It now became manifest that they who had entered into the plot thought themselves too far committed to recede; besides, the allurements held out were irresistibly powerful; twelve thousand crowns in gold, preferments, honors, and posthumous canonization. To halt midway, was to run upon almost certain death, since the secret might be, in revenge, betrayed to the Venetian government, which would not fail to inflict signal vengeance on those within its reach. When Fulgentio laid these things before his friend Paolo, the latter, almost disgusted with a life which could not be preserved without an unintermitted system of precaution, entreated earnestly that the matter might be suffered to drop. Fulgentio, however, carried the letters directly to the state inquisitors; upon which Antonio and Francesco were immediately apprehended. The fate of the former is not known, as from this moment he disappears from the cognizance of history. There were, however, deep dungeons in Venice-the terrible Piombieri, over the portals of which might have been written the inscription which Dante saw upon the gates of hell

Relinquish hope, all ye who enter here. Francesco was immediately condemned to death, and his execution was to be public; but a commutation of the sentence was offered, if he would consent to make a full confession of his own guilt, and to disclose the names and titles of all those who were engaged in the conspiracy. The import of the letters he could not conceal, because the counterpart of them had been found in his pocket.

It would be beside our purpose to trace the plot through all its ramifications, and to consign to infamy the name of every one engaged in it. It may be sufficient to say that there were those who wore mitres, and scarlet hats, and crowns. But the Venetian senate, calm and rigid as destiny, was not by any considerations of respect or fear to be turned aside from its purpose. A rigid search was instituted after the assassins; and, if any of them was discovered, it is easy to conceive what became of them. The state inquisitors were under no compulsion to reveal the secrets of their office to the world, and an impenetrable cloud still hangs over them. It is only known that Francesco, having suffered a long imprisonment, was banished forever from the territories of the

Ordinary enemies would have desisted after so signal a defeat, from pursuing an old man, whose days, by the operations of nature, were fast drawing to a close; but Paolo's foes were made of different metal. Having already thrown away both blood and treasure in the enterprise, they determined to persevere; and now it became a regular contest between the subtlety of Rome and the subtlety of Venice. Paolo soon received intimation that new plots were in progress; and at length, a young man, armed cap-à-pie like a knight, appeared in the city, and sought an interview with the persecuted father. He maintained that the facts he had to divulge concerned his life; but Fulgentio, who now lived in perpetual terror for his friend, suspected some dark design, especially as the stranger appeared to shroud himself in mystery, refused to declare his name or calling, and insisted only on the absolute necessity of seeing Paolo in private. The great statesman, who had almost now become weary of existence, would willingly have granted his request, even though his object should be to make a new attempt upon his life; to this, however, Fulgentio would not agree, though the young man offered to lay aside his arms, to submit his person to examination, and to allow all other precautions possible to be taken for Paolo's security. When this was peremptorily refused, he observed that his secret must forever remain untold; and only said while taking leave: "Beware of traitors, for you have great need. I came to Venice with one impression, I leave it with one totally different. You are much honester friars than some persons believe."

During the remainder of Fra Paolo's life, the doge and the senate redoubled their exertions for his preservation-the secret corridor was prolonged-the state gondola more strongly guarded-the convent surrounded with a more imposing array of military force. They appeared to apprehend the extinction of an oracle upon which the very existence of the republic depended. Other causes also concurred to insure the tranquillity of the statesman's declining years. Ill success had damped the ardor of his enemies, and the belief began very generally to prevail, that the slightest suspicion of being engaged in a plot against him, sufficed to justify, in the eyes of the state inquisitors, perpetual confinement in the Piombieri. Numbers of doubtful persons, arriving for no definite

pur

pose at Venice, had disappeared suddenly, and were no more heard of. Other individuals of similar character fell by night in the streets of Rome, in Padua, in Ravenna, and even in Bologna, until the persuasion was diffused throughout Italy, that Venice knew how to reach her enemies wherever

they might attempt to conceal themselves. The historian, therefore, of the Council of Trent was suffered to die peaceably in his bed, full of days and honors, sincerely lamented by his contemporaries, and renowned through all succeeding ages.

MR. J. S. BUCKINGHAM certainly is a man whose life should be instructive and amusing. It is difficult to say where he has not been, whom or what he has not seen, and what kind of speculation he has not attempted. If it pleases him to write his own biography, it most likely will please many to read it. On the other hand, if it should please many to read it, there can be no doubt that it will please him very much to write it at considerable length.

mas.

At present we have before us the first two volumes, and they close with a hint that "future volumes" may be looked for before ChristThe book, as its author tells us in a preface, is intended not only to amuse, but to serve as an example, to all persons battling with obscurity or difficulty, of what may be done by "industry, integrity, zeal, and perseverance... labor, economy, temperance, and that single-mindedness which regards the faithful discharge of duty as the great object to which all others must be made subordinate." Mr. Buckingham also purposes in this autobiography to clear his character from misrepresentation, and to leave behind him, "for the consideration of posterity, his deliberate views as to many of the evils which still impede the progress of improvement in society."

