or
the Comanches, their education was deemed complete. They required no
teaching to learn how to apply the spoil, and to satisfy their
passions in the hour of victory.

In the year of grace 1806, this sensual, brutal, impious,
superstitious, ignorant, and cunning race endowed Italy with a little
mountaineer, known as Giacomo Antonelli.

Hawks do not hatch doves. This is an axiom in natural history which
has no need of demonstration. Had Giacomo Antonelli been gifted at his
birth with the simple virtues of an Arcadian shepherd, his village
would have instantly disowned him. But the influence of certain events
modified his conduct, although they failed to modify his nature. His
infancy and his childhood were subjected to two opposing influences.
If he received his earliest lessons from successful brigandage, his
next teachers were the gendarmerie. When he was hardly four years old,
the discharge of a high moral lesson shook his ears: it was the French
troops who were shooting brigands in the outskirts of Sonnino. After
the return of Pius VII. he witnessed the decapitation of a few
neighbouring relatives who had often dandled him on their knees. Under
Leo XII. it was still worse. Those wholesome correctives, the wooden
horse and the supple-jack, were permanently established in the village
square. About once a fortnight the authorities rased the house of some
brigand, after sending his family to the galleys, and paying a reward
to the informer who had denounced him. St. Peter's Gate, which adjoins
the house of the Antonellis, was ornamented with a garland of human
heads, which eloquent relics grinned dogmatically enough in their iron
cages. If the stage be a school of life, surely such a stage as this
is a rare teacher. Young Giacomo was enabled to reflect upon the
inconveniences of brigandage, even before he had tasted its sweets.
About him some men of progress had already engaged in industrial
pursuits of a less hazardous nature than robbery. His own father, who,
it was whispered, had in him the stuff of a Grasparone or a Passatore,
instead of exposing himself upon the highways, took to keeping
bullocks, he then became an Intendant, and subsequently was made a
Municipal Receiver; by which occupations he acquired more money at
considerably less risk.

The young Antonelli hesitated for some time as to the choice of a
calling. His natural vocation was that of the inhabitants of Sonnino
in general, to live in plenty, to e