murdered Constance his mother by plunging his dagger into her bosom, because he could not persuade her to promise him a portion of her property which he coveted. The Pope, enraged by this new enormity, immediately commanded Mon, Siguore Taverna, Governor of Rome, to see the execution of the Cenci performed with all due rigour, and without farther delay. The Governor summoned all the judges to hold a court for the purpose of deciding finally on the sentence; and it was decreed that the females should suffer decapitation, and the young men were condemned to have their flesh torn by red-hot pincers, and to be broken on the wheel. Farinaccio, however, succeeded in proving that Bernardo, a youth of fifteen, had no part in this unnatural murder, and that his confession was merely extorted from him by terror and bodily torments. The intrepid advocate went to the Pope, and pleaded the cause of the youth, with an eloquence so animated and convincing, that he obtained mercy for him, provided he should witness the horrible catastrophe which was to close the career of his kindred. The sentence was executed; and, in spite of the revolting nature of the crime, a universal sentiment of pity for the criminals seemed to pervade the minds of the Romans. SKETCHES OF MEN, MANNERS, &C. EVERY-DAY PEOPLE. My Aunt Edwards is continually railing at Every-day People. She became acquainted with the Cooksons, last Autuum, at Ramsgate: the young folks used to walk together upon the Pier, from morning to night, and when they arrived at the extremity of that noble buttress, old Cookson used to lodge his telescope upon the dwarf granite wall, and let all the young Edwardses, one after another, peep through it at the French coast. My Aunt Edwards and Mrs. Cookson rode over to Broadstairs three mornings in the same carriage: so that it seemed in a fair way of being a thick and thin business. But when the two families returned to London, affa'rs assumed a colder complexion. Aunt Ellwards lives in Fitzroy-square, and the Cooksons only in Gower-street. This is very much against them: indeed, it has induced my Aunt to denominate My them "every-day people." They did well enough at Ramsgate: one must not be too particular, especially since the invention of steam-boats: but my Aunt Edwards must say, that, without meaning to detract from the merits of the man-what's his name (Watt is his name) who invented steam, he has much tag rag and bobtail to answer for at Ramsgate. The fare to Margate is such a trifle: the breakfasts on board are really so very respectable: and the eighteen-penny carriage overland to Ramsgate is so very moderate, that it is no wonder so many every-day people come smoking and dabbling down every Saturday. Knowing the Cooksons to be good sort of people, as well as everyday ones, I begged my Aunt Edwards to grant them a new trial in London: but no, she was inexorable: the residence in Gower-street operated as a bar: Bedford-square she would not have minded; even Russell-place might have been passed over with a suitable apology; but Gower-street could only be tenanted by every-day people. I took nothing by my motion. Whilst on a visit to my Aunt in Albionplace, I became acquainted with Charles Cookson, the eldest son of the subsequently proscribed family. We rode together on horseback to Kingsgate, upon which occasion I obtained much information from him. I bear it, I hope, in grateful memory. He pointed out to me certain hills across the ocean, and told me that was the French coast. Horseback, he added, was a healthful exercise, much more so, indeed, than riding in a close carriage. When we arrived at Broadstairs, he said that Broadstairs was not nearly so large as Ramsgate, adding that the two Piers would not bear a mement's comparison. He, moreover, considered it as curious, that there should be an Albion Hotel at the one place, and an Albion Place at the other. The colour of the sea, too, according to him, was sometimes green and sometimes blue. It seemed to him, the fishing-boats ran some risk in a storm: he considered the company at largate as too mixed: he only bathed every other day; and he thought that Buonaparte must have felt dull at Saint Helena. Upon our arrival at Kingsgate, he pointed up to the inscription over the archway, "Nunc regis jussu Regia Porta vocor," and said "That's Latin." When I said that Lord Holland must have found it a salubrious sgut, ha answered with great quickness, "Yes, but not so convenient as Kensington for attending the House of Lords." When Mr. Charles Cookson complained of the dearness of every thing at Ramsgate, I answered "True, but their season is a short one: they must make hay while the sun shines.' To this he replied, Certainly." Nothing important occurred beyond what I have mentioned. I hope to inherit my Aunt Edwards' Navy Fives, but not her hostility to every-day people. They are a race for whom I have an esteem. Sterne loved a jackass, and Talleyrand's wife took Volney for Robinson Crusoe. "All nature's difference makes all Nature's peace:" and, as I look upon myself as something out of the common way, I hope that I may stand excused for rather liking every-day people. crape. Of the two daughters, Lucy and Amelia, the latter was employed in looking over her own scrap-book, and the former, in folding up slips of paper, and giving them a spiral twist towards the base, without which, I presume, they could not fulfil their office of lighting wax-tapers. He The knocker now began to do its duty. Mr. and Mrs. Sparkes were introduced, arm-in-arm. The attitude was new last