which are thought worthy of a visit." "We live here, sir, apart from the world. It is for that reason we have selected this residence," replied she, coldly. "I shall respect your seclusion, madame," answered he, with a deep bow, "and only beg once more to tender my sincere apologies for the past. He moved towards the door as he spoke, the ladies curtsied deeply, and with a still lowlier reverence he passed out. The Duke lingered in the garden, as though unwilling to leave the spot. For a while some doubt as to whether he had been recognised passed through his mind, but he soon satisfied himself that such was not the case, and the singularityof the situation amused him. "I am culling a souvenir, madame," said he, plucking a moss-rose as the lady passed. "I will give you a better one, sir," said she, detaching one from her bouquet, and handing it to him,—and so they parted. "Per Bacco! Stubber, I have seen two very charming women. They are evidently persons of condition; find out all about them, and let me hear it to-morrow;"-and so saying, his Highness rode away, thinking pleasantly over his adventure, and fancying a hundred ways in which it might be amusingly carried out. The life of princes is rarely fertile in surprises; perhaps, therefore, the uncommon and the unusual are the pleasantest of all their sensations. CHAPTER II. ITALIAN TROUBLES. STUBBER knew his master well. There was no need for any perquisitions on his part; the ladies, the studio, and the garden were totally forgotten ere nightfall. Some rather alarming intelligence had arrived from Carrara, which had quite obliterated every memory of his late adventure. That little town of artists had long been the resort of an excited class of politicians, and it was more than rumoured that the "Carbonari," had established there a lodge of their order. Inflammatory placards had been posted through the town-violent denunciations of the government-vengeance, even on the head of the sovereign, openly proclaimed, and a speedy day promised when the wrongs of an enslaved people should be avenged in blood. The messenger who brought the alarming tidings to Massa carried with him many of the inflammatory documents, as well as several knives and poinards, discovered by the activity of the police in a ruined building at the sea shore. No arrests had as yet been made, but the authorities were in possession of information with regard to various suspicious characters, and the police prepared to act at a moment's notice. It was an hour after midnight when the council met, and the Duke sat pale, agitated, and terrified at the table, with Landetti, the prime min ister, Capreni, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and General Ferrucio, the War Minister,—a venerable ecclesiastic, Monsignore Abbati, occupying the lowest place in virtue of his humble station, as confessor of his Highness. He who of all others enjoyed his master's confidence, and whose ready intelligence was most needed in the emergency, was not present; his title of Minister of the Household not qualifying him for a place at the council. Whatever the result, the deliberation was a long one. Even while it continued, there was time to despatch a courier to Carrara, and receive the answer he brought back; and when the Duke returned to his room, it was already far advanced in the morning. Fatigued and harassed, he dismissed his valet at once, and desired that Stubber might attend him. When he arrived, however, his Highness had fallen off asleep, and lay, dressed as he was, on his bed. Stubber sat noiselessly beside his master, his mind deeply pondering over the events which, although he had not been present at the council, had all been related to him. It was not the first time he had heard of that formidable conspiracy, which, under the title of the Carbonari, had established them, selves in every corner of Europe. In the days of his humbler fortune he had known several of them intimately; he had been often solicited to join their band; but while steadily refusing this, he had detected much which to his keen intelligence savored of treachery to the cause amongst them. This cause was necessarily recruited from those whose lives rejected all honest and patient labor. They were the disappointed men of every station, from the highest to the lowest. The ruined gentleman--the beggared noble-the bankrupt trader -the houseless artizan---the homeless vagabond, were all there; bold, daring and energetic, fearless as to the present, reckless as to the future. They sought for any change, no matter what, seeing that in the convulsion their own condition must be bettered. Few troubled their heads how these changes were to be accomplished-they cared little for the real grievances they assumed to redress their work was demolition. It was to the hour of pillage alone they looked for the recompense of their hardhihood. Some, unquestionably, took a different view of the agencies and the objects; dreamy speculative men, with high aspirations, hoped that the cruel wrongs which tyranny inflicted on many a European state might be effectually curbed by a glorious freedom--when each man's actions should be made conformable to the benefit of the community, and the will of all be typified in the conduct of each. There was, however, another class, and to these Stubber had given deep attention. It was a party whose singular activity and energy were always in the ascendant-ever suggesting bold measures whose results could scarcely be more than menaces, and advocating actions whose greatest effect could not rise above acts of terror and dismay. And thus while the leaders plotted great political convulsions, and the masses dreamed of sack and pillage, these latter dealt in acts of suicidal assassination--the vengeance of the poinard and the poison cup. These were the men Stubber had studied with no common attention. He fancied he saw in them neither the dupes of their own excited imaginations, nor the reckless followers of rapine, but an order of men equal to the former by intelligence, but far transcending the last in crime and infamy. In his own early experiences he had perceived that more than one of these had expatriated themselves suddenly, carrying away to foreign shores considerable wealth, and that, too, under circumstances where the acquisition of property seemed scarcely possible. Others, he had seen, as suddenly throwing off their political associates, run into stations of rank and power; and one memorable case he knew, where the individual had become the chief adviser of the very state whose destruction he had sworn to accomplish. Such a one he now fancied he had detected among the advisers of his Prince, and, deeply ruminating on this theme, he sat at the bed-side. "Is it a dream, Stubber, or have we really heard bad news from Carrara? Has Fraschetti been stabbed, or not? "Yes, your Highness, he has been stabbed, exactly two inches below where he was wounded in September last-then it was his pocket-book saved him; now it was your Highness's picture, which, like a faithful follower, he always carried about him. "Which means, that you disbelieve the whole story." 