tenacious, yet yielding when some dexterous hand has found out the joints in his mail. And here he was going through a ceremonial which was in fact an admission of his defeat and the token of a subverted policy. But he did it well. Never did knight of old bear lance better in the press of the tournament or in the lists than did the Kaiser in his ancient robes going through the fantastic rites prescribed for him. He fasted, he lay on his stomach with his face to the ground in the church as flat as --well as a pancake; he was oiled and greased and annointed; he was wiped dry; he was dressed and undressed; he was put on a most unruly Bucephalus; he took strange oaths and made impossible vows; and in every act and portion of his part he was erect, solemn, conscious and kingly. No smile on his lips, no frown on his brow-impassive a sphinx-like look about the man as one who was bent on a work adored by Fate and Heaven. The whole of the proceedings were over long before it was expected, and the king had returned over the bridge and gained his palace ere midday. There was still one thing to be done ere he could be let alone and be at rest. The dinner was spread for himself and his fair queen and for four of the great ones of Hungary, but ere the monarch could taste of the food which was served to him by the greatest of the magnates in full dress, it was needful that the table should be ornamented with a piece of one of the roast oxen which the people were devouring in an adjacent meadow; and with one solitary toast given by the king-" Elgin a haza" (Long live our country)-the banquet ended. What the end of this day's work may be no one can foretell; but certain it is no more remarkable sight has been witnessed in its way by this generation, or even by those who assisted at the coronations, many and splendid as they have been, which have graced this half century.

"La Colonna Infame."

THOSE who have had the privilege of reading in the original that chef d'œuvre of modern Italian literature, "I Promessi Sposi," by Manzoni, will not fail to have been powerfully impressed with the wonderful force and vigour of his description of the great plague in Milan in the year 1630, of the horrors of the "lazzeretto" and of the thousand infamous and brutal acts of violence committed in the name of justice by terror-stricken governors urged on by an ignorant and demoralized population. The firm belief in the wilful propagation of the plague by lawless persons by means of some powder or ointment smeared on the walls of the city, so ably commented on by Manzoni in this book, was not as we know common to Milan. In most accounts we read of the ravages of that dreadful pestilence -the scourge of the seventeenth century in London, Geneva, Turin, Florence, and Palermo-and even in more recent severe visitations of Asiatic cholera, we find traces of a similar superstition. In Milan, where the terror and panic ran so high, and where the torture extorted from scores of persons an absolute confession of the horrid crime imputed to them, we have in the records of the criminal proceedings abundant evidence of the strange infatuation, ignorance and depravity of both rulers and people. In these enlightened times we are perhaps hardly capable of estimating with strict justice the extent to which an ignorance of physical laws may in times of panic have distorted the judgment of sober men. It is, however, not so much an argument against the application of the torture that it has repeatedly been applied to extort confession of crimes morally and physically impossible, as the fact that by its instrumentality thousands of perfectly innocent persons have suffered. Ignorance may produce great inconveniences but not crime; and an institution essentially bad cannot apply itself "da se." We cannot, therefore, shift the burden of guilt altogether on the shoulders of an ignorance of the possible and impossible, or acquit the judges of a culpable and ignoble terror which led them on to acts of undoubted injustice and violence. In Milan, in the year 1630, many persons were condemned to suffer torture and death for having smeared the walls of the city with an ointment which propagated the plague; we know that this was an impossible crime, but the authorities of that time considered these acts so atrocious and the condemnations so meritorious that they caused the house of one of the principal of the reputed "untori," or annointers, to be pulled down, and on its site to be erected a column, entitled "Infame," or infamous, on which was inscribed the offence and its punishment. This column was destroyed in 1778, and some years ago the author was acquainted with a Milanese gentleman who remembered well this

curious relic of barbarism. The history of the circumstances which led to the erection of this "Colonna Infame " is ably described by Manzoni in a kind of appendix to his celebrated story "I Promessi Sposi," and I propose giving a succinct account of what was perhaps one of the most reckless and blind perversions of criminal justice that history can produce.

It was during the height of the terrible plague, and towards half-past four o'clock in the morning of the 21st June, 1630, that a silly woman called Caterina Rosa happened by misfortune to look out of the window of a kind of gallery that was at the entrance of a street called Vetra de Cittadini, at the end looking towards the "Porta Ticinese," when she saw a man enveloped in a long black cloak and his hat drawn down over his eyes; he had some paper in his hand, on which (she said in her subsequent deposition) he appeared to be writing. She held the man in view, and observed that he kept very close to the wall; and turning the corner, she remarked that at intervals he drew his hand along the wall. Then, added the woman, it occurred to me that perhaps this was one of the persons who went about smearing the walls with ointment to propagate the plague. Taken with such a suspicion, she passed into another room, the window of which looked up the street the man had taken, and here again she observed that he constantly rubbed his finger along the wall. At another window of the same street was another spectatress, named Octavia Bono, who could not say whether she conceived the same suspicions by herself, or whether they came after hearing the rumours that had got abroad. This woman, when examined, deposed to having seen the man from the time of his first entrance into the street; but she can say nothing about his rubbing his hand or finger against the wall. "I saw," she said, "that he stopped suddenly at the end of the garden-wall of the house delle Crevelli,' and I noticed that he had some paper in his left hand on which he appeared to be writing. I afterwards saw him rub the paper on a part of the gardenwall where there was a little whitewash." Most probably the poor man was only trying to clean some inkstains from his fingers, as it seems that he really was engaged in writing; for in his own examination the next day, he was asked if he wrote as he walked along; and he replied, "Signor, si." With regard to his having kept so close to the wall, he said that it was to get shelter as it was raining. And that it was raining Caterina herself deposed; but the following ingenious conclusion was drawn from this circumstance: "It is probable that a rainy morning would be chosen expressly, so that persons passing along the street under shelter of the wall might more readily brush their clothes against the ointment." After the unfortunate man had reached the end of the street he turned back, and just on reaching the corner from whence Caterina Rosa had been watching his proceedings, by another piece of misfortune, he encountered a person entering the street, who saluted him. Caterina, who in order to see everything had again returned to the window of the first room, looking out, asked the other man who it was he had saluted. He replied that he knew him only by sight, but that he was one of the sanitary commissioners.