year, but it is now becoming an every-day one. Mr. and Mrs. and the two Miss Oliphants came next; the girls shook hands with the Miss Cooksons in great apparent glee, and immediately ran with them into the adjoining drawing-room, to canvass matters unfit for the public ear. Mrs. Oliphant wore a red shawl, and Mr.Oliphant Hardly was I well settled in my cham- limped a little-I fear he is subject to bers in Furnival's Inn, when I received the gout. We had likewise Sir John a card from Mr. and Mrs. Cookson, re- and Lady Dawson, recently from Paris, questing the honour of my company at and a young man in blue from Basingdinner on the Friday following. The stoke. Mr. Charles Cookson, though printer having intimated in a neat Ita- at home, was the last person who enÎian hand, at the bottom corner on the tered the room. The consequence was, right, that the favour of an early answer he had to shake hands with every body was desired, I lost no time in acquaint- in the lump: a ceremony which brought ing Mr. and Mrs. Cookson that I would the colour into his cheeks. While do myself the honour of accepting their standing at the window, the master of invitation. This affair of honour being the mansion told me, that he rememthus settled, I waited in tolerable tran- bered when Baltimore-house stood in quillity the arrival of the day that was the fields, and that duels used to be to usher me into Gower-street. It might fought behind the mansion now approbe that my Aunt Edwards had put it into priated to the British Museum. my head, but certain it is, that, on driv- also recollected Bedford-house, with ing up to the place of invitation, it the two sphinxes at either end of its front struck me that Gower-street had an wall; indeed, he ventured to predict, every-day look. The footman who that upon the falling in of the present opened the door was arrayed in drab, leases, the Bedford property would-be faced with green; and on my commenc- considerably improved. I, on the other ing the ascent of the staircase, he offer- hand, was not idle: I said that there ed to take a visitor's hat as he ascends was quite a new town in the neighthe stairs. They may be right in the bourhood of Regent's Park; that Gowerabstract. A greasy old tatter" of street would be more gay when it felt may be no pretty appendage to a should become a thoroughfare: and drawing-room, but I must be allowed to that the present was a very backward observe, that when a servant thus at- Spring. I believe too, I observed, that, tempts prematurely to purloin one's hat, a twelvemonth ago, nobody could have one sets the family down for every-day predicted that the three per cents. would people. As my hat happened to be a have reached ninety-seven-but of this new one, I determined to get the credit I am not certain. Turning round toof it; so, rejecting the importunities ofwards the company, I now encountered the domestic, I carried it upstairs in my hand. Old Mr. Cookson, on my entrance to the drawing room, offered to shake hands with me, but I was much too polite to do that: Itreated his overture with disdain, until I had advanced up to the fire-place to make a bow to Mrs. Cookson, who sat upon the sofa with a fat middle-aged woman in pink little Crosby Cookson, (christened with a sirname after his maternal Uncle,) by no means an every-day child; quite the contrary, educated at home, and attended by the very first masters. I love to talk to home-educated children; they are the only wise people we have. left. Our dialogue ran as follows:Well, Crosby, are you a good boy?" "Yes, very." "What do you learn ?"- "Every thing." 6% You must have a prodigious memory.' "Yes, I have.". "Who gave it you?" -"Mr. Fine Eagle!" Fine Eagle, indeed, the Bird of Paradise."-" Mamma says, as I shall be eight next August, it would be a great shame if I did not know every thing.' Certainly, what else are the Rules for Memory' good for? Let me examine you: When did Cicero flourish ??. "In the great plague of 1666." "Who married Queen Anne?"-" The Black Prince." "Who strung Cleopatra's necklace?""The venerable Bede.' "Who gained the Battle of Blenheim ?"—"John Bunyan.' "Who was the first Bishop of London?"-" Titus Oates." "Who was the first inventor of gunpowder?" 66 Bishop Blaise." "What's Latin for a carpet?"-"Homo." "There's a good boy, so it is!" The sound of "Dinner is ready" here caused my my catechism to halt. (To be concluded in our next Number.) SELECT BIOGRAPHY. ANECDOTES OF ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN. (No. III). MARIA THERESA. Maria Theresa, empress-queen of Bohemia and Hungary, was the daughter of the Emperor Charles VI., who, losing his only son, constituted her the heiress of his dominions. She was born in 1717; and at the age of nineteen, married Francis of Lorraine, and on the death of her father in 1740, ascended the throne, No sooner had she attained that envied, though dangerous situation, than the neighbouring princes invaded her dominions on all sides; and she being no longer in safety at Vienna, fled for protection to her Hungarian subjects. She assembled the states, and presenting herself before them with her infant in her arms, addressed them in Latin in the following memorable words:-"Abandoned by my friends, persecuted by my enemies, attacked by my nearest relations, I have no other resource than in your fidelity, in your courage, and my own constancy. I commit to your care the son of your Kings, who has no other safety than your protection.' At the spectacle of the beauty and distress of their young Queen, the Hungarians, a warlike