2. A reward, in ready money, with pardon for this, or any other crime, and a pension of two hundred ducats, re. vertible to children, was promised to any person who would discover the planner or perpetrator of this crime. No such discovery was made.

3. One of young Foscari's footmen, named Olivier, had been observed loitering near Donato's house on the evening of the murder; he fled from Venice next morning. These, with other circumstances of less importance, created a strong suspicion that Foscari had engaged this man to commit the murder.

4. Olivier was taken, brought to Venice, put to the torture, and confessed nothing; yet the Council of Ten, being prepossessed with an opinion of their guilt, and imagining that the master would have less resolution, used him in the same cruel manner. The unhappy young man, in the midst of his agony, continued to assert, that he knew nothing of the assassination.

5. This convinced the court of his firmness, but not of his innocence; yet, as there was no legal proof of his guilt, they could not sentence him to death. He was condemned to pass the rest of his life in banishment, at Canea, in the island of Candia.

6. This unfortunate youth bore his exile with more impatience than he had done the rack: he often wrote to his relations and friends, praying them to intercede in his behalf, that the term of his banishment might be abridged, and that he might be permitted to return to his family before he died. All his applications were fruitless; those to whom he addressed himself had never interfered in his favour, for fear of giving offence to the ob'durate Council, or had interfered in vain.

7. After languishing five years in exile, having lost all hope of return through the interposition of his own, family or countrymen, in a fit of despair, he addressed the duke of Mil'an, putting him in mind of services which the doge, his father, had rendered him, and begging that he would use his powerful influence with the state of Venice that his sentence might be recalled.

8. He intrusted his letter to a merchant, going from Canea to Venice, who promised to take the first opportu

nity of sending it from thence to the duke; instead of which, this wretch, as soon as he arrived at Venice, delivered it to the chiefs of the Council of Ten.

9. This conduct of young Foscari appeared criminal in the eyes of those judges; for, by the laws of the republic, all its subjects are expressly forbidden to claim the protection of foreign princes, in any thing which relates to the government of Venice.

10. Foscari was therefore ordered to be brought from Candia, and shut up in the state prison. There the chiefs of the Council of Ten ordered him once more to be put to the torture, to draw from him the motives which determined him to apply to the duke of Mil'an. Such an exertion of law is, indeed, the most flagrant injustice.

11. The miserable youth declared to the Council, that he wrote the letter in the full persuasion that the merchant, whose character he knew, would betray him, and deliver it to them; the consequence of which, he foresaw, would be his being ordered back a prisoner to Venice, the only means he had in his power of seeing his parents and friends; a pleasure for which he had languished, with insurmountable desire, for some time, and which he was willing to purchase at the expense of any danger or pain.

12. The judges, little affected with this generous instance of filial piety, ordained, that the unhappy young man should be carried back to Candia, and there be imprisoned for a year, and remain banished to that island for life, with this condition, that, if he should make any more applications to foreign powers, his imprisonment should be perpetual. At the same time, they gave permission that the doge and his lady might visit their unfortunate son.

13. The doge was, at this time, very old; he had been in possession of the office above thirty years. Those wretched parents had an interview with their son in one of the apartments of the palace; they embraced him with all the tenderness which his misfortunes and his filial affection deserved.

14. The father exhorted him to bear his hard fate with firmness. The son protested, in the most moving terms, that this was not in his power; that, however others could support the dismal loneliness of a prison, he could not;

that his heart was formed for friendship, and the reciprocal endearments of social life; without which, his soul sunk into dejection worse than death, from which alone he should look for relief, if he should again be confined to the horrours of a prison. And, melting into tears, he sunk at his father's feet, imploring him to take compassion on a son who had ever loved him with the most dutiful affection, and who was perfectly innocent of the crime of which he was accused.

15. He conjured him by every bond of nature and religion, by the feelings of a father, and the mercy of a Redeemer, to use his influence with the Council to mitigate their sentence, that he might be saved from the most cruel of all deaths, that of expiring under the slow tortures of a broken heart, in a horrible banishment from every creature he loved. "My son," replied the doge, "submit to the laws of your country, and do not ask of me what it is not in my power to obtain."

16. Having made this effort, he retired to another apartment; and, unable to support any longer the acuteness of his feelings, sunk into a state of insensibility, in which condition he remained till some time after his son had sailed on his return to Candia.

17. Nobody has presumed to describe the anguish of the wretched mother. Those who are endowed with the most exquisite sensibility, and who have experienced distresses in some degree similar, will have the justest idea of what it was.

18. The accumulated misery of those unhappy parents touched the hearts of some of the most powerful senators, who applied with so much energy for a complete pardon for young Foscari, that they were on the point of obtaining it; when a vessel arrived from Candia, with tidings, that the miserable youth had expired in prison, a short time after his return

19. Some years after this, Nicholas Erizzo, a noble Venetian, being on his death-bed, confessed that, bearing a violent resentment against the senator Donato, he had committed the assassination for which the unhappy family of Foscari had suffered so much.

20. At this time the sorrows of the doge were at an

end; he had existed only a few months after the death of his son. His life had been prolonged till he beheld his son persecuted to death for an infamous crime; but not till he should see this foul stain washed from his family, and the innocence of his beloved son made manifest to the world.

21. The ways of Heaven never appeared more dark and intricate than in the incidents and ca-tas'tro-phe of this mournful story. To reconcile the permission of such events to our ideas of infinite power and goodness, however difficult, is a natural attempt in the human mind, and has exercised the ingenuity of philosophers in all ages; while, in the eye of Christians, those seeming perplexities afford an additional proof that there will be a future state, in which the ways of God to man will be fully justified.

PART OF CICERO'S ORATION AGAINST VER'RES.

I ASK now, Verres, what you have to advance against

this charge? Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated, is alleged against you?

2. Had any prince, or any state, committed the same outrage against the privilege of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient reason for declaring immediate war against them?

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3. What punishment, then, ought to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked pretor, who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cofanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison at Syracuse, whence he had just made his escape?

4. The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to empark for his native country, is brought before the wicked pretor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him but

without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy.

5. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, "I am a Roman citizen; I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The blood-thirsty pretor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted.

6. Thus, fathers, was an innocent Roman citizen publickly mangled with scourging; whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings were, "I am a Roman citizen!" With these he hoped to defend himself from violence and infamy. But of so little service was this privilege to him,' that, while he was asserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution; for his execution upon the cross!

7. O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear; O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred! now trampled upon! But what then? Is it come to this? Shall an inferiour magistrate, a governour, who holds his power of the Roman people, in a Roman province within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red hot plates of iron, and at last put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen!

8. Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his own ric.es, strikes at the root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance.

9. I conclude with expressing my hopes, that your wisdom and justice, fathers, will not, by suffering the atrocious and unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total subversion of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confusion.

HISTORY OF WILLIAM TELL.

BEFORE Switzerland was delivered from the dominion of Austria, a governour of that nation resided in the city of