Brooding from day to day, from day to day
Chewing the bitter cud, and starting up

As tho' the hour was come to whet your fangs,
And, like the Pisan, gnaw the hairy scalp
Of him who had offended-if ye must,

Sit and brood on; but oh forbear to teach
The lesson to your children.

MARCOLINI.

It was midnight; the great clock had struck, and was still echoing through every porch and gallery in the quarter of ST. MARK, when a young Citizen, wrapt in his cloak, was hastening home under it from an interview with his Mistress. His step was light, for his heart was so. Her parents had just consented to their marriage; and the very day was named. "Lovely GIULIETTA!" he cried, " And shall I then call thee mine at last? Who was ever so blest as thy MARCOLINI?" But as he spoke, he stopped; for something glittered on the pavement before him. It was a scabbard of rich workmanship; and the discovery, what was it but an earnest of good fortune? "Rest thou there!" he cried, thrusting it gaily into his belt. "If another claims thee not, thou hast changed masters!" and on he went as before, humming the burden of a song which he and his GIULIETTA had been singing together. But

how little we know what the next minute will bring forth! He turned by the Church of ST. GEMINIANO, and in three steps met the Watch. A murder had just been committed. The Senator RENALDI had been found dead at his door, the dagger left in his heart; and the unfortunate MARCOLINI was dragged away for examination. The place, the time, every thing served to excite, to justify suspicion; and no sooner had he entered the guardhouse than a damning witness appeared against him. The Bravo in his flight had thrown away his scabbard; and, smeared with blood, with blood not yet dry, it was now in the belt of MARCOLINI. Its Patrician ornaments struck every eye; and when the fatal dagger was produced and compared with it, not a doubt of his guilt remained. Still there is in the innocent an energy, a composure, an energy when they speak, a composure when they are silent, to which none can be altogether insensible; and the Judge delayed for some time to pronounce the sentence, though he was a near relation of the dead. At length however it came; and MARCOLINI lost his life, GIULIETTA her

reason.

Not many years afterwards the truth revealed itself, the real criminal in his last moments confessing the crime: and hence the custom in VENICE, a custom that long prevailed, for a cryer to cry out

in the Court before a sentence was passed, "Ricordatevi del povero MARCOLINI!"*

Great indeed was the lamentation throughout the City; and the Judge, dying, directed that thenceforth and for ever a Mass should be sung every night in a chapel of the Ducal Church for his own soul and the soul of MARCOLINI and the souls of all who had suffered by an unjust judgment. Some land on the BRENTA was left by him for the purpose: and still is the Mass sung in the chapel; still every night, when the great square is illuminating and the casinos are filling fast with the gay and the dissipated, a bell is rung as for a service, and a ray of light seen to issue from a small gothic window that looks towards the place of execution, the place where on a scaffold MARCOLINI breathed his last.

* Remember the poor MARCOLINI!

THREE leagues from PADUA stands, and long has stood

(The Paduan student knows it, honours it) A lonely tomb beside a mountain-church; And I arrived there as the sun declined