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they have easily driven rifled balls through plates of wrought-iron sent over for trial by our manufacturers. The question naturally arises, therefore, in our minds-Are our gunners able to drive 68-pound shot through these plates at four hundred and fifty yards, because our plates are not made of proper material? Then, again, we receive notes from individuals of all classes offering suggestions, few of which have been tried, relative to adopting all sorts of armour instead of the uniform heavy plate. For instance, one ingenious gentlemen, Captain John Kempthorne, of the Cornish Volunteers, says: "A plate of iron 1 inch in thickness and 4 inches square, when rolled into a tube, would be capable of withstanding a force at least sixteen times as great when applied to the end of each tube than when received on the surface of the plate." He then proceeds to say, that if a ship was covered with a section of a honeycomb, or two sections, we will suppose, of 23 inches thickness, great lightness, combined with perhaps almost an equal amount of invulnerability, would be acquired. In the same post that brings us this clever idea, which is decidedly worthy of being tested, and probably contains the germ of a great discovery, another writer modestly says: I also add a small idea, a very small one, and that is, it this suggestion of Captain Kempthorne be tried, that the tubes externally and internally (the honeycomb, in fact) be plated over with thin iron, so as to form water-tight cells, adding to the buoyancy of the iron when immersed in the water." One person insists, and he no mean judge upon such matters, that the plate armour is the most primitive form in which the idea could be carried out; and that there are many forms, and angles or curves, fourfold more capable of resisting the stroke of projectiles. We merely point to

these as proofs that much has to be done, and that in the best spirit too, to work out the question to a satisfactory result.

We have for some time been chuckling with the idea that the Frenchmen were all wrong in their iron-clad vessels: they would not float or fight in a sea-way, and that we were inventing rifled cannon which should crack the sides of their ships as fast as they chose to put them in the water. We made a huge mistake; let us be candid and acknowledge it. We are told that Armstrong's 100pounders and the solid 68-pounders lately tried on a 6-inch plated embrasure at Shoeburyness, made no impression, although the stroke was so violent that one projectile actually recoiled back into the traverse where the committee were watching for the effect; and at the same time similar projectiles working against solid granite, carried off such flakes of stone, that the gun's crew within the granite fortress would have been decimated. Can anything be more conclusive? Do not wait for a war, to do things in haste and repent at leisure. Pitch secrecy to the French, call in the mechanical and engineering skill of England and America openly in the face of all nations, and let others match us if they can. For our part, we have faith in the genius of our sailor race; and though England be slow to adopt innovation, it will assuredly be no easy task to preserve the lead against her government and people, when earnestly labouring for a common and holy end-defence, safety, and the commerce of the world. We beat France in our Enfields and Whitworths, we beat her in our breech-loading Armstrongs; it will be strange indeed if we do not match before long that fleet of 300 rifled cannon in iron-clad vessels of war which she is straining every nerve to produce, and, it is aver red, will put in the water, by May

1861!

VOL. LXXXVIII.-NO. DXLII.

2 X

THE ROMANCE OF AGOSTINI.

CONCLUSION.-CHAPTER XXII.

FRANCISCO'S plans were changed after that St Peter's Eve. The kindness of Monsignore moved him as such kindness should, but does not always do. He whom the English Lucy had bound her bright young life to, and who had been able to awake so much affectionate interest in the breast of that saintly old man, was not to fall into alms-receiving because his expectations were so great. Surely no! This incident touched a spirit, in which there was no lack of generous impulses, with that spur of gold which finds out the mettle of the steed. Francisco went to his work next morning, though all the world was making holiday. He finished his Beatrice, though he was sick of her. He made haste with all the other incomplete works he had, which were commissioned from him by the picture-dealer or copy-dealer who specially patronised Francisco, and carried them home to the dingy shop in the Babuino, where they were destined to be hung up among the other Beatrices and Auroras of all sizes and manners, which baited that trap for the Forestieri, and took home with him some other commissions, to which he set himself without delay. His fever was over; he saw Rospigliosi only when he could not help it; went much less frequently to Teta's; lived and contained himself in his little apartment four stories high. If sometimes his thoughts, which he could not withdraw with his person, strayed to that great subject; if in imagination he went over the trial, its witnesses, its pleadings, its adversaries, till the hot occupation of his thoughts made his hand tremble, he gave battle bravely to these overpowering thoughts, and if he could not overcome, at least resisted them, and kept on with a resolution which had little to aid it in anything he could see around him at his everyday labours. Thus he worked through the fervid July, when every window in the Piazza but his own was elaborately closed, shutting out the hot air and sunshine, and

