sun. The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. The priest, the
monk, and twenty-two insurgents were shot after the repression. The
heads of the victims were cut off and placed in iron cages where their
wives or mothers were likely to see them. A woman went to Naples to
beg for the pardon of her two grandsons, by name Diego and Emilio. The
King, with barbarous clemency, told her to choose one. In vain she
entreated that if both could not be saved the choice should be left to
chance, or decided by someone else. But no; unless she chose they
would both be shot. At last she chose Diego. Afterwards she went mad,
and was constantly heard wailing: 'I have killed my grandson Emilio.'
This anecdote gives a fair notion of Francis I., whose short reign
was, however, less signalised by acts of cruelty, though there were
enough of these, than by a venality never surpassed. The
grooms-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-bedchamber sold the public offices
in the daylight; and the King, who was aware of it, thought it a
subject for vulgar jokes with his intimates. Francis died in 1830 of
bad humour at the Paris revolution, and was succeeded by Ferdinand
II., to be known hereafter as Bomba--then a clownish youth, one of
whose first kingly cares was to create St Ignatius Loyola a
Field-Marshal.

The revolution which upset the throne of Charles X., and ushered in
the eighteen years' reign of the Citizen King, seemed likely to have
momentous consequences for Italy. The principle of non-intervention
proclaimed by French politicians would, if logically enforced, sound
the death-knell of the Austrian power in Italy. Dupin, the Minister of
War, enlarged on the theme in a speech which appeared to remove all
doubt as to the real intentions of the Government. 'One phrase,' he
remarked, 'has made a general impression; it expresses the true
position of a loyal and generous Government. Not only has the