o, the history of the Corsican national heroes,
Giudice della Rocca and Sampiero, becomes intelligible, nor do we fail
to understand some of the mysterious attraction which led the more
daring spirits of the island to prefer a free life among the macchi
and pine-woods to placid lawful occupations in farms and villages.
The lives of the two men whom I have mentioned are so prominent in
Corsican history, and are so often still upon the lips of the common
people, that it may be well to sketch their outlines in the foreground
of the Salvator Rosa landscape just described. Giudice was the
governor of Corsica, as lieutenant for the Pisans, at the end of the
thirteenth century. At that time the island belonged to the republic
of Pisa, but the Genoese were encroaching on them by land and sea,
and the whole life of their brave champion was spent in a desperate
struggle with the invaders, until at last he died, old, blind, and in
prison, at the command of his savage foes. Giudice was the title which
the Pisans usually conferred upon their governor, and Della Rocca
deserved it by right of his own inexorable love of justice. Indeed,
justice seems to have been with him a passion, swallowing up all other
feelings of his nature. All the stories which are told of him turn
upon this point in his character; and though they may not be strictly
true, they illustrate the stern virtues for which he was celebrated
among the Corsicans, and show what kind of men this harsh and gloomy
nation loved to celebrate as heroes. This is not the place either to
criticise these legends or to recount them at full length. The most
famous and the most characteristic may, however, be briefly told. On
one occasion, after a victory over the Genoese, he sent a message
that the captives in his hands should be released if their wives and
sisters came to sue for them. The Genoese ladies embarked, and
arrived in Corsica, and to Giudice's nephew was intrusted the duty
of fulfilling his uncle's promise. In the course of executing his
commission, the youth was so smitten with the beauty of one of the
women that he dishonoured her. Thereupon Giudice had him at once put
to death. Another story shows the Spartan justice of this hero in
a less savage light. He was passing by a cowherd's cottage, when he
heard some young calves bleating. On inquiring what distressed them,
he was told that the calves had not enough milk to drink after the
farm people had been served. Then Giu