throat, from which he thrust out a horribly dilated tongue, he dropped heavily on the floor. The altar he never reached, but was permitted at last only a sight of what his impious hands would so foully have polluted. Lampognano, who had secured his arms, seeing himself surrounded on all sides by persons who evinced no very favorable signs of protection, or even friendship, resolved to consummate the oath he had taken on the preceding night with his companions, and he plunged his dagger up to the hilt in the breast of the fallen duke, repeating it again with the vehemence of despair. His guards instantly rush on the conspirators with their spears and lances, and while, in the unparalleled confusion, Olgiato makes his escape, they prostrate upon the corpse of the prince the bodies of Lampognano and Visconti. "Murderers! meet your worthy death!" they shout, as they continue to pierce them with their lances; and the cry is raised, that Galeazzo is murdered. They flock to the spot in denser crowds than at any time before; each one asks who the assassins are, and the inquirers find a full answer on beholding, stretched on the paved floor, the corpses of two strangers, frightfully mutilated. The music is now all hushed; the bell has done its ringing; all collect about the entrance, and press upwards on each other, in suffocating crowds, to reach the murdered duke. Visconti turns, in his death-struggles, and calls out faintly for his friend Lampognano. "Ha! he mutters sedition yet!" growls an old blue-beard, and he breaks his jaw with the halberd he holds in his hand. He falls back again on the body of the prince, and the two students lie slain on the corpse of him they had so vainly thought to make an offering to the liberty of their country. But all eyes are suddenly turned in every direction around them. "This way I saw him pass,' says one: "he seemed in haste," says a second, and all look eagerly, though fruitlessly, for the third unhappy student, whom they would make a certain and speedy victim to their unbridled rage. But in vain. They permit the corpses of Lampognano and Visconti to be kicked from the holy temple and trodden under foot, while that of Sforza is carried back in pomp to his chariot,- —a sorry contrast to the manner of its previous exit therefrom. The tidings spread like wild-fire through the city; the bells chime in a mournful tolling, and the procession moves back with measured tread to the palace of the duke. Doubtless the multitude would on further reflection have rejoiced at the event, that had just transpired; but the suddenness of such a scene so totally unhinged their feelings, that in the atrocity of the deed, rather than its happy consequences, their thoughts were wholly occupied. The assassins were branded as murderers and traitors; for a long time the city mourned the loss of the duke, and imprecated the hands by which they had been bereft of him. CHAPTER III. "It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! It riseth slowly as her sullen car Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it! She is not rosy fingered, but swoll'n black; Her face is like a water turn'd to blood, And her sick head is bound about with clouds, As if she threatened night ere noon of day! It does not look as it would have a hail Or health wish'd in it, as another morns.-BEN JOHNSON'S CATALINE. From this scene of slaughter Olgiato had hastily found his way to his lodgings unperceived, revolving in his mind all the time the results, that were sure soon to follow either for good or ill. For two days he kept his own company, choosing in solitude to mourn the untimely fate of his friends, and brace himself to meet his fortune, whatever turn it might next take. He would scan the pages of the Roman Historian and Philosopher, which they were wont to read together, and as he sat alone and silent in his chamber, the trembling tear might often be heard dropping on the leaves; although conscious that they had done the state a service,' yet he could not refrain from weeping over their lamentable fate he had the student's heart, and grieved now they were gone he had not sacrificed his life with theirs in so holy a cause. So intimate and lasting are the friendships, which the student forms, that death would seem rather to strengthen than to sever them. He had risen early on the third morning after the accomplishment of his vow, and watched from his window the sun as it rose over the evenly undulating hills that bounded the beautiful landscape, arraying in gorgeous coloring the fair plains below. In the hazy distance rose the dome of the Temple, where the great sacrifice had just been made to Milan liberty;-scattered along the road that led to the city were foot passengers of every class, threading their way thus early to their accustomed places of business or dissipation. He sat in this dreamy contemplation till all the usual passers had deserted the road, seemingly revolving in his mind what should be his next step, for to remain where he was in safety he knew was impossible. Hours flew, yet he knew nothing of the time, and it had already become late in the morning. He rose at last from his seat almost as suddenly as before from the place of his disturbed dream, and putting on his cap paced his room for a few moments in excited haste; then opening the door he found his way to the great thoroughfare, which his anxious eye had so long threaded from one end to the other. He had proceeded but a little distance, when sad feelings of separation from his little kingdom probably forever came over his soul, and he sat down upon a stone by the roadside to take a last, lingering look of every thing that was so dear to him. Crystal tears welled their way up from his heart and through their glimmering film he saw all the flowers of his hopes faded or crushed at his feet: his house was desolate, and he might in vain sit, and "List within his silent door