entury as lord of Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and
Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to death in an attempt to possess
himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for
that time,--fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy,
and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed
innumerable conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin
whom the fame of his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the
Mountain to send against him. As lord of Padua he was more incredibly
severe and bloody in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for
the Paduans had been latest free, and conspired the most frequently
against him. He extirpated whole families on suspicion that a single
member had been concerned in a meditated revolt. Little children and
helpless women suffered hideous mutilation and shame at his hands.
Six prisons in Padua were constantly filled by his arrests. The whole
country was traversed by witnesses of his cruelties,--men and women
deprived of an arm or leg, and begging from door to door. He had long
been excommunicated; at last the Church proclaimed a crusade against
him, and his lieutenant and nephew--more demoniacal, if possible,
than himself--was driven out of Padua while he was operating against
Mantua. Ecelino retired to Verona, and maintained a struggle against
the crusade for nearly two years longer, with a courage which never
failed him. Wounded and taken prisoner, the soldiers of the victorious
army gathered about him, and heaped insult and reproach upon him;
and one furious peasant, whose brother's feet had been cut off by
Ecelino's command, dealt the helpless monster four blows upon the head
with a scythe. By some, Ecelino is said to have died of these wounds
alone; but by others it is related that his death was a kind of
suicide, inasmuch as he himself put the case past surgery by tearing
off the bandages from his hurts, and refusing all medicines.

II.

Entering at the enchanted portal of the Villa P----, we found
ourselves in a realm of wonder. It was our misfortune not to see the
magician who compelled all the marvels on which we looked, but
for that very reason, perhaps, we have the clearest sense of his
greatness. Everywhere we beheld the evidences of his ingenious but
lugubrious fancy, which everywhere tended to a monumental and mortuary
effect. A sort of vestibule first received us, and beyond this dripped
and glimmered the garden. The walls of the v