troops in the ambitious wars of Napoleon in remote regions, and were obliged to pay heavy taxes in the midst of the total ruin of their commerce, all the periodicals were full of praises of the institutions for the encouragement of science, arts, and industry, in Italy. After the fatal retreat from Russia, Murat, whom Napoleon had personally offended, deserted the cause of France, and joined Austria, (January 11, 1814), whose army penetrated into Italy, under Bellegarde. The viceroy, Eugene, continued true to Napoleon and his own character, and offered to the enemies of his dynasty the boldest resistance, whic was frustrated by the fall of Napoleon in France.

After the truce of April 21, 1814, the French troops evacuated all Ital", and most of the provinces were restored to their legitimate sovereigns. The wife of Napoleon, however, the empress Maria Louisa, obtained the

duchies of Parma, Piacenzá, and Guastalla, with reversion to her son, and Napoleon himself became sovereign of Elba, of which he took possession, May 4. But before the congress of Vienna had organized the political relations of Europe, he effected his return to France, March 1, 1815. At the same time, Murat, king of Naples, abandoned his former ambiguous attitude, and took up arms, as he pretended, for the independence of Italy. But his appeal to the Italians was answered by a declation of war by Austria. Driven from Bologna by the Austrian forces, and totally defeated by Bianchi Tolentino, he lost the kingdom of Naples, into which the Austrian general Nugent had penetrated from Rome, and Bianchi from Aquila, seven weeks after the opening of the campaign. He embarked from Naples, with a view of escaping to France. Ferdinand returned from Palermo, and Murat's family found an asylum in Austria. Murat himself made a descent on Calabria, from Corsica, in order to recover his lost kingdom. He was taken prisoner at Pizzo, brought before a court martial, and shot, (Oct. 13, 1815).

Meanwhile, the congress of Vienna, by the act of June 9, 1815, had arranged the affairs of Italy:-1. The king of Sardinia was reinstated in his territories, according to the boundaries of 1792, with some alterations on the side of Geneva; for the portion of Savoy, left in possession of France by the peace of Paris, of May 30, 1814, was restored by the treaty of Paris, of Nov. 20, 1815. To his states was united Genoa, as a duchy, according to the boundaries of that republic, in 1792, and contrary to the promises made to Genoa.-2. The emperor of Austria united with his hereditary states the new Lombardo-Venetian provinces formerly belonging to Austria, the Valteline, Bormio, and Chiavenna, separated from the Grisons, besides Mantua and Milan. Istria, however, was united with the Germanic-Austrian kingdom of Illyria; Dalmatia, with Ragusa and Cattaro, constituting a distinct Austrian kingdom.-3. The valley of the Po was adopted as the boundary between the states of the church and Parma; otherwise, the boundaries of Jan. 1, 1792, were retained. The Austrian house of Este again received Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, Massa, and Carrara.-4. The empress Maria Louisa received the state of Parma, as a sovereign duchess, but, by the treaty of Paris, of June 10, 1817, only for life, it having been agreed that the duchess of Lucca and her descendants should inherit it.-5. The arch-duke Ferdinand of Austria became again grand-duke of Tuscany, to which were joined the Stato degli Presidj, the former Neapolitan part of the island of Elba, the principality of Piombino, and some small included districts, formerly fiefs of the German empire. The prince Buoncompagni Ludovisi retained all his rights of property in Elba and Piombino.-6. The Infanta, Maria Louisa, received Lucca, of which she took possession as a sovereign duchy, 1817, with an annnuity of 500,000 francs, till the reversion of Parma.-7. The territories of the church were all restored, with the exception of the strip of land on the left bank of the Po; and Austria retained the right of maintaining garrisons in Ferrara and Commacchio.-8. Ferdinand IV. was again recognized as king of the Two Sicilies. Britain retained Malta, and was declared the protectress of the United Ionian Islands. The knights of Malta, who had recovered their possessions in the States of the Church and in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, for a time made Catania, and after 1826, Ferrara, their residence. The republic of San Marino, and the prince of Monaco, whose mountain-fortress the Sardinians, and before them the French occupied, alone remained unharmed amid the fifteen political revolutions which Italy had undergone in the course of twenty-five years. The Austrian predominance was thus more firmly established than ever in Italy.

We shall now proceed with a history of VENICE, its political and commercial eminence having rendered it for many centuries by far the most important of the Italian states.

THE HISTORY OF VENICE.

Of all the republics of Italy, Venice is that whose history is the most nteresting and singular; it has all the startling brilliancy of romance, and fully justifies the poetical remark-"Truth is strange, stranger than fiction." Even the termination of her independent existence differed from that of other states; it was only in the expiring throes of her once vast power that the springs of the policy which were created, and so long maintained by that power, were laid bare to the world's gaze. The policy of other states was obvious in their acts; but until the last vestige of Venetian power and independence was annihilated by the iron hand of Napoleon, the results, only, of Venetian policy were to be seen, the process never. In looking with stedfast eye upon that process it will be impossible to avoid a feeling of disgust and indignation at many of the individual acts of the government; but equally impossible will it be to withhold praise from its general wisdom. The tyranny to which some of the noblest and best blood in Venice was sacrificed we must detest; but the stern severity with which the domestic traitor was put down, and the keen policy by which the foreign foe was hoodwinked, we cannot but admire and approve. The history of Venice is now, more than ever, interesting to us; for it is in our day that a blow, as swift and crushing as the thunderbolt, has struck out of the list of independent states this ancient republic, so remarkable in site and in institutions.