66 Every word of it.” "And the poinards found at the Bocca de Magni ?" "Found by those who placed them there." "And the proclamations?" "Blundering devices. See, here is one of them, printed on the very paper supplied to the Government offices. There's the water mark, with the crown and your own cypher on it." "Per Bacco ! so it is. Let me show this to Landetti." "Wait a while, your Highness; us trace this a little further. arrests have been made." "None." let No "Nor will any. The object in view is already gained; they have terrified. you, and secured the next move." "What do you mean ?” "Simply, that they have persuaded you that this state is the hotbed of revolutionists; that your own means of security and repression are unequal to the emergency; that disaffection exists in the army; and that, whether for the maintenance of the government or your safety, you have only one course remaining." "Which is--” "To call in the Austrians." "Per Bacco! it is exactly what they have advised. How did you come to know it? Who is the traitor at the council board?" "I wish I could tell you the name of one who was not such. Why, your Highness, these fellows are not your ministers, except in so far as they are paid by you. They are Metternich's people; they receive their appointments from Vienna, and are only accountable to the cabinet held at Schoenbrunn. If wise and moderate counsels prevailed here, if our financial measures prospered, if the people were happy and contented, how long, think you, would Lombardy submit to be ruled by the rod and the bayonet? Do you imagine that you will be suffered to give an example to the peninsula of a good administration ?" "But so it is," broke in the Prince; "I defy any man to assert the opposite. The country is prosperous, the people are contented, the laws justly administered, and, I hesitate not to say, myself as popular as any sovereign of Europe." And I tell your Highness, just as distinctly, that the country is ground down with taxation, even to export duties on the few things we have to export-that the people are poor to the very verge of starvationthat if they do not take to the highways as brigands, it is because their traditions as honest men yet survive amongst them-that the laws only exist as an agent of tyranny, arrest and imprisonment being at the mere caprice of the authorities. Nor is there a means by which an innocent man can demand his trial, and insist on being confronted with his accuser. Your jails are full, crowded to a state of pestilence with supposed political offenders, men that, in a free country, would be at large, toiling industriously for their families, and whose opinions could never be dangerous, if "And why not, sir? Of what value could such a man as I am be to your service, if I were not to tell you what you'll never hear from othersthe plain, simple truth? Is it not clear enough that if I only thought of my own benefit, I'd say whatever you'd like best to hear-I'd tell you, like Landetti, that the taxes were well paid, or say, as Cerreccio did, t'other day, that your army would do credit to any state in Europe; when he well knew at the time, that the artillery was in mutiny from arrears of pay, and the cavalry horses dying from short rations !" "I am well weary of all this," said the duke, with a sigh. "If the half of what I hear of my kingdom, every day, be but true, my lot in life is worse than a galley-slave's. One assures me that I am bankrupt; another calls me a vassal of Austria; a third makes me out a Papal spy; and you aver that if I venture into the streets of my own town-in the midst of my own people, I am almost sure to be assassinated!" "Takeno man's word, sir, for what, while you can see for yourself, it is your own duty to ascertain," said Stubber resolutely. "If you really only desire a life of ease and indolence, forgetting what you owe to yourself and those you rule over, send for the Austrians. Ask for a brigade and a general. You'll have them for the asking. They'd come at a word, and try your people at the drum head, and flog and shoot them with as little disturbance to you as need be! You may pension off the judges; for a court martial is a far speedier tribunal, and a corporal's guard is quite an economy in criminal justice. Trade will not perhaps prosper with martial law, nor is a state of siege thought favourable to commerce. No matter. You'll sleep safe so long as you keep within doors, and the band under your window will rouse the spirit of nationality in your heart, as it plays, not festering in the foul air of a dun-God preserve the Emperor !" “And you dare to speak thus to me, Stubber!" said the Prince, his face covered with a deadly pallor as he spoke, and his white lips trembling, but less in passion than in fear. "You forget yourself, sir, and you forget me!" said the Duke sternly, as he drew himself up, and threw a look of insolent pride at the speaker. "Mayhap I do, your Highness," was the ready answer, "and out of that very forgetfulness let your Highness take a warning. I say, once more, I distrust the people about you, and as to this conspiracy at Carrara, I'll wager a round sum on it, that it was hatched on t'other side of the Alps, and paid for in good florins of the Holy Roman Empire. At all events, give me time to investigate the matter. Let me have 'till the end of the week to examine into it, and if I find nothing to confirm my views, I'll say "Take your own way; I promise OUR COAST. BY FRANCIS DAVIS. I. God bless the towers and temples, For no work of mighty Nature Nor a stone there ever tinkled 'Neath the craftsman's peaceful steel, That guard our northern strand,- Save where some wizard vale or bay In their hurricane career- Through your cold eternal stone, LET US BOW TO MIND ALONE- Save the holy right of shining II. Bless the teachers of those tenets, III. Oh ye high and heaven-crowned ones,- Tempest-shorn and dew-anointed, Ah! they're more than priestly lessons, As the dark or light he hymneth,- From its oftener-coming guests. May its first or fount declare, |