the Ten Commandments remain at the core of all the
Pandects and Institutes that keep our hands off our neighbours'
throats, wives, and pockets; still, every year shows that the parson's
maxim--"non quieta movere "--is as prudent for the health of communities
as when Apollo recommended his votaries not to rake up a fever by
stirring the Lake Camarina; still, people, thank Heaven, decline to
reside in parallelograms, and the surest token that we live under a free
government is when we are governed by persons whom we have a full
right to imply, by our censure and ridicule, are blockheads compared to
ourselves! Stop that delightful privilege, and, by Jove! sir, there is
neither pleasure nor honour in being governed at all! You might as well
be--a Frenchman!

CHAPTER II.

The Italian and his friend are closeted together.

"And why have you left your home in -----shire, and why this new change
of name?"

"Peschiera is in England."

"I know it."

"And bent on discovering me; and, it is said, of stealing from me my
child."

"He has had the assurance to lay wagers that he will win the hand
of your heiress. I know that too; and therefore I have come to
England,--first to baffle his design--for I do not think your fears
altogether exaggerated,--and next to learn from you how to follow up
a clew which, unless I am too sanguine, may lead to his ruin, and your
unconditional restoration. Listen to me. You are aware that, after
the skirmish with Peschiera's armed hirelings sent in search of you, I
received a polite message from the Austrian government, requesting me
to leave its Italian domains. Now, as I hold it the obvious duty of any
foreigner admitted to the hospitality of a State, to refrain from all
participation in its civil disturbances, so I thought my honour assailed
at this intimation, and went at once to Vienna, to explain to the
minister there (to whom I was personally known), that though I had, as
became man to man, aided to protect a refugee, who had taken shelter
under my roof, from the infuriated soldiers at the command of his
private foe, I had not only not shared in any attempt at revolt, but
dissuaded, as far as I could, my Italian friends from their enterprise;
and that because, without discussing its merits, I believed, as a
military man and a cool spectator, the enterprise could only terminate
in fruitless bloodshed. I was enabled to establish my explanation
by satisfactory proof; and my acquaint