At the opening of the present century, the armies of the French Republic, after dominating over Italy, were driven from their conquests, and compelled, with shrunken forces, to find shelter under Massena, within the walls of Genoa. Various efforts were made by the Austrian general, aided by bombardment from the British fleet, to force the strong defences by assault. At length the city was invested by a strict blockade. All communication with the country was cut off, while the harbor was closed by the ever-wakeful British watch-dogs of war. Besides the French troops, within the beleaguered and unfortunate city are the peaceful, unoffending inhabitants. Provisions soon become scarce; scarcity sharpens into want, till fell Famine, bringing blindness and madness in her train, rages like an Erinnys. Picture to yourselves this large population, not pouring out their lives in the exulting rush of battle, but wasting at noonday, daughter by the side of mother, husband by the side of wife. When grain and rice fail, flaxseed, millet, cocoa, and almonds are ground by hand-mills into flour, and even bran, baked with honey, is eaten, less to satisfy than to deaden hunger. Before the last extremities, a pound of horse-flesh is sold for thirty-two cents, a pound of bran for thirty cents, a pound of flour for one dollar and seventy-five cents. A single bean is soon sold for two cents, and a biscuit of three ounces for two dollars and a quarter, till finally none can be had at any price. The wretched soldiers, after devouring the horses, are reduced to the degradation of feeding on dogs, cats, rats, and worms, which are eagerly hunted in cellars and sewers. "Happy were now," exclaims an Italian historian, "not those who lived, but those who died!" The day is dreary from hunger,--the night more dreary still, from hunger with delirious fancies. They now turn to herbs,--dock, sorrel, mallows, wild succory. People of every condition, with women of noble birth and beauty, seek upon the slope of the mountain within the defences those aliments which Nature designed solely for beasts. Scanty vegetables, with a scrap of cheese, are all that can be afforded to the sick and wounded, those sacred stipendiaries of human charity. In the last anguish of despair, men and women fill the air with groans and shrieks, some in spasms, convulsions, and contortions, yielding their expiring breath on the unpitying stones of the street,--alas! not more unpitying than man. Children, whom a dead mother's arms had ceased to protect, orphans of an hour, with piercing cries, supplicate in vain the compassion of the passing stranger: none pity or aid. The sweet fountains of sympathy are all closed by the selfishness of individual distress. In the general agony, some precipitate themselves into the sea, while the more impetuous rush from the gates, and impale their bodies on the Austrian bayonets. Others still are driven to devour their shoes and the leather