The escape of Giovanni Casanova from under the Leads of the Grand Ducal Palace in 1756, as described by himself, exhibits a remarkable combination of patient ingenuity and the most determined courage. The incident deserves to be inserted here in some detail, and will serve to bring home to the reader some of the curious conditions of the inmates of gaols in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The story is to be found in his autobiography, a book of memoirs, the authenticity of which has been seriously questioned, but his prison experiences bear the distinct impress of truth; he writes with a precision and particularity that must be wanting from any purely imaginative fiction. He must surely have acted personally in the events he describes; the difficulties he surmounted were real; the perils and adventures through which he passed successfully could never have been invented; all the incidents and episodes were solid, sober facts. In other respects these memoirs may appear shadowy and untrustworthy. Much of the matter seems too highly coloured and full of exaggeration. This prince of vauriens was no doubt a great liar. We can easily believe that he was constantly in luck’s way, long able to keep his purse full by his winnings at the gaming table; but when he tells us how he rubbed elbows with the best in society, appeared at European courts, talked familiarly with crowned heads and received civilities and high consideration from princes and great personages, we are disposed to question his veracity. He was unquestionably a real personage and the hero of many stirring and surprising adventures, and in none does he show to so much advantage as in his escape from the prison of the Piombi. It is certain that at an early stage of his profligate and depraved career, he came under the grave displeasure of the authorities of his native Venice and was committed, arbitrarily, no doubt, but not altogether wrongly, to the tender mercies of the legal custodians of the Grand Ducal Prison. His arrest put a summary check upon his vicious and dissolute proceedings, but it was not on account of his immorality that they laid hands upon him; his chief offence was that he was supposed to deal in magic and was in possession of certain forbidden books on the Black Art, containing the formulas and incantations to be used in raising evil spirits and communing with the devil.