THE DECLINE AND FALL

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chap, multitudes, who implored heaven for the success’ of their undertaking. Could passion have lis-tened to reason; could private interest haveyielded to the public welfare; the supreme tri-bunal and confederate union of the Italian re-public might have healed their intestine discord,and closed the Alps against the barbarians ofthe North. But the propitious season hadelapsed; and if Venice, Florence, Sienna, Peru-gia , and many inferior cities, offered their livesand fortunes to the good estate, the tyrants ofLombardy and Tuscany must despise, or hate,the plebeian author of a free constitution. Fromthem, however, and from every part of Italy , thetribune received the most friendly and respect-ful answers: they were followed by the ambas-sadors of the princes and republics: and in thisforeign conflux, on all the occasions of pleasureor business, the low-born notary could assumethe familiar or majestic courtesy of a sovereign/The most glorious circumstance of his reign wasan appeal to his justice from Lewis king of Hun-gary , who complained, that his brother, and herhusband, had been perfidiously strangled byJane queen of Naples:* her guilt or innocence

f It nai thus that Oliver Cromwell ’* old acquaintance, who remem-bered hi* vulgar and ungracious entrance into the house of commons,were astonished at the case aud majesty of the protector on his throne(see Harris’s Life of Cromwell, p. 27-34, from Clarendon, Warwick,Whitelock, Waller, &c.). The consciousness of merit and power willsometimes elevate the manners to the station.

c See the causes, circumstances, and effects, of the death of Andrewin Giannonc (tom. iii, 1. xxiii, p. 220 229) and the Life of Petrarch(Memoires : tom. ii, p. 143-148, 245 250, 376-379, notes, p. 21-37),The abh£ de Sade tviihei to extenuate her guilt.