to the hands of the Genoese, and laid
a plot by which the noblest of the Corsicans was brought to death.
First, they gained over to their scheme a monk of Bastelica, called
Ambrogio, and Sampiero's own squire and shield-bearer, Vittolo. By
means of these men, in whom he trusted, he was drawn defenceless and
unattended into a deeply wooded ravine near Cavro, not very far from
his birthplace, where the Ornani and their Genoese troops surrounded
him. Sampiero fired his pistols in vain, for Vittolo had loaded them
with the shot downwards. Then he drew his sword, and began to lay
about him, when the same Vittolo, the Judas, stabbed him from
behind, and the old lion fell dead by his friend's hand. Sampiero was
sixty-nine when he died, in the year 1567. It is satisfactory to know
that the Corsicans have called traitors and foes to their country
Vittoli for ever. These two examples of Corsican patriots are enough;
we need not add to theirs the history of Paoli--a milder and more
humane, but scarcely less heroic leader. Paoli, however, in the
hour of Corsica's extremest peril, retired to England, and died in
philosophic exile. Neither Giudice nor Sampiero would have acted thus.
The more forlorn the hope, the more they struggled.

Among the old Corsican customs which are fast dying out, but
which still linger in the remote valleys of Niolo and Vico, is the
_vocero_, or funeral chant, improvised by women at funerals over
the bodies of the dead. Nothing illustrates the ferocious temper and
savage passions of the race better than these _voceri_, many of
which have been written down and preserved. Most of them are songs
of vengeance and imprecation, mingled with hyperbolical laments and
utterances of extravagant grief, poured forth by wives and sisters at
the side of murdered husbands and brothers. The women who sing them
seem to have lost all milk of human kindness, and to have exchanged
the virtues of their sex for Spartan fortitude and the rage of furies.
While we read their turbid lines we are carried in imagination to one
of the cheerless houses of Bastelica or Bocognano, overshadowed by its
mournful chestnut-tree, on which the blood of the murdered man is yet
red. The _gridata_, or wake, is assembled in a dark room. On the
wooden board, called _tola_, the corpse lies stretched; and round
it are women, veiled in the blue-black mantle of Corsican costume,
moaning and rocking themselves upon their chairs. The _pasto_ or
_conforto