Filippo Strozzi, his relative and rival, who had married Clarice de' Medici, was Louisa, the consort of Luigi Capponi. She was very beautiful, adorned with gentle manners, discreet, and virtuous; yet the Duke Alexander appeared to look upon her with an impassioned eye. One Salviati, a friend and creature of the Duke, frequently made use of words and manners towards her, at various festivals, not to be tolerated by a noble lady, whether he acted for himself or as the guiltier agent of the Duke. He had the folly too to boast of this conduct in presence of Leo Strozzi, the brother of Louisa, and after some sharp words the subject dropped. But, returning one evening on horseback from the palace, Salviati was assailed by three persons, and badly wounded in the head and thigh. Suspicion fell upon the Strozzi, several of whom were arrested, but after a strict examination they were acquitted; Pietro even ridiculed his accusers; and the whole of the Strozzi indignantly left the city and retired to Rome. The unfortunate Louisa, after supping in perfect health with her sister Ridolfi, was suddenly seized with dreadful pains, of which she died, and, as it was given out, by poison; whether administered by the creatures of the Duke, irritated at her refusals, or by her own relatives to protect her from a more dishonorable fate, still remains a mystery. The end of Alexander was one well merited by the tenor of his life and reign. Lorenzo de' Medici, called Lorenzino from his small stature and slight limbs, after ingratiating himself into his relative's favor by the basest arts, became his assassin. One evening he in formed the Duke that he had at length succeeded in persuading a noble lady, who had uniformly rejected his overtures to meet his wishes, and, if he would wait for her in his house, he would then conduct her thither. Having dismissed his attendants, he accompanied Lorenzo to his chamber, who in ungirding his sword took care to secure it fast in the sheath; and then hastened to bring-not the lady, but the terrible accomplice of his guilt. Scoronconcolo was one of the most daring of his savage tribe. Lorenzo told him that the intended victim was a great friend of the Duke. "Were it the Duke himself," replied the other, "I would do the business I have undertaken." "You have guessed well; it is the Duke;" said Lorenzo. "It is right—let us go to him," was the answer. On re-entering the room, the Duke, in full expectation, doubtless, that it was the lady, appeared to take no notice of their entrance. "My lord. are you asleep," called Lorenzo, at the same time hitting him a furious blow with his sword across the loins. Starting up, the Duke defended himself with a stool: Scoronconcolo gave him a deep cut across the face, and Lorenzo, pushing him back upon the bed, sprung upon him, and thrust his hand into the Duke's mouth to prevent his cries. The Duke seized the fore finger of Lorenzo so sharply between his teeth, that the latter, fainting with pain, cried to his companion to release him. Fearful of wounding Lorenzo if he struck, the savage coolly laid aside his dagger, and, taking out a knife, cut the Duke's throat as he lay, extricated Lorenzo, and wrapped the dead body in the curtains. His unnatural relative did not escape; pursued by justice, and his steps every where dogged during a space of ten years, he was at length overtaken and assassinated at Venice, in the thirty-second year of his age, his ill-planned enterprize only opening the way for a far more politic tyrant than the last. The ducal annals of Florence abound in those domestic crimes and excesses that stamp the reign of all despotic families, from the grand signor to the czar of Muscovy, writing their familiar history in characters of blood. It was thus, in the seventeenth century, that the lovely and noble Catarina Canacci fell a victim to the jealousy of ducal rank. Incensed at the loss of the Duke's affections, his consort resolved to wreak her utmost vengeance on the fair cause; and, not satiated by the assassination of the unhappy girl, she had the head severed from the bust, and brought to her to contemplate. On days of festival she had been accustomed to send to the Duke some little present, elegantly adorned and presented in a rich silver vessel. On that morning, being new year's day, she took the head of the ill-fated lady, and, decking it out in the usual manner, covered it, and sent it by her handmaid to the Duke. Unconscious of her fate, and dreaming probably of presenting the new year's gift just arrived to his best beloved, the Duke approached it, and withdrew the coverlet. Imagine all the accusing horrors of that moment; the pangs he felt as he stood rivetted to the spot, with his eyes fixed in fearful enchantment on the fiendish spell-work before him! He knew the sorceress, for frequently had she warned both him and his beloved mistress; and he uttered no cry, no complaint. The authoress of his misery consulted her safety by flight, and he was left to the comfortless reflections from which no tyrant is exempt-whether disappointed in ambition, in oppression, or in royal seduction and adultery. From the period when Florence fell under the sway of a petty despot, her history becomes a blank; a gloomy peace, like the sleep of death, shrouded all but her past fame; the genius of her poetry and her arts declined; the ages of her Dante, her Michael Angelo, and her Lorenzo were for ever fled, and, with her liberty, even valour, and beauty itself, decayed. TEMPLE OF THE CLITUMNUS. Along the crisped shade and bowers, MILTON'S COMUS. ITALY, bright and beautiful as it is, has few spots which the wanderer leaves with more regret than the calm, fertile, district of the Clitumnus. No where in the world, perhaps, has the genius of pastoral life had a more favorite abode. In the ages of antiquity, when the influences of nature were the chief source of poetic feeling, it was peopled by the fairest creations of rural fancy, and might vie with Arcadia in the gaiety and beauty of its shades and grottos, haunted by nymphs whose mortal beauty derived a deep and inexpressible charm from the lovely scenes around them, and the sparkling dreams which the poets had sung beneath their bowers. The river had no rival for limpid clearness; its amber waves stole along with a gentle murmur which the listening ear of fancy might well convert into music;and what was there in its bright, azure depths, whispering only to the winds as gentle as itself, which could |