dislodged at the sword's point, he resolved not to die unavenged, and springing with a wild cry upon the ranks of his enemies, slew three of them before he himself perished. The insurgents broke into the convents of the Minorites and Preaching Friars, and slaughtered all the monks whom they recognized as French. Even the altars afforded no protection; tears and prayers were alike unheeded; neither old men, women, nor infants, were spared; the ruthless avengers of the ruthless massacre of Agosta swore to root out the seed of the French oppressors throughout the whole of Sicily; and this vow they cruelly fulfilled, slaughtering infants at their mothers' breast, and after them the mothers themselves, nor sparing even pregnant women, but, with a horrible refinement of cruelty, ripping up the bodies of Sicilian women who were with child by French husbands, and dashing against the stones the fruit of the mingled blood of the oppressors and the oppressed. This general massacre of all who spoke the same language, and these heinous acts of cruelty, have caused the Sicilian Vespers to be classed among the most infamous of national crimes. But these fill a vast volume, and in it all nations have inscribed horrors of a similar, and sometimes of a blacker dye; nations often more civilized, and in times less rude, and not only in the assertion of their liberty or against foreign tyrants, but in the delirium of civil or religious partisanship, against fellow-citizens, against brothers, against innocent and helpless beings, whom they destroyed by thousands, sweeping away whole populations. Therefore I do not blush for my country at the remembrance of the vespers, but bewail the dire necessity which drove Sicily to such extremities. A SHORT CHAPTER ON FROGS. In one of Steele's papers in the "Guardian" is the following passage: "I observe the sole reason alleged for the destruction of frogs, is because they are like toads. Yet amidst all the misfortunes of these unfriended creatures, it is some happiness that we have not yet taken a fancy to eat them; for should our countrymen refine upon the French never so little, it is not to be conceived to what unheard-of torments owls, cats, and frogs may be yet reserved." That frogs constituted the chief diet of Frenchmen was, a few years ago, as popular and beloved an article of belief among British lads, as that one Englishman was equal to three of the said frog-consumers. More extended intercourse has, however, shown us that frogs do not constitute the entire food of our Gallic neighbors, and taught them that _we_ do not all wear top-boots, and subsist solely on beef-steaks. As, however, frogs _do_ form a dainty dish, I will give what the Yankees term a "few notions consarning them and their fixings."