My light-hearted niece returned to me with an air of importance quite new to her, and which did not abate till she observed how exceedingly I had suffered during our separation. I felt reassured on learning that everything depended on the examination of the papers, as I had no doubt they were of a sufficiently innocent character. The shock, however, had been enough to mar my power of enjoying Venice. We did, indeed, go about to see the usual sights; and even the shadow-like attendance of the policeman ceased at length to give us much annoyance. But I saw everything through an unpleasant medium, and heartily wished myself out of a region where the government of pure force seems the only one attainable. At the end of a fortnight, we received back our papers, with many apologies for their detention, and for the scrutiny to which we had been exposed; which, however, it too truly appeared, had been brought upon us by that one incautious expression of Claudia at Verona. Very soon after, we left Venice, and regained the safe shores of England with little further adventure. [_Note._--Let no one suppose that this is in any degree an exaggeration of the present state of things in Venice. Only about a month after the adventure of the two ladies, two individuals of that city were condemned for having been in correspondence with political exiles. One, a nobleman, had his sentence commuted to the galleys, at the intercession of a Spanish princess, daughter of Don Carlos; the other, a bookseller in the Piazza di San Marco, was hanged on the morning of Saturday the 11th October, during the whole of which day his body was exposed to the public gaze. The walls were next day found extensively inscribed with, 'Venetians! remember the murder of yesterday, and revenge it!'--_Ed._] STUDENT-LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE. Most Englishmen know as much about Timbuctoo or Patagonia as they either know or care to know about Oxford or Cambridge. Those, however, who have the curiosity to include such subjects in their knowledge of 'foreign parts,' will find a very pleasant guide to an acquaintance with the geography, language, laws, manners, and customs of Cambridge, in a work recently published by an American student,[5] who some years ago transferred his studies from Yale College to that university. In describing Cambridge, Mr Bristed asks his readers to imagine the most irregular town that _can_ be imagined--streets of the very crookedest kind, houses low and antique, with their upper storeys sometimes projecting into the narrow pathway, which leads the bewildered stranger every now and then over a muddy little river, winding through the town in all sorts of ways, so that in whatever direction he walks from any point, he is always sure before long to come to a bridge. Such is the town of Cambridge--the _bridge_ over the _Cam_. And among these narrow, ugly, dirty streets, are tumbled in, as it were at random, some of the most beautiful academical buildings in the world.