people, drew their swords, and exclaimed as with one voice:"We will die for our Queen Maria Theresa.' An army was assembled; and the Queen, who had two powerful supports in her rare talents, and the love of her people, recovered several important places; the Kings of England and Sardinia espoused her cause; and after eight years war, Maria Theresa was confirmed in her rights by the peace signed in 1748. She then directed her attention to repairing the evils which war had occasioned, the arts were encouraged, and commerce extended. The ports of Trieste and Fiurm opened to all nations, and Leghorn extended her commerce to the Levant and East Indies. The city of Vienna was enlarged, and embellished; and manufactures of cloth, porcelain, silks, &c. established in its vast suburbs. To encourage science, the Empress erected universities and colleges throughout her dominions, one of which at Vienna bears her name.— She founded schools for drawing, sculp ture, and architecture; formed public libraries at Prague, and Inspruck; and raised magnificent observatories at Vienna, Gratz, and Tyrnau. Her cares were extended over every class of her subjects; the wounded, old, and infirm soldiers, found asylums in convenient and healthy hospitals; the widows of officers, and the daughters of indigent nobles, were provided with resources in establishments formed for their reception.-But in 1756, the torch of war was again kindled, and was inextinguished till 1763, when the treaty of Hubertsbourgh placed the affairs of Germany on nearly the same footing as before the war: the only advantage Maria Theresa reaped, was electing her son Joseph King of the Romans, in 1764.-The next year, she experienced a great domestic misfortune in the loss of her husband, to whom she had been tenderly attached; the mourning she assumed was never laid aside during her life; and she founded at Inspruck, a chapter of nuns, whose office was to pray for the repose of the soul of this beloved husband. Vienna beheld her every month water with her tears the tomb of this prince, who for thirty years had been her support and adviser. In 1772, she entered into a convention with the King of Prussia, and Empress of Russia, to dismember Poland; and in 1779, augmented her states by a small portion of Bavaria.. After a long and glorious reign, after having beheld her eight children seated on the thrones, or united to the monarchs of some of the most flourishing states of Europe, and after having merited the title of Mother of her Country, Maria Theresa descended to the tomb in 1780. Her last moments were employed in shedding benefits upon the poor and orphans; and the following were some of the last words she uttered: " The state in which you now behold me,' said she to her son, "is the termination of what is called power and grandeur. During a long and painful reign of 40 years, I have loved and sought after truth; I may have been mistaken in my choice, my intentions may have been ill understood, and worse executed; but he who knows all, has seen the purity of my intentions; and the tranquillity I now enjoy is the first pledge of his acceptance, and emboldens me to hope for more." "One of the most consoling thoughts on my death-bed,' said she, "is, that I have never closed my heart to the cry of misfortune."-At the age of fourteen, Maria Theresa was introduced to the council-room of Charles VI.; as she was constantly demanding favours for others, the Emperor said to her one day, "I see you will only wish to reign for the sake of doing good." "That is the only way," she replied, to support the weight of a crown.' Every day of her reign was marked by some act of benevolence. One day, having perceived a soldier who was on duty to be ill, she ordered him to be relieved instantly, and conducted in one of her carriages to the hospital. They informed her, that his illness was only occasioned by poverty, and grief for his separation from his mother, whose distress he was no longer able to alleviate, by his daily labour. The Empress sent into Moravia, a distance of forty leagues, to fetch his mother: "I have the pleasure," said she, "myself, to re-unite you to a son, by whom you are so tenderly beloved, and who must be equally dear to you. I will bestow on you a pension to supply the deficiency of his labour, and hope that your mutual affection may remain undiminished. These (said she) are my 'recreations."-Without any other guard than the love of her subjects, she was accessible to the humblest of her people; "I am only a poor labourer," said a Bohemian peasant, "but I can speak to our good Queen whenever I please, and she listens to me as though I were a lord." One day, the Empress, on returning to her palace, beheld a woman and two children following her, found that hunger had forced them from their cottage, to endeavour to obtain charity. "What have I done," said the Queen, "that such a misfortune should happen in my sight.". She gave them instant relief, and ordering her own dinner to be brought to them, exclaimed, "They are my children, ought they to be reduced to beg?" Shortly after the death of her husband, she had her own coffia made, and worked in secret at her funeral garments, and it was in this dress she was buried. The author of "Anecdotes of Frederic the Great," draws the character of Maria Theresa in nearly the following terms: "She was the greatest princess and the most amiable woman of her age: her judgment was as excellent as her heart; she was formed by nature alone; without having studied languages by principle, the quickness of her