them. What had been done at Milan and Ferrara, at Ravenna and Verona, might surely be repeated at Pisa. Could not the enemies of the state and of his own party be utilised to serve his purposes? What mattered the loss of the independence of Pisa so long as she was governed by him? What mattered the falling away of the republic if his family were aggrandised thereby? The thought that he was about to betray the confidence of his countrymen seems to have been unaccompanied by an atom of compunction. He resolved to make the best use of his position to assist him in achieving his object. He was, of course, too prudent to speak of what was in his mind, but he gave a sign of extraordinary departure from the traditional policy of his family, by giving his sister in marriage to Jean Visconti, judge or lord of Gallura, and chief of the Pisan Guelphs.

The meaning of this was soon apparent. The government of Pisa discovered a conspiracy of Count Ugolino and Gallura to subvert the state by the aid of the Tuscan Guelphs, and to share the prize between them. This was in 1274. Gallura was banished the Pisan territory, and Ugolino was thrown into prison. The former died soon afterwards at San Miniato, but Ugolino found means to get out of prison, and betook himself to the Florentine and Lucchese army, whose aid he easily secured to assist him against the hated Ghibelines of Pisa.

But it was far from the count's wish to see his countrymen crushedat least by any but himself. He accordingly expressed himself satisfied, and succeeded in causing a cessation of hostilities, when in 1276 the Pisans consented to recal him. On his return he strove to attract both parties without committing himself to either. Secretly he continued his relations with the Guelphs at the same time that he courted the attention of their opponents. His great wealth drew many to his side, and the knowledge of his powerful connexions made him a formidable enemy.

An opportunity of enlarging his authority presented itself in 1282, when the long smouldering animosity of the Genoese and Pisans, being excited by a real affront to the flag of Genoa, burst out into open war.

Some dispute had arisen at St. Jean d'Acre between the Pisan and Genoese colonists, and had resulted in the burning of the houses of the latter. This cause of complaint was included in a demand for satisfaction which the Genoese made on account of some hostile acts done in Corsica. Satisfaction was refused, and the two cities prepared for war.

In accordance with a strange custom, born of a chivalrous spirit which scorned to take advantage, either city allowed the presence of five commissioners from the other to watch and report upon the character of the preparations.

The war was carried on with lukewarmness for two years, on account of the backwardness of the armaments, but in August, 1284, the Genoese fleet put to sea in search of the enemy, and came up with them on the 6th of the same month, off the island of Meloria, at the mouth of the Arno. The numbers of ships were about equal-viz. one hundred on each side. Alberto Morosini, a Venetian, who had been made podestà or dictator of Pisa, commanded the first division of the Pisan fleet. Count Ugolino and Andreotto Saracini, who had been associated with him as captains of the fleet, led two other divisions. Oberto Doria and Conrad Spinola commanded the Genoese.

The battle was fought with great fury and courage until the capture of the Pisan admiral, when Ugolino hung out the signal of retreat. It was asserted by the Pisans, and very generally believed, that at this time the battle was by no means lost; that the count could have continued the fight with a good chance of winning, but that he purposely contributed to the defeat of his countrymen in order to weaken them sufficiently to receive his dominion.

The event seemed to warrant the suspicion; but treason or no treason, the defeat was crushing. Twenty-eight galleys were taken, seven were destroyed; five thousand men were killed, and eleven thousand, including the admiral, taken prisoners.

As soon as the news of the battle were known, Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Pistoia, Prato, and Volterra-all the Tuscan Guelphs, in factdeclared war against Pisa, with the intention of destroying the last stronghold of the Ghibelines. The Pisans, in their utter distress, were compelled to accept the rule of a man whom they had once proved to be a traitor, whom they loudly accused of assisting their enemies in the recent battle, and whose character they had reason to suspect in every particular. But then he was known to have influence with the Guelphs. None but he could stand between them and this fresh set of enemies. Traitor as he was, sinister as were his designs, it was better to trust to the chance of some gleam of patriotism remaining within him, or to that of his interests running concurrently with theirs against the Guelphs, than to expose themselves to the certain destruction which their helplessness invited.

Ugolino caused himself to be appointed captain-general for ten years, and at once set to work to break up the Guelphic league. By money, by concessions, and by his personal influence, he succeeded in achieving this object; but he also made it the means of consolidating his own power at the expense of the Pisan state.