The two volumes part with their hero at the

*Autobiography of James Silk Buckingham; including his Voyages, Travels, Adventures, Speculations, Successes and Failures, faithfully and frankly narrated; interspersed with Characteristic Sketches of Public Men with whom he has had intercourse during a period of more than fifty years. With a Portrait. Vol. I. and II. Longman & Co.

age of about thirty, but by the time he was twenty-one he was already a married man, and competent to have the command of a vessel; he had made many voyages; he had been a prisoner to the French; he had visited Spain, the West Indies, and Virginia; he had written a tragedy, and had preached (at the age of fifteen) a powerful discourse from the pulpit. Indeed, at the early age of eight, he had quelled a Cornish food-riot, by striking up the hymn

Salvation, oh the joyful sound,

in presence of the miners; on which occasion he obtained "a capful of sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns" for the exploit. On account of Mr. Buckingham's precocity, in short, the story of his life becomes amusing at a very early period. The son of a retired master of a merchantman, born at Flushing, in a house washed by the sea at high-tide; happiest, as a boy, when in a boat, the taste for sea life and adventure was developed in Mr. Buckingham while yet in petticoats. When between seven and eight years old, it was his great object of ambition to show that he could handle a boat, under sail, without the assistance of any one; and he used to perform in the harbor such evolutions, in a fast yawl, as made him feel himself the observed of all

observers" among the "veteran tars," who mustered there in great force, the harbor being occupied by two squadrons of frigates, to say nothing of its being a packet-station. Once he was upset, and being almost drowned, relates that, during this submersion, "I saw distinctly a number of floating fishes, creeping crabs, large heaps of bones and other re.

At length the smooth flow of the current of my life was partially broken by the intervention of a new feeling and a new phase in my existence. I was at this period about fifteen years of age; and having for some time led a life of as much gayety as was possible in the position in which I was placed, I found now and then, especially in the gloom of the evening and the early hours of the morning between waking and leaving my bed, something very like shame for misspent time, and a desire to repair it gradually stealing over me. This feeling reached its culminating point, by what might be called an accident, or at least an unexpected and unpremeditated event. On the evening of a day in Lent, I was walking alone through St. Aubyn street, and seeing that service was performing in the church there, I went in, and took my place in one of the pews near the pulpit. After the evening prayer, the clergyman, whose name I think was Williams, preached a most touching sermon on the story of the Prodigal Son. It took deep root in my heart. I thought of my dear indulgent mother, and felt that I had disregarded her wishes and injunctions in feeding rather than repressing my inclinations for a sea-life; and that in the hours spent with young officers at the Fountain, and Prince William Henry, (the latter the favorite hotel of the young Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William the Fourth,) as well as in the boxes and the green room of the theatre, I had misapplied many precious hours which could now never be redeemed. My repentance was most sincere. I determined to begin a new life, and applied myself with all practicable diligence to the abandonment of my old connections and the formation of new.

Not being of a disposition then, any more than since, to take up opinions on trust, or to have sufficient reverence for authority as to be able to place entire reliance thereon, I read earnestly, not merely the Old and New Testaments, but all the commentaries on them within my reach; and books of controversial theology soon became to me the most delicious food. I rose constantly in the morning at four o'clock, though not required to attend to business till nine, after breakfasting at eight. I rarely ever went to bed till midnight, reading therefore at least eight hours every day, attending worship three times on Sundays, and twice and thrice on the evenings of the week; so that in a year or so I had devoured perhaps a hundred volumes, large and small, on theology, no other subject having then the least attraction for me. The book of all others that fascinated me most was the celebrated treatise on Free Will, by the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, the American Puritan divine. The writings of Bunyan, Baxton, Cotton Mather, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and most of the old Nonconformist divines, were all agreeable to me, but Jonathan Edwards bore away the palm. I became, therefore, a confirmed Calvinist of the most rigid school, as firmly believing myself to

conditional predestination; and I am free to con fess, that though the ground on which I could dare to think myself thus favored appears to me now most hollow and insufficient, it was a belief which made me inexpressibly happy.

In the second volume of this autobiography, Mr. Buckingham, who has in the first volume been to the new world, is to be followed to Smyrna, to the Isles of Greece, to Grand Cairo, to the Cataracts of the Nile and Nubia, across the Isthmus of Suez, through the Land of Goshen, to Arabia, to India, and back to Egypt, where we leave him, in the dress of an Oriental, preparing, as an Envoy of the Egyptian Pasha, to traverse Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia.