Then I said, deposed Caterina, "I have seen him doing certain things that do not please me at all;" and going out we observed that the walls were smeared with a yellowish-looking ointment. The other woman deposed also to having seen the walls smeared with ointment of a yellow colour. Thus commenced this extraordinary judicial investigation. It never seems to have struck any one as singular that a man engaged in such a kind of work should have waited until after sunrise to do it, or that he should have gone along without once looking up at the windows to see if he was observed, or even how it was that he could handle with impunity an ointment that was to kill those who merely brushed their clothes against it in passing. The inhabitants of the street, under the influence of fright, soon discovered all kinds of ominous marks and smears, which had probably been unnoticed before their eyes for years, and in trepidation and haste they set about burning straw all along the wall to disinfect it. Residing in the same street was a barber called Giangiancomo Mora, and he like many of the others imagined that the walls of his house had been smeared with the ointment. He little knew, unhappy wretch, what other and more real danger was hanging over him, and from the action of that same commissioner. The story of the two women was soon enriched by new circumstances. A son of the barber Mora being examined was asked, "if he knew or had heard in what manner the said commissioner smeared the said walls and houses," replied, "I heard that a woman living over the portico traversing the Via Vetra-I do not know her name-had said that the commissioner smeared the walls with a pen; holding a jar in the other hand." Very likely Caterina had spoken of a pen, and it is easy to divine what other article she had baptised a jar; but to a mind that could see nothing but poisonous ointment a pen might possibly have a more intimate connection with a jar than with an inkstand. One circumstance however was true: the man was a sanitary commissioner, and from this indication he was found to be one "" Gugliemo Piazza.”

"It has been signified to the Senate that yesterday morning the walls and doors of the houses in the Via Vetra de Cittadini have been smeared with a pestilential ointment," said the Chief Justice to the criminal notary; and with these words, already full of a deplorable certainty, and passed without correction from the mouths of the people into those of the magistrates, the process commenced. Gugliemo Piazza had been arrested and his house searched from top to bottom, but nothing had been found. Questioned as to his profession-his ordinary habits-on the walk he had taken the previous morning-on the clothes he wore, &c., they at length asked him, "Have you heard that certain walls in the Via Vetra, particularly towards the Porta Ticinese,' have been smeared with a poisonous ointment?" He replied; "I don't know, because I didn't stop at the Porta Ticinese." This was considered to be improbable, and to this question four times repeated, he replied four times the same thing in different words. Again, among the facts of the previous day of which Piazza

had spoken was his having been in the company of certain parochial deputies (these were gentlemen elected in each parish by the sanitary tribunal to watch over and enforce the execution of their orders). He was asked who were these deputies, and he replied, "I do not know their names, I know them only by sight." This was also pronounced improbable —a terrible word, to understand the importance of which it is necessary to remark, that the judges could only legally inflict the torture when it had been proved that the prisoner had lied in his answers to the questions put to him, but the law also stated that the lie or lies must regard the substantial circumstances of the crime imputed; beyond this the infliction of the torture was left entirely to the discretion of the judges. How far these improbabilities were reasonable we leave to the reader. The judges now intimated to the prisoner that he should state plainly and openly "why he denied knowing that the walls of the said street had been smeared, and why he denied a knowledge of the names of the deputies; these things being palpable falsehoods. If, therefore, he persisted in this denial he would be put on the cords, so as to extort from him the truth regarding these circumstances." "If you should also put the collar on my neck I know no more than what I have told you," replies the poor man, with that kind of desperate courage with which reason will sometimes defy force, as if to show that whatever it can do it cannot make truth falsehood. The unfortunate wretch is forthwith put to the torture on the cords, and he is asked if he has resolved to tell the truth. "I have said it, SignoriI have said it," he persists. "Oh for the love of God let me down. I will say all I know. Oh, Heavens! make them give me a little water." Presently he is let down and placed on a seat, but now again replies, "I know no more than I have told you. Oh, Signori, make them give me some water."

He is reconducted to his coll, and the examination recommences on the 23rd June. The tribunal now decrees that "Gugliemo Piazza," after having been shaven, redressed, and purged, shall be put to severer tortures than before with the fine cords (an atrocious addition, which dislocates both arms and hands), at the discretion of the president of the sanitary commission and the chief justice, in consequence of certain falsehoods on the part of the accused-resulting from the process. In order to understand the meaning of the first part of the order, viz., that the accused shall be first shaven, redressed, and purged, it is necessary to remark that in those times it was firmly believed that, either in the hair, in the skin, in the clothes, or even in the intestines, there might be some amulet or charm, which these precautions were intended to counteract. The miserable Piazza is again submitted to new and severer tortures; but nothing is extracted from him beyond the following pathetic outcries :"Oh, my God! what assassination is this! Oh, Signor President, make them kill me, make them cut off my hand-kill me-kill me! At least, let me rest a little. Oh, for the love of God, let me have some water! I know nothing. I have said all I know." After repeated requests to VOL. XVI, No. 92. 12.