At his instance, Florence required as a condition precedent of peace, that all the count's enemies and all the chief Ghibelines should be banished, and that certain strong castles should be surrendered. These hard conditions were complied with, but the Pisans absolutely refused to agree to the count's proposal to give up some strongholds which alone protected them from the armies of the Lucchesi, their known enemies, and the count's known friends.

To oppose Ugolino's offer to give the important fortress of Castro in Sardinia, of which island the Pisans were sovereigns, in exchange for the prisoners taken at Meloria, the prisoners themselves sent deputies from Genoa; and the poor people had to contend at the same time against the malice of a foreign enemy, and against the craft of a protector powerful and willing to harm them.

In order to keep himself in power, he refused to make peace with Genoa, or to treat again for the return of the prisoners. His enemies, and they were many, now felt the weight of his anger. Under colour of administering justice, he banished, or judicially murdered, their persons, confiscated their property, and proscribed their families.

The tyranny and cruelty of the man excited his own nephew, Nino de Gallura, to attempt to arouse the people against him. Nino, though a Guelph, joined with him the Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, all Ghibeline families, and entered into an agreement with them to procure

limitations to the power of the count, to set on foot a peace with Genoa, and to obtain the liberation of the prisoners. The attempt to raise the people to revolt proved idle; but they so far backed the conspirators that, when Nino openly accused his uncle of having overstepped the bounds of his authority as captain-general, and of having acted as podestà, Ugolino was obliged for the moment to yield.

A podestà was named, and the count, without being deprived of his office of captain-general, was obliged to desist from governing the city as a prince.

But he only bided his time. Shortly afterwards, in 1287, he formed an alliance with Ruggiero degli Ubaldini, Archbishop of Pisa, the object of which was to drive Nino de Gallura and his party from the city, to seize the supreme power, and to share it between them. The plan was successfully carried out. Gallura and his friends were driven from the city, and Ugolino caused himself to be proclaimed captain and lord (capitano e signore) of Pisa. "Say then, Lombard, is there anything lacking to me?" was his insolent question to a citizen, as he entered his palace. Nothing, sir, except the wrath of God," was the reply.

66

Once established in power, Ugolino did not scruple to throw away the tool by which he had secured it. He refused to acknowledge the claims of the archbishop, and, in answer to the popular cry that he should be associated with him in the government, the count replied that he recognised no equal. In vain the Ghibelines asked to be represented. Neither Guelph nor Ghibeline was to share the glory of his reign. Ruggiero, though not less ambitious nor cruel than the count, was more simulating." He, too, bided his time.

Meanwhile, the misery of the people increased, and with it the tyranny of their ruler. Their commerce was destroyed by his persistent refusal to make peace with Genoa; their liberties were daily trampled on in the most flagrant way, and their friends were rotting in the Genoese prisons because it did not suit the tyrant's interest to have them recalled.

Their murmurs and their deep curses reached his ears and aroused his anger. His nephew was one day representing in vivid colours the sufferings of the people, and indirectly reproaching him with being the cause of them, when he drew his dagger from its sheath, and struck a blow at him. A nephew of the archbishop was standing by, and rushed forward to stop the blow. The count, balked of his intention, turned round upon the unfortunate young man, and laid him dead at his feet. This was the last straw which broke the archbishop's patience.

Taking advantage of the popular anger at a further refusal of the count to treat with Genoa, and discovering a design of his still more to subject the city by the introduction of the Guelphs, Ruggiero, on July 1, 1288, called the people to arms. He heightened their fury by telling them of plans, real or imaginary, for the suppression of their liberties and for the surrender of their city to their enemies.

The count, with his family and friends, was closely besieged in the palace, which was barricaded and defended with desperate courage. But the assailants, having fired it in several places, gained an entrance, rushed in, slew the bastard son of Ugolino and one of his grandsons, and сарtured him, Gaddo and Uguccione, his youngest sons, and Nino, Dit le Brigata, and Anselmuccio, his grandsons. These were all dragged out of the palace, and thrust into a tower on the Piazza dei Anziani, where

they were detained till the following March. It then became a question as to what should be done with them, and the archbishop was the man to answer it. He took the key of the tower from the warders, whom he dismissed from further attendance, locked the door that none might open it, and threw the key into the Arno.

Five days the survivor of the other four remained, having seen their death-struggles and tasted of their anguish. He then succumbed to hunger in the Famine Tower, and was carried to Antenora to expiate his crimes, and to wait in that ice-hole, for the wicked priest who had so foully done him to death.