Much of Mr. Buckingham's experience yet to be told relates to India; and from the account of the first incident by which his at

tention was drawn to Indian affairs-a chance attendance at a meeting held in the Egyptian-Room, something less than half a century ago, on the subject of the East India Company's charter, we extract an amusing sketch of a well-known conservative proprietor of East India stock, and of the way in which charter-renewal and free trade could be talked about before these latter days:—

Immediately after Alderman Waithman, rose Sir William Curtis, a wealthy ship biscuit baker and contractor, and a large proprietor of East India stock, who, though rather renowned for the absence than the presence of much wisdom, was, nevertheless, one of the most popular aldermen of London, and celebrated for his gastronomic fame, turtle and champagne dinners, and civic hospitality. He was received with the most boisterous applause, even before he had opened his lips-so entirely satisfied were the audience, apparently, that what he was going to say would be agreeable to them. His speech was certainly original, and highly characteristic of the man. He said, in substance, it was all very well for the honorable alderman who had just sat down to come forward with his statistics, by which a man might prove anything, and with his arguments, which were not worth the trouble of refuting; it would, no doubt, answer the speaker's purpose in increasing his popularity among the enemies of our glorious constitution, who wanted to pull down all established institutions, beginning with the East India Company, and then passing on to the House of Lords, the established Church, and at last the very Crown itself. But he, Alderman Curtis, and his friends, had come forward to stand by the altar and the throne, to uphold whatever was established, and to resist all innovations. He knew enough of the Hindoos and the Chinese to know that they would never trade with any other parties than the Honorable East India Company; and as to

the opening their countries to the rabble that would be sure to find their way there, if once the charter were abolished and the trade and intercourse made free, he was quite certain that before a year was over, we should be forcibly expelled from China-we should lose our glorious empire in India altogether, and then the sun of England's greatness would be set forever!

His speech, though short, was repeatedly interrupted by vociferous applause, and his portly body and round full rubicund face seemed lighted up with more than its usual tints of purple and crimson, in which the juice of the grape and the good cheer of his brother alderman, the cook and confectioner Birch, who furnished forth the city feasts, contended for the mastery. When the motion was put from the chair, Alderman Waithman's free-trade amendment was lost by an overwhelming majority, and the original resolution, recommending the renewal of the East India Company's charter, carried unanimously; for the minority was so small that none held up their hands when the original resolution was put to the vote.

I returned from the meeting as much astonished as I was disgusted at the result. I remem bered, when ten or twelve years younger, before the death of Pitt or Fox, reading the debates in Parliament, then scantily reported in the public papers; and being struck with the fact, that the arguments of the Whigs seemed to me so convincing, compared with those of the Tories, that I could never comprehend how it happened that the votes were always in favor of the latter. But anything so palpably gross as the exhibition at the Mansion-house, I had never before experienced.

We add a mention of two very different and rather more interesting people, from Mr. Buckingham's account of what he saw in Cairo.

At Cairo we remained a short time, and had the pleasure to meet there Sheikh Ibrahim, Mr. Burckhardt, who had not yet set out on his African journey. He passed several hours with us, expressed great interest in our voyage, and renewed his assurances of friendship. This was the last occasion of my meeting him, as he subsequently died at Cairo, and was interred there as a Mohammedan, with all the usual rites and

ceremonies of the Moslem faith; never having entered at all on the great African journey, for which he had been six or seven years in training and preparation.

We met here, also, for the first time, Signor Belzoni, who had been employed by the Pasha as a hydraulic engineer, for the management of the water-works and irrigation of his gardens at Shoobrah, in the Delta. We learnt from Signor Belzoni, that he was a native of Padua, and being gifted with almost superhuman strength, which his fine athletic figure and great height seemed to indicate, as well as with great flexibility of limb and finger, improved by constant exercise, he had exhibited his powers as an athlete and juggler in his own country and Malta, and from thence had visited England, where he made a tour through all the provinces, exhibiting feats of strength and dexterity, under the name of the Patagonian Samson, till he had exhausted public curiosity, and had now come out to Egypt, with a view to visit India for a similar purpose. Both Mr. Babington and I did our best to persuade him against incurring such a risk of loss-first, as he had no license to visit India, for the want of which I had been banished from the country; and next, because the athlete and jugglers of India form a very low and degraded caste, and would cause his occupation to shut him out from all European society. It appears that he was impressed with this advice, as he subsequently relinquished the intention, was afterwards employed by Mr. Salt and Mr. Bankes to bring down some of the fragments of ancient monuments from Upper Egypt, and then obtained deserved celebrity as an enterprising and successful traveller, by opening one of the great Pyramids of Memphis, penetrating into several of the unopened tombs of the kings at Thebes, and publishing a faithful and interesting account of his researches in Egypt; while Mrs. Belzoni, his English wife, added her contribution in an account of the state of female society in the East, to which she had been freely admitted.

We have said enough to show both the strength and weakness of these volumes; and whichever quality may be predominant, a certainty remains that they can hardly fail to be thought readable. We anticipate both amusement and instruction from the continuation of Mr. Buckingham's Memoirs.

THE EXHIBITION IN DANGER.-The announcement of the Emperor's Crimean trip bas caused no small alarm among those who are preparing expensive works for the great Paris Exhibition, the opening of which is fixed for the 1st of May. The impression has gained ground that if Louis Napoleon should leave Paris, the Exhibition will not be opened at all; that the opening will be postponed indefinitely; or at all events, that,

from the absence of the Court, the affair will lose much of its éclat. Some applications on the subject have been made at the office of the Minister of State, and the answer given was, that in any case the Emperor will be back to Paris, ten days at least, before the day fixed for the opening of the Exhibition, and that he will certainly preside at the ceremony of the opening, which will not be postponed.