judgment always presented her with the most proper · expression. Few women, few ministers indeed, have possessed that quick perception, which enabled her instantly to appreciate what was proposed. "But this advantage was not the only one Maria Theresa possessed. Her ågare, one of the most beautiful of forms, breathed candour and goodness. She heard every one without having prepared with her ministers an answer, but formed it from the discourse addressed to her, a discourse, to which she bestowed all her attention;-no evasions, no deceitful promises, a gracious refusal, or a speedy favour. "The faults of this princess," said Rulhiere, in his history of the anarchy of Poland, were for the most part an exces of virtue. Rather too prodigal of her benefits, and too ready to bestow her confidence to those whose attachment might have been suspected; a slight propensity to indiscretion, from having nothing in her own breast to conceal,. and too scrupulous an attachment to the rules of justice, even in politics." She apparently surmounted this defect in the division of Poland in 1772, when her piety and sense of justice, however sincere, gave way to the aggrandisement of her dominions. M. How lowly then he supplicates that Being Whose mercies yesterday he dared to doubt." A NATIVE of one of the small German principalities, I belonged to the superior order of the bourgeoise. My mother was related to the celebrated Wieland; and perhaps it was the early perusal of his works that first inspired my fondness for literary pursuits. But the situation of my father was such as to preclude my devoting to them the time required for more serious employ. The eldest of a numerous family, I felt both example and exertion were to be expected from me. I gave myself up to the study of the law, and leaving the University at the age of twenty, I commenced my professional career. Not all the vivacity, not all the buoyancy of expectation, so vivid in youth, can alleviate, or at least alleviate but very slightly, the bitterness of a first separation from the home where indulgence has made the happiness of your childhood. I felt it most painful; but here was no farewell like my farewell to Amelie, the companion of my boyhood, and the idol which every thought and hope worshipped; whose naive tenderness and gentle sweetness were even more endearing than her perfect beauty. Our families had been long intimately connected. Already Amelie's mother called her son; but Amelie was as yet only fifteen, and a few years, usefully employed, would lay the sure foundation of the beautiful but uncertain visions of early life. I left them, and applied to the duties of my profession with all the ardour of a young lover, who knows that the accomplishment of his wishes depends on himself. haps there is no security to a young man's principles, or such an incentive to his efforts, as a deep and early attachment. What charm can licentious pleasure find for one whose imagination is filled with the prospect of all that is exalted and refined? or what stimulus can be like that which to him involves the happiness of his life? Early marriages are too often productive but of mutual Per misery ;-often rashly formed and ill assorted. Of necessity deficient in experience, what else can be expected? But an early engagement, while it involves none of the more serious cares and most harassing duties, yet fills up the heart leaving no vacant space for less pure feeling; and we all know how animating it is to look forward, and how delicious it is to hope. Amelie wrote to me constantly; and it was something more than delight to mark how in every letter her understanding developed itself, and her character gradually acquired solidity, yet without losing its so natural grace. I had been indefatigable in my exertions, and exertion was in my case, as it usually is, crowned with success. In six months I was to return to home, family, and friends, and, more than all, to Amelie. It was at this period that I received intelligence of her mother's death. I felt not only grief, but my heart died within me with vague apprehensions of impending evil; and this feeling was any thing but allayed when I heard that an aunt was to take the place of Amelie's parent, for I was not ignorant that, as the widow of a general officer, she had access to the court of our little principalities, and that, naturally given to dissipation and intrigue, her character had not always been free from reproach. But Love and Confidence are twins, and I loved Amelie too well not to confide in her. Six months soon passed, and I returnedto my native city, where for a few weeks I was unutterably happy,-as happy as success, competence, and affection, could make me. Amelie changed but in added loveliness, was all I had hoped, and her birth-day was fixed for our marriage Our fathers settled between them all those necessary arrangements so tedious to a lover; and while they were settling the marriage articles, I was passing my time deliciously in the society of one whose innocence, playfulness, and gentleness, rendered each day more charming. I sometimes fancied I observed a guarded caution on the side of the aunt, never to leave us a moment alone; but it was done so gradually, so apparently by chance her manner to myself was so caressing-she joined in all our projects with so much interest-took her part in our conversation with so much frankness and vivacity,-that her presence soon became pleasantly habitual; indeed it seemed rather a restraint upon Amelie than on me, But I was too happy to think! indifrizance |