Hear him tell the tale he told to Dante :

When I awoke,

Before the dawn, amid their sleep I heard
My sons (for they were with me) weep and ask
For bread. Right cruel art thou if no pang
Thou feel at thinking what my heart foretold;
And if not now, why use thy tears to flow?
Now had they waken'd; and the hour drew near
When they were wont to bring us food; the mind
Of each misgave him through his dream, and I
Heard, at its outlet underneath, lock'd up
The horrible tower: whence, uttering not a word,
I looked upon the visage of my sons.

I wept not: so all stone I felt within.

They wept and one, my little Anselm, cried,

"Thou lookest so! Father, what ails thee?" Yet
I shed no tear, nor answer'd all that day

Nor the next night, until another sun
Came out upon the world. When a faint beam
Had to our doleful prison made its way,

And in four countenances I descried

The image of my own, on either hand

Through agony I bit; and they, who thought

I did it through desire of feeding, rose

O' the sudden and cried, "Father, we should grieve
Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gavest
These weeds of miserable flesh we wear;
And do thou strip them off from us again."
Then not to make them sadder, I kept down
My spirit in stillness. That day and the next
We all were silent. Ah, obdurate earth!
Why open'dst not upon us?

When we came

To the fourth day, then Gaddo at my feet
Outstretch'd did fling him, crying, "Hast no help
For me, my father!" There he died; and e'en

Plainly as thou seest me, saw I the three

Fall one by one 'twixt the fifth day and sixth:
Whence I betook me, now grown blind, to grope
Over them all, and for three days aloud

Call'd on them who were dead. Then fasting got
The mastery of grief. Thus having spoke,
Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth
He fasten'd like a mastiff's 'gainst the bone,
Firm and unyielding.*

* Cary's Dante, canto xxxiii.

A TOWN FULL OF MAD PEOPLE.

BY ALEXANDER ANDREWS.

A POPULATION Composed of two thousand lunatics and two hundred and fifty sane people should surely be as worthy of a visit and as much an object of interest as the Mormons on the Great Salt Lake, or the engaging natives of Borioboola-gha. And as we have only a railway run of four or five miles to reach the unique community, perhaps some readers be minded to perform the journey with us, or should their nerves not be equal to the task of plunging in medios lunaticos, they may take our report as a faithful and true description of this mad town, with its public and private establishments, its brewery, its bakery, its laundry, its busy workshops, its gas-works, its chapel, its cemetery, its infirmary, and its outlying farm.

may

De lunatico inquirendo, then-not by twenty-six gentlemen of county repute summoned to meet in the library of the hall, or place, or court, or castle, to declare whether my Lord Wornout or Sir Matthew Usedup be of sufficiently strong mind to grant a renewal of those leases which are about to fall in, and in regard of which his heir at law, his very dutiful son, is getting fidgety; to listen to the opinion of the family doctor as to the period when he first saw a flicker about my lord's or Sir Matthew's reason, and what he thinks of it now; to examine the feeble old man in the arm-chair, sitting in the next room, and to hear him piteously appeal for alms, or feebly acknowledge that he cannot form the slightest estimate of his property's value; rarely (too rarely, perhaps) to listen to an advocate on his behalf; to be ruled, sometimes even biased, by the uncertain summing up of the learned commissioner; and finally, guided by the dates of the family doctor, to pronounce that "the subject of this inquiry is of unsound mind and incapable of managing his own affairs, and has been so from the — of · 18-." Not of this sort is our inquiry to-day. The subjects of it have, alack! no property to look after-no leases to grant no heirs-at-law-no family doctor; and we are not twenty-six gentlemen of repute, but one humble individual (accompanied by the chaplain and medical superintendent of the establishment), making our unofficial inquiry into the condition of our poor mad brothers and sisters in the huge asylum for pauper lunatics at Colney Hatch.

Considering the easy contiguity of Colney Hatch to the metropolis, and the picturesqueness of the surrounding country, it is a place but little known to the majority of Londoners. Passengers by the Great Northern Railway are well acquainted with the long dull wall that forms the eastern boundary of the asylum; but the line itself commands no prospect of the beautiful scenery hereabouts, nor, indeed, affords any considerable view of the establishment itself. But approaching it from the Green Lanes of Stoke Newington (now, alas! rapidly becoming a misnomer), and from the long country lane that bears up to it from Bowes's Farmor, still better, walking from Hornsey-rise through Crouch-end, over Muswell-hill, and skirting the new Alexandra Park-you will become conscious of being surrounded by scenery that can compete with any of