when only in the green half-light stealing through the Persiani existence seemed tolerable to his neighbours. When he could endure it no longer, Francisco shut up his little apartment, took his canvasses and colours, and set off to the hills, where Mariuccia's spare chamber-spare in more senses than one-dark, cool, neutral-coloured apartment, with its red tiles growing grey with the dust of years, its dim grated window, its rustling lofty mattresses of maize, and its dark Madonna on the wall-was most reverently and joyfully got ready for him. Mariuccia spread her best coperta, soft warm cover, quilted with cotton, and splendid with Chinese vignettes in red and yellow on a blue ground, upon the bed, and did everything that it was possible to do in the way of ornament. To be sure, it did not occur to her to clean the window, but neither did it occur to Francisco, who had found an attic with a roof-light where he could paint. He painted Mariuccia in full costume to please that good woman; and he painted a pretty daughter of Gigi, who did more credit to the scarlet jacket and pretty headdress, and who, moreover, if needful, with her smooth black hair, and bright eyes, and olive cheeks, rosy with the mountain air, made a picture which the dealer in the Babuino would not scorn. Francisco, if he pleased, might have gone often enough to that Cæsaretti villa, where the Advocate lived in villeggiatura; and did spend many an evening with Monsignore, who took him up to the roof of his house, and showed him the stars through that great telescope which was the wonder of Rocca, and told the dreaming youth, whose mind was a hundred miles away-or perhaps more like two thousand, wandering after his English Lucy-about suns and systems which, to be sure, the young man knew nothing about, and cared still less for. Monsignore's society, however, was good for Francisco; though the pursuits of the old

priest, who was fond of a gentle kind of science, and amused his placid days with his garden and his telescope, had but small attraction to the young painter with that splendid but agitating light upon his horizon. The two spent many an hour together. Monsignore, always ready to hear and soothe the perturbation of Francisco's thoughts, and Francisco proving at other times an excellent listener, as young people will who have their own visions at hard to escape to, and who have still the faculty of keeping up two threads of interest, and dropping in an answer now and then as if they heard, though their hearts are ever so far away.

In the village Francisco's steps were watched with a secret half-stealthy affectionate reverence, which, it may be supposed, in the depths of his heart, was very flattering to him. Of all nations in the civilised worldpartly, heaven help them, by dint of long service under strangers, and government of unloving rulers, from whom the heart behoved to conceal itself there is none so quick at the art of communicating its sentiments without words as the Italians. Roc ca, in mute gossip, had concluded with itself upon Francisco's rights; mutely they made their obeisances to him, kissed his hand, did him all the honours of the village. They called him Don Francisco invariably, and Illustrissimo, addressed him only in the third person, and conducted themselves like a delighted clique of innocent conspirators, all of whom were in the secret, which only by-and-by, after due preparation, was to burst upon the rest of the world. This secret homage, which had in it something of affection and familiarity as well, brought the young man acquainted with the honours to which he began, with less wonder and more composure, to look forward. Perhaps it was Monsignore's refining society; perhaps it was the simple adoration of these villagers; but, however it came about, it is certain that Francisco changed, even to himself, day by day. He had made no advance whatever in education, none in wealth; in personal comfort, ease, and light-heartedness, the very reverse of

improvement; yet nobody could have seen him now among the crowd of young Romans on Pincio or the Corso, and supposed him simply one of them. Without any help of training from society, a certain distinction of look and manner had fallen upon the young man. The few strangers travelling in the heat of summer among these hills-and they were very few-when by chance a passing party of them encountered him on Monte Cavo, where he went often, never failed to ask who he was; and as he sat there, looking with the eye of a painter over that wide and solemn panorama, the Campagna falling off into long wistful stretches of purple mist, and San Pietro all alone, Rome disappearing in the distance, standing out upon the plain like the magnificent plaything of some giant's child-thoughts new and strange to him began to rise in the thoughtless young heart, which up to this time had neither political creed nor settled opinions. He went to gazedown upon Nemi, with its sparkles of villages, its sweet olive-woods, and that white palace-front where he was born; perhaps to dream over other scenes than that one already so deeply stamped on his memorythat miserable picture of drawn curtains, and closed doors, and whispering women, through the midst of which comes the peasant in her scarlet jacket, with the outcast baby concealed under Cenci's shawl; perhaps to think of a sweeter Duchessa, who will need no curtains nor confidants. But as he sat and mused, other thoughts visited Francisco. He himself was perhaps to be a power and influence in this sad, lovely, silent country-silent, still untouched by the fiery breath of revolution, but with many a thought in its heart. Would it be better or worse for him that he was a son of San Michele, a villano of Rocca? or should he fall into just such a Duke Agostini as all the Dukes Agostini had been? These thoughts came grave and memorable over his youth; and the change grew and increased day by day, when the young painter laid his brushes by, and spent his summer leisure upon far-seeing Cavo in the silence of the hills.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The days and the months, however, went on languidly in spite of Francisco and his thoughts. The .Duchessa still lived, and was like to live, in the unloveliness of her old age; and there was no immediate prospect that Donna Anna, who wanted Rospiglioso's villa for her nursery, would come soon into her kingdom; therefore the Avvocato had no immediate spur of haste to quicken him out of the ordinary routine of law, slow everywhere, and no way ameliorated, as one may suppose, by recognising for supreme authority a bench of bishops, and adding a certain ecclesiastical confusion and intricacy to its natural tedium. All Rome was in possession of the evidence to be given long before it came before the Tribunale; and if the good Monsignore, and his still more powerful invisible little English ally, had not so early taken possession of the field, it is like enough that, in the curiosity, interest, and flattery of the cafés, the young hero might have lost himself. As it was, Francisco held fast by his pictures. If he did not improve in his art as such devotion to it merited, it was most probably because his mind was agitated by the uncertainty and suspense of his position. He added two or three more Beatrices to the stock in the Babuino before that winter was over. He began to have rather a specialité for Beatrices, perhaps because he had done so many that his hand moved freely, without much help from his mind, upon these accustomed traits. The winter passed like other winters; the Forestieri came and crowded out the Romans from those tall houses in the strangers' quarter; murmurs of English, chatters of French, placid growls of German, diversified the sounds on Pincio in those cheerful afternoons; -but there was no Lucy to refresh the eyes of the young painter. Perhaps she was gay in some other gay capital, forgetting her strange, secret troth-plight-perhaps in that wonderful big London, of which the fame had reached Francisco's ears; for the

