was prohibited, and its author banished.

A book entitled _Histoire de la tyrannie et des exces dont se rendirent
coupables les Habitans de Padoue dans la guerre qu'ils eurent avec ceux de
Vicence, par Arlotto, notaire a Vicence_, carries us back to the stormy
period of the fourteenth century, when Italy was distracted by war, the
great republics ever striving for the supremacy. Arlotto wrote an account
of the cruelties of the people of Padua when they conquered Vicenza, who,
in revenge, banished the author, confiscated his goods, and pronounced
sentence of death on any one who presumed to read his work. Happily
Vicenza succeeded in throwing off the yoke of Padua, and Arlotto recovered
his possessions. This book was so severely suppressed that its author
searched in vain for a copy in order that he might republish it, and only
the title of his work is known.

Genoa too has its literary martyrs, amongst whom was Jacopo Bonfadio, a
professor of philosophy at that city in 1545. He wrote _Annales Genuendis,
ab anno_ 1528 _recuperatae libertatis usque ad annum_ 1550, _libri quinque
(Papiae_, 1585, in-4). His truthful records aroused the animosity of the
powerful Genoese families. The Dorias and the Adornos, the Spinolas and
Fieschi, were not inclined to treat tenderly so daring a scribe, who
presumed to censure their misdeeds. They proceeded to accuse the author of
a crime which merited the punishment of death by burning. His friends
procured for him the special favour that he should be beheaded before his
body was burnt. The execution took place in 1561. The annals have been
translated into Italian by Paschetti, and a new Latin edition was
published at Brescia in 1747.

Books have sometimes been fatal, not only to authors, but to their
posterity also; so it happened to the famous French historian De Thou, who