Sulpice, who witnessed the last moments of this wonderful person, that no importance ought to be attached to the words of the dying man-" Vous voyez bien qu'il n'a plus sa tête."

The day before we left Switzerland I met Madame de Staël in Geneva. Taking leave, she said, "God bless you! stay for me in Italy," alluding to a fanciful project of joining us on the other side of the Alps; and on the same evening I had a note from her concluding with these words: "I shall never forget the two friends.”

When I revisited Geneva in 1828 I passed by Coppet, and paused a short time to gaze on the vine-covered slopes under the villa Diodati. I could discover the little pathway down which I had many a time rambled to the cove where Lord Byron's boat was anchored. The well-known scenes on either side of the lake were indeed as magnificent and lovely as ever-" but all the guests departed." It is seldom that death in so few years has dealt so many blows in a circle where old age was scarcely to be seen. Of the inmates and habitual visitors at Diodati, Lord Byron, Mr. Shelley, Mr. Lewis, Dr. Polidori were gone. Of those I saw at Coppet, Madame de Staël herself, her son, her friend Rocca, Mr. de Bonstetten, and Schlegel, all had passed away. I am speaking of the year 1828, but when I last saw the same scenes, in 1842, many other names might be added to the list.

We left the neighbourhood of Geneva for Italy on the 5th of October, 1816. From Thonon we went to La

Ripaille, where we saw one of the living wrecks of the Revolution. The old inhabitants of this celebrated retreat, the monks, were expelled by the French, and the extensive but ruined mansion, having been thrice sold, was at last tenanted by General Duppa. The general was present when we entered the premises-a fine, tall, pleasing-looking person, dressed like a farmer. His wife was killing fowls in the courtyard. "Formerly," said the general, "I commanded divisions, now I command nobody but my wife; I have no steward, and am my own servant." He added that he had lost 75,000 livres of annual income by French politics, and was now on the point of losing 4000 more because he did not choose to be naturalized in France. He informed us that he had served under Louis XVI., but said nothing of his other commander-in-chief, Napoleon. An Englishman who should be equally communicative with one whom he had never seen before, and was never likely to see again, would be thought mad.

At La Ripaille the church was turned into a barn, the towers, all but two, were razed, and a garden had been planted on the embanked buttresses. Over the front gate were still seen the arms of the Prince of Savoy, surmounted by that papal crown which he resigned for this sensual seclusion. The French, by an easy conversion, had made the tiara look like a cap of liberty.

Passing the rocks of Meillerie, we could not help remarking that the bowers of Clarens are not visible from that spot, but that the view of them which

charmed St. Preux must have been taken nearer to St. Gingough, where the precipices are higher and more immediately overhanging the lake-but Meillerie sounded well, and was preferred. The noble road which has been cut through the rocks has discontented some of the lovers of Rousseau, as having spoilt all the tender recollections connected with this region of romance. This objection was made in our hearing at Coppet, when a gentleman present, an old soldier, remarked "that the road was well worth the recollections." Lord Byron, in a note to the third canto of Childe Harold, has mentioned this, but made the remark somewhat stronger by changing the "vaut bien ” into "vaut mieux."

We crossed the Simplon and stayed a day on the banks of the Lago Maggiore, to visit the Borromean islands. On the Isola Bella we were shown the large laurel-tree on which Napoleon cut the word "BATTAGLIA" a day or two before the battle of Marengo. This sort of record has one advantage over other memorials, that the incision may be deepened repeatedly, and the tradition easily kept alive without injury to the original. One of the first objects pointed out to me when I went to Westminster School were the letters "J. Dryden," rudely cut or scratched in the bench of the lower-fifth form, and no one doubted that the first traces of the name had been made by the hand of the great poet himself.

· De Tracy- Confalonieri

-Count Luigi Porro Anelli Count Strasoldo - Austrian Government - The French kingdom of Italy — First appearance of Napoleon at Milan Madame Castiglione Prince Eugene - The Secret Society The Allies enter Italy Promises of independence - Revolution at Milan Murder of Prina - Provisional Government Austrians recover Milan and all Lombardy - Attempt at insurrection in 1820-21.

WE arrived in Milan on the 12th of October, 1816, and left it on the 3rd of November. Those with whom we chiefly associated during the time were the Abate Monsignore Lodovico Gattinara de Breme, and his brother the Marquis, the head of that distinguished Piedmontese family; the celebrated Monti; Silvio Pellico, the author of Francesca da Rimini,' afterwards so well known by the painful narrative of his sufferings in the dungeons of Spielberg. There also we saw Count Perticari, an author of some repute, and Bosieri, the conductor of a literary journal called 'The Day.' These gentlemen-even Monti, of whom it may now safely be told, for "nothing can touch him further,"were all of one way of thinking in politics; but we also saw something of the inmates and frequenters of the Casa Castiglione, such as Acerbi, conductor of the

Biblioteca Italiana, Anelli, and others whose opinions took their complexion from the recently-restored masters of Lombardy.

I passed through Milan in 1822. All my friends of the Liberal party had disappeared. Where is De Breme? "He is happy in having died; he has seen none of these things," was the reply. And Silvio Pellico? "In an Hungarian dungeon." Bosieri too? "In prison." De Tracy? "Also in confinement." Confalonieri? "Reprieved on the scaffold; but whether dead or in prison now, no one knows." Count Luigi Porro? "In exile." "In exile." He had been executed in effigy a few days before my arrival. Such were the bitter fruits of that unhappy attempt to shake off the Austrian yoke in 1821. Shortly after the failure of this conspiracy it was known that the Heads of Departments were prepared to retire from Milan, with the treasure and the archives, had the Piedmontese advanced into Lombardy with the expected force. The fate of Italy was then in the hands of the Prince of Carignan, the unfortunate Charles Albert of later days. It should be told, however, that neither Count Strasoldo nor Count Bubna, the civil and military governors of Milan, were accused of remembering their dangers with the rancour which such recollections usually inspire; indeed their administration generally could not be called tyrannical or unjust. The severe punishment of insurrection, or political conspiracy, is an inevitable condition of foreign subjection; but the ordinary tribunals