At the northeastern extremity of Italy, between the Alps and the northwestern coast of the Adriatic, there was settled from a very early age a people called the Heneti or Veneti, from whom the fertile district in queswas. called Venetia. From their position at the extremity of Italy it might be reasonably inferred that they were originally some nomade tribe of Northmen, and among the latest, if not the very latest of the early colonizers of Italy from that quarter. But a very great difference of opinion exists as to their actual origin. Both poetically and popularly they have been supposed to be the Heneto-Paphlagones, mentioned by Homer, who, having lost their leader in the Trojan war, were led into Europe by Antenor, and, having arrived at the head of the Adriatic gulf, expelled the Euganei, and settled there. Strabo thinks differently, and believes them to have been originally from Gaul-there having been a Gallic tribe of that name. But Polybius states, that though the Veneti undoubtedly resembled the Gauls in some of their manners and customs, they differed from them in language. Moreover, it is well observed by a modern historian, that whatever might be the resemblances between the Veneti and a Gallic tribe of the same name, as to manners, customs, and even dress, there is one striking part in the history of the former which may be looked upon as almost irrefragable evidence that it is not in Gaul that we must look for their origin. It is this: that, having a Gallic colony in their immediate neighbourhod, the Veneti constantly took the part of Rome against that colony in all occasions of dispute. That the account which makes them the Heneto-Paphlagonés of Homer is correct, seems by no means improbable. We may easily suppose, having crossed the Bosphorus, they passed over the plains of Thrace, skirted the Danube and the Save into Croatia, and at length halted on the northwestern shore of the Adriatic, and either expelled or subjected the people whom they found there. Whatever the origin of the Venetians, it is quite certain that at a very carly period they were extremely prosperous and powerful. The

very nature of the country would indicate this, as well as account for the long independence of Venice; an independence which lasted during some of the mightiest desolations of the world; which witnessed the expiring agony and downfall of the mighty empire of Rome; the rise of the French empire in the West, when Clovis conquered the Gauls; the rise and fall of the Ostrogoths in Italy and of the Visigoths in Spain; of the Lombards who succeeded the former, and of the Saracens who supplanted the latter! The Comte Figliosi, a learned modern historian of Venice, very clearly shows that in the most distant times the people which occupied the country since called the Venetian states of the Terra Firma, also occupied Rialto and its sixty neighbouring islets; and that from that circumstance arose the titles of Venetia Prima and Venetia Secunda, the first being applied to the continental territory, the second to the Venetian isles. The fertility of the former naturally inclined the inhabitants to agriculture; the situation of the latter in the midst of canals, at the embouchure of rivers, and near the Grecian islands, as naturally disposed them to navigation and commerce, and led to maritime skill, and the wealth and power of which that is invariably the creator.

It is not until the fourth century after the building of Rome that we find any mention made of the Venetians as a people; but the manner in which they are then mentioned by Polybius, shews that their prosperity and strength must even then have been of long standing, and arrived at a very high pitch. We have it on the authority of that historian, that the very existence of Rome may be said to have been preserved by the Veneti, on an occasion when the Gauls had made themselves masters of every foot of the eternal city, with the exception of the capitol. The Gauls, a restless, bold, and greedy people, were still, even in the fourth century of Rome, an almost nomade people. Polybius tells us that they were scattered about in villages unenclosed by walls. Of furniture they knew not the use. Their way of life was simple as that of the most unreclaimed savages; they knew no other bed than the grass; nor any other nutriment than the wild animals which they hunted down or ensnared. The arts and sciences were wholly unknown to them. Their wealth consisted of gold and cattle: the sole things which could with facility be removed from place to place as vagrant fancy or pressing conjuncture might demand. Such was the people who, in the year 364 from the building of Rome, defeated the Romans in the pitched battle of Allia, marched upon the city itself, beating the Romans in every skirmish durng three successive days, and obtained possession of all but the capitol tself. At this most critical juncture the Veneti poured into Gaul with a fury which speedily relieved Rome of her foes, who hastened to defend their families and possessions.

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Much difference of opinion has existed as to whether the Veneti were at this time the allies or the subjects of Rome; but we are disposed to think that they were the former, or Rome would not have sent a formal embassy to acknowledge and thank them for this timely and important service. It was not thus that haughty Rome treated those who were already subjected to her. But powerful and wealthy as the Veneti already were, not even their power and wealth could permanently keep them independent of the daily increasing power and profound policy of Rome. Friendly allies probably in the first instance, the Veneti, whether from force, fear, or in the well-founded hope of protection, at length became dependent upon Rome. They furnished a contingent force to Rome in the second Punic war, and Rome, on the other hand, defended Venetia as one of its proper provinces. In truth, it is of little consequence how Venetia passed from alliance to subjection; from voluntarily serving a neighbour, to marching under the orders of a protector and master. Such fate inevitably awaited the smaller and weaker of the neighbouring states;