The summer before last, after a shocking soaking in crossing the Apennines, I contracted one of those miserable fevers that nature seems to exact as a toll from unfortunate Trans-Alpines for a summer's residence in Italy. I had no faith in Italian doctors, and as there was no medical man from my own country in Florence, I was persuaded to call in Doctor Playfair a Scotch physician, long domiciled in Italy, and as I afterwards discovered, both a skillful practitioner and a charming companion. I was kept kicking my heels against the footboard in all some six weeks, and when I had become sufficiently convalescent to sit up, the doctor used to make me long and friendly visits. In these visits he kept me posted up with all the chit-chat of the town; and upon one occasion related to me, better than I can tell it, the following story, of the truth of which (in all seriousness), he was perfectly satisfied, having heard it from the mouth of one of the parties concerned. "Do throw some _bajocchi_ to those clamorous natives, my dear Republican, that I may proceed with my story in peace." Well, then, to give you a little preliminary history--don't be alarmed--a very little. The liberal government established in Naples in the winter of 1820-21, on the basis of the Spanish Cortes of 1812, was destined to a speedy dissolution. The despotic powers of the Continent, at the instigation of Austria, refused to enter into diplomatic relations with a kingdom which had adopted the representative system, after an explicit and formal engagement to maintain the institutions of absolutism. An armed intervention was decided upon at the Congress of Laybach, with the full consent and approbation of Ferdinand I., who treacherously abandoned the cause of his subjects. It was agreed to send an Austrian army, backed by a Russian one, into the Neapolitan dominions, for the purpose of putting down the Carbornari and other insurgents who, to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand men, badly armed, badly clothed, and badly disciplined, had assembled under the command of that notorious adventurer, Guiliemo Pepe, for the protection of those feebly secured liberties which had resulted to their country from the Sicilian revolution of the previous summer. This foreign force was to be maintained entirely at the expense of Ferdinand, and to remain in his kingdom, if necessary, for three years. The feeble resistance offered by the patriots to the invading forces--their defeat at the very outset--and their subsequent flight and disbandment--constitute one of those disgraceful denouements so common to Italian attempts at political regeneration. "By all the storks in Holland," exclaimed the Dutchman, "cut short your story--I see nothing in it particularly enlivening." "_Badinage à part_," resumed the Frenchman, "I have done in a word."