young man was not aware, in his simplicity, that the English barbarians chose wintry weather for their villeggiatura. It was now a full year since Lucy had said "Farewell" and "Remember" out of the carriage window. He had need of all the excitement of his position to keep up in his mind the visionary bond of that betrothal. Yet who could tell? Any day, according to their fantastic youthful agreementany moment, while the Avvocato tediously dawdled through his preparations, Lucy herself might come to the rescue of her lover with her English fortune in her hand.

The spring was so far advanced again that Teta's tall house was half emptied of its annual guests, when Teta's mother, released by special grace for the day, came to pay a visit to her daughter. Climbing up that long stair was somewhat hard work nowadays to Cenci. She reposed herself, breathless, in the rococo chair, when she had received the salutations of the mistress of the house, and took off her bonnet to enjoy the air more freely from the open window. The hair was very scanty on that old uncovered grey head, on which Cenci, according to the custom of her country, wore no cap; but her life had been a more innocent and virtuous life than that of her mistress, and her face had fared better than the Duchessa's. Nevertheless, with her gay shawl and her heavy earrings, and her thin locks gathered up into a scanty knot on the top of her head, Cenci, in her old age, was not so pleasant a figure to look at as the ample Teta in her Roman fulness. In Italy the old women have not reached to that sweet art of cleanness and whiteness, and sober apparel, which contributes so much to the beauty of age.

"I rejoice myself that thou hast had a good season, my child," said Cenci; "but it has been otherwise in the Palazzo. Ever since this unfortunate young man has been talked of, the Duchessa has done nothing but rage and scold. Holy Madonna!

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My mother, you have lived so long in the palace that you think the Duchessa can do anything," said Teta, with a little pity of her mother's limited experience. Do you think the Tribunale will listen to the Duchessa? do you think even in Rome, where everything goes by favour, and where the idle frati count themselves better than the galantuomini who work for their children-do you think even here that your Duchessa can corrupt all the judges, and keep Don Francisco out of his right? Holy Santa Theresa! if it was possible, the very women would pull the prelates from their seats."

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"You think you know better than your mother, Teta mia," said Cenci; you know the world and the Forestieri; but I, my child, know life; I know it is the great one who gains, and the poor one goes to the wall. Where has he money, this unfortunate, to resist the Duchessa and, besides, she no longer cares for her reputation; she has done so much for the good of the Church that the Santo Padre himself would command her but an easy penance. She will come to the trial-if it comes to be a trial-and tell the Tribunale that he has no rights, this unhappy one. Ah, figlia mia! the Duchessa is very bold when it is necessary. She will overwhelm him with shame,

even though she shames herself in doing it. You call him Don, you others; yet even in her own bedchamber, as Mariuccia well remembers, the Duchessa forbade us to call the infant Don; and hard as it seems, Teta mia, she was kinder to the child than you. You call him Don, you kiss his hand, but when he has fallen out of these great hopes, he will hate to see you; he will think you have wronged him. These are flatteries, my child-nothing more."

"Madre mia, the Duchessa scolds so much that you have the pain at the heart," said Teta. "When one feels bad at the heart, one believes in nothing except what is miserable. Here is your chamber always ready, and why will you still remain a cameriera, to go and come at the pleasure of an ingrate like the Duchessa? When she dies, you must leave her, my mother. Grazia a Dio, thou hast had thy purgatory in thy lifetime! and yet for love of her, who does nothing but scold, you leave your Teta alone in this great house when all the Forestieri are away. Figure to yourself that I make an indiscretion, my mother? I am not so old or so ugly that it should be impossible. Gaetano is gone half of the time, and my mother_will_not come to take care of me. Yes, Teta poverina! thy mother loves the Duchessa better than thee!"

'Hush, bella mia," said the old woman, "you were always wise till you met with Gaetano; and though I thought it a very poor marriage for my daughter, I am very well contented now, and so I know art thou; so away with thy indiscretion; I do not believe in it. Ah, but it is hard servitude to serve the Duchessa ! That is true. Indeed, it is true; only thou knowest I have been her cameriera since she was a bride."

"If it is hard now, what will it be when the Signore Avvocato Rospigliosi," said Teta, dwelling on the name as though some spell lay in its long syllables, "brings thee before the Tribunale, and thou art obliged to tell what happened within those curtains in the Genzaro villa? It will be necessary, my mother, that you tell it before all the world."

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