For the light foot that comes no more." 6 He drew his hand across his eyes to dash aside the fast-coming tears, and rose from his rude seat to pursue his way onward to the city. Now he went faster and now more subduedly, muttering to his own ear expressions of sorrow and anxiety. He found his way to the Forum, determined first to notice the state of public feeling respecting the late assassination of the duke from the snatches of conversation he might overhear. One he would hear exclaiming, 'Alas for the liberties of Milan, now that its Ruler is gone,' and another in his hearing would inquire who these murderers were, that so boldly took life at no one's command; then dropping his voice would whisper, Has the third, who made his escape so suddenly, been yet found?' The frequency of such remarks and inquiries at last so tortured the mind of our young hero, that in the very agony of despair, though he hoped Fortune might yet favor him, he ascended the stairs on which the public sales were transacted, and raising his voice to an energetic and manly tone, cried out" Citizens of Milan! God has this day raised you up a preserver: that your tyrant has met an ignominious death, is already well known to you all that his unbridled tyranny deserved a forfeit no less than his life, your own suffering has long since sadly taught you: whatever may be your decision, now know ye, that Girolamo Olgiato is the only remaining one of his murderers!" : It would be impossible to describe the variety of emotions that pervaded the breasts of the listening multitude, as these words fell from his lips. At first thought they imagined Heaven had kindly sent them a deliverer, who should guide them in their present troubled and excited state; but on hearing the horrible confession from the very murderer himself, their rage was unbounded. All their love of liberty was at once merged in their horror at the unparalelled atrocity of the deed, and rising up as a single man, with the cry of "Traitor! traitor!" resounding through the whole Forum, they seized on him, and without any form of trial, or so much as counsel from superior authority, hurried him away he knew not where. Dense crowds gathered at every street they entered: every one, when he had learned the cause of the unruly excitement, only joined in it the more zealously himself, and helped to swell the size of a mob the city government might then have vainly attempted to quiet. The poor student is borne onwards by the infuriated crowd, itself scarce knowing whither, till he is brought to the usual place of execution for malefactors: he is disrobed by rough hands of the few garments that had withstood the fury of the mob, and rudely thrown upon the ground: his neck is stretched across the block, the loyal spectators the while signifying their approval by their fiendish yells and shouts; and while the executioner stands over his doomed head, ready to strike the fatal blow, wrapped in the recollections of the past, or in visions of the time to come, and filled with the enthusiasm of the ancient republic, from the pages of whose history he had drunk in the love of liberty, whose language seemed to him in that moment of his country's degradation as alone fitted to express the emotions of his soul, the young hero exclaimed with a loud voice and unfaltering accent, "Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memoria facti!" Thus mournfully died at the bright and elastic age of twenty three, the last faithful, but unfortunate asserter of the Lombard Republic. WATER SPIRITS. HAVE ye not heard of the spirits fair, That dwell in the watery main! That rise from their bed and wanton in air, Then plunge in its dark depths again? How they sport their long tresses in the dallying breeze, Their grottoes all studded with amber and pearls, At calm eventide, when the waters are still, Has pillowed his head in its rest ; These bright water-spirits skim light o'er the wave, While they sing, in full chorus, the song which He gave― The God of the waters-on creation's bright morn, When they sparkled and flashed in its earliest dawn. The forms of these spirits, so perfect and fair, Around them falls loosely their ocean-died hair, At even I lie at the foot of the hill That stares in the face of the river; "HALLO! Tim-I vow, if you aint eternally, in this old grave-yard of yours, digging into some of your worm-eaten boxes forever: eternally at work-eternally drudging and drugging"-exclaimed Bob Sangar, as he entered the lawful precincts of Mr. Timothy Twitter, Physician and Surgeon, an old, long gone-by building of dingy exterior, and internal arrangements to suit. "Tim, I say; don't you know you are not taxed for the open air you breathe? One would imagine you had forgotten that, and for economy's sake had determined to snuff the effluvia of your own compounds and preparations. Come, I'm in for a go to-night; what say you?" "Ah! Bob, my business presses-patients thicken: I have not had time to so much as step over the way this three days. Had three billets of invitations to select parties within as many hours, and been obliged to decline them all,—yes, to sacrifice all for the louder call of the mortar and pestle. But come in the back room, Bob; we'll hear what propositions you have to make, and as this is a Dispensary, I think we'll be able to dispense with some of our business for their sake, tonight." "Ha! ha! at your old game again," retorted Bob; never will be cured of that," and they both moved slowly away to the retirement of an inner room, which Tim was pleased to call his office, where business of a private nature was alone transacted. For the clear understanding of the whole picture, we may premise to our readers that Robert Sangar, Gent., and Timothy Twitter, Esq., were both of them young men, both busied in the same line of profession, and both warm friends for other reasons than these. Bob Sangar was the son of a highly |