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they had wrested it from the unfortunate house of Torriani, in 1285.

Francesco enjoyed the friendship of Cosmo de' Medici, and of the houses of Este, Gonzaga, and Montefeltro. He possessed the affection of an excellent wife, and was kind, just, and true in all his domestic relations, while his encouragement of arts and commerce obtained the gratitude of his subjects. But though the Milanese rejoiced under his equitable rule, the vices of his successors too soon proved to them that they had only exchanged one race of tyrants for another.

THE TWO FOSCARI.

A. D. 1445.

THE inflexible severity displayed by the Venetian senate towards Carrara and Carmagnola, soon afterwards found new objects for its exercise in the persons of Francesco and Giacopo Foscari, to whom, as the chief citizens of the state, it might have been supposed some share of mercy would be extended. We often believe ourselves influenced by abstract notions of justice, when, in fact, we are the instruments of headstrong passions;

and while the council of Ten imagined that they were merely judging the Foscari by those impartial laws, to which the prince as well as the peasant should submit, they were in reality the tools of a revengeful senator. This nobleman, named Loredano, attributed the death of his two nearest relations to the elder Foscari, and with bitter irony had made the following entry in his books;"Francesco Foscari, debtor, for the death of my father and uncle;" leaving a blank on the opposite side for the payment.

Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice, having distinguished himself in his youth as an able general, was enjoying in his extreme old age the glory of having widely extended the domains of the republic, when, in the midst of his prosperity, heavy misfortunes put his firmness of soul to a painful test. His son, Giacopo, was accused, in 1445, of having received presents from foreign princes, and especially from Felippo Visconti, Duke of Milan. This was not only beneath his dignity, but contrary to the positive laws of the republic.

The council of Ten treated this affair as if the accused had been a private individual. He was brought before his judges, and before the doge, who, in spite of his near relationship, was not allowed to quit the tribunal. He was cross-ex

amined, put to the question*, pronounced guilty, and sentenced by his father to perpetual banish

ment.

On his voyage to Napoli, in Romania, the place appointed for his exile, he fell sick at Trieste. At the earnest petition of the doge, the council then assigned him a residence at Treviso, forbidding him to quit it on pain of death, and exacting that he should be daily seen by the governor of the city.

Five years had passed, when Donato, one of the council of Ten, returning home late in the evening, was assassinated at his own threshold. Suspicion,

having no nearer object, fell on young Foscari: one of his footmen had been observed lurking in Venice on the night of the murder, and had not been seen since. No doubt he had been the instrument of his master's vengeance! Search was made for him; he was apprehended, brought before the council, and put to the torture, but confessed nothing, having indeed nothing to confess. The council were still unsatisfied; they caused Giacopo Foscari to be brought from Treviso, and made use of the same horrible means to extort an acknowledgment of guilt. The unfortunate young man,

* The strappado.

while on the rack, never ceased attesting his innocence; but his constancy was regarded only as obstinacy. As there was no positive proof against him, he could not be sentenced to death, but the presumptive evidence, which was insufficient to affect his life, was considered weighty enough to justify his perpetual banishment to Canea, in the isle of Candia. It is so evidently unfair that a crime which could not be proved should bring on the accused a mitigated punishment when he ought to have been released from any, that it seems more than probable that the dark machinations of Loredano must have worked on his fellow-senators to adjudge this severe doom. Giacopo, in spite of his earnest entreaties, was sent to Canea, which, from its distance from Venice, appeared to him clothed with tenfold more horrors than his former banishment.

Languishing for the home of his childhood with an intensity, which, if it bordered on weakness, was at least a very excusable one, he perpetually wrote to his father and friends, beseeching them to solicit some abatement of his hard sentence. Obtaining no redress, he at length wrote to Francesco Sforza, then Duke of Milan, entreating his interference on behalf of an innocent and unliappy exile. This letter, committed to the care of a treacherous mes

senger. was carried, not to Sforza, but to the council of Ten.

Here was a new crime to lay to the charge of Giacopo Foscari. To solicit foreign aid was considered treasonable in a Venetian citizen. A vessel was immediately despatched to bring him before the council. On his arrival, the first act of his judges was to sentence him to receive thirty stripes. "It was a singular destiny," says Daru, "for the citizen of a republic, and the son of a prince, to be thrice put to the question; and the torture was this time the more odious, as having no end to gain, for the action with which he was charged was incontestable."

When the unhappy prisoner was asked, between the intervals of the strappado, what had induced him to write to the Duke of Milan, he replied, it was precisely because he doubted not that his letter would fall into the hands of the tribunal, and that he should be, in consequence, summoned to Venice, where he would gladly undergo the torture to have the consolation of once more beholding his parents, his wife, and his children. This touching confession only caused his judges to confirm his former sentence of exile, attended with the aggravating addition, that, as he had formerly been at large in Canea, he should now, on his arrival there, be

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