ed
hour that evening.

'When Octavio Baldi came to the Presence-chamber door, he
was requested to lay aside his long rapier--which,
Italian-like, he then wore;--and being entered the chamber,
he found there with the King three or four Scotch Lords
standing distant in several corners of the chamber; at the
sight of whom he made a stand; which the King observing,
bade him be bold and deliver his message; for he would
undertake for the secrecy of all that were present. Then did
Octavio Baldi deliver his letters and message to the King in
Italian; which when the King had graciously received, after
a little pause, Octavio Baldi steps to the table, and
whispers to the King in his own language that he was an
Englishman, beseeching him for a more private conference
with his Majesty, and that he might be concealed during his
stay in that nation; which was promised and really performed
by the King, during all his abode there, which was about
three months. All which time was spent with much
pleasantness to the King, and with as much to Octavio Baldi
himself as that country could afford; from which he departed
as true an Italian as he came thither.'

The presence of Sir Henry in Venice, where he was a _persona
gratissima_, both for his love of Italy and his knowledge of the
language, did much to strengthen the new relations between England and
the Republic. The feeling between Venice and the Stuart kings became
extremely cordial; but on the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1642, the
Republic suspended the commission of Vincenzo Contarina, who had been
appointed to succeed Giovanni Giustinian as ambassador to England. The
secretary Girolamo Agostino, however, continued to discharge Venetian
affairs till the year 1645; and his dispatches contain minute
particulars concerning the progress of the Civil War. In the year 1645,
Agostino was recalled, and the interests of Venice in England were
entrusted to Salvetti, the Florentine resident. Agostino left behind him
in England a secret agent, with instructions to forward a weekly report
on the progress of affairs to the Venetian ambassador in France, among
whose dispatches we find these newsletters from London. After the death
of Charles I it is not likely that the Republic would have been
represented at the Court of Cromwell, towards whom the feeling of Venice
was not cordial, had she