Pubblico, and raise a revolutionary cry; but they being resisted from within, and seconded by no response of the citizens, with whom the existing government was highly popular, the émeute was promptly put down, the Archbishop and its other leaders being instantly hanged from the windows, and their bodies tossed into the piazza. [Illustration: _Alinari_ GIULIANO DE' MEDICI] The melancholy catalogue of crime contains no blacker atrocity, none more fatal by example and social results, than such concerted murders as those of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Giuliano de' Medici. Yet when history arraigns their assassins at the bar of human judgment, due consideration should be given to certain extenuating pleas. The age was one of violence, when life was little valued, and religion exercised no vital influence on morals; when their public and private excesses too often rendered those in high places a common nuisance; when justice and vengeance were convertible terms, the dagger or the poisoned draught their ready instruments. As we write these sentences similar outrages are revived. One looked upon as the most enlightened and most practical of Italian liberals is suddenly called to administer the temporal affairs of Rome at a crisis of singular difficulty. His private life is unchallenged, his public policy untried. As he enters the anticipated scene of his future labours,--the first constitutional assembly ever attempted in a city which had long ruled the world,--he falls pierced to the heart by the poignard of a dastardly miscreant. A crime for centuries disused becomes again national, consecrated by pæans of the Roman populace, who tramp the streets chanting-- "Blessings on the hand That laid the tyrant low."[187] When the dismal tidings reached Leghorn, the mob hurry to the piazza, prompt, like the old democracy of Florence, to overturn existing powers on the chance of new masters. The governor of the city, and guardian of its peace, accepts and celebrates the cowardly murder, by announcing to them from his balcony that "Pellegrino Rossi, a man hated by all Italy for his principles, has fallen by a son of the ancient Roman republic. May God save his soul, and the liberty of Italy!" [Footnote 187: On the 15th of November, 1848, Count Rossi was assassinated on entering the Chamber of Deputies at its first sitting. No effort was made by the bystanders or Assembly to seize the culprit. At night the streets rang with the chorus-- "Benedetta quella mano Che il tiranno pugnalò!" It has been our study to exclude from these pages all allusion to modern politics, or to events as yet untested by time. But when outrages such as this are perpetrated in broad day, and applauded by a people, it becomes all men to protest against lessons calculated to annihilate civilisation, and to reproduce the worst features of the dark ages.]