440

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

of his son; but, alas! both were seized, condemned to death,and executed together in the market-place of Cosenza !

In the forest of San Biaso, a brigand wandering with hiswife, the latter was delivered of a child which, she feared,might impede them in their flight, and also suffer from thehardships of living in the open air. The poor creature ven-tured in the middle of the night, into the city of Nicastro,and going to the house of a friend, with tears and maternalagony, consigned to her her only child,—then swiftlyreturned to her husband in the forest with some breadand meat provided by her friend. How this fact transpiredI do not know, but I do know that the kind receiver of theinfant was tried for the offence of “ aiding brigands,” andwas executed ! The child, a boy, was handsomely providedfor by King Joachim.

The state of society and social feeling became like that inwhich we see the victims to a shipwreck or a plague ; eachperson caring only for self,-—all other sentiments beingabsorbed in the desperate catastrophe. So atrocious a stateof feeling could not fail of injuring the social morals ;—but,let it be remembered, that to the English were the Cala-brians indebted for the importation of brigandism whichsubverted every sentiment of humanity. The shock itselfwas not of long duration, for out of upwards of threethousand brigands notified as existing on the 10th ofNovember,—by the end of the year not even one remained atlarge in the kingdom of Naples. Some few had escaped totheir English friends in Sicily , and not more than twentywere in prison awaiting their trials.

Amidst thousands of romantic cases of flights, pursuits*combats, deaths, that only require th e real facts to berecorded in order to produce matter for the melo-drame ornovel, I can only afford space for two brief cases whichwere witnessed by intimate friends of mine. • A chief of