After noticing the defective state of the European law of nations in certain respects, the author from whose work the following narrative has been derived, thus proceeds: “The other case in which it seems to me that the law of nations should either be amended, or declared more clearly and enforced in practice, is that of the blockade of towns not defended by their inhabitants, in order to force their surrender by starvation. And here let us try to realize to ourselves what such a blockade is. We need not, unhappily, draw a fancied picture; history, and no remote history either, will supply us with the facts. Some of you, I doubt not, remember Genoa; you have seen that queenly city, with its streets of palaces rising tier above tier from the water, girdling with the long lines of its bright white houses the vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of which is marked by a huge natural mole of rock, crowned by its magnificent lighthouse-tower. You remember how its white houses rose out of a mass of fig, and olive, and orange trees, the glory of its old patrician luxury; you may have observed the mountains behind the town, spotted at intervals by small circular low towers, one of which is distinctly conspicuous where the ridge of the hills rises to its summit and hides from view all the country behind it. Those towers are the forts of the famous lines; which, curiously resembling in shape the later Syracusan walls inclosing Epipolæ;, converge inland from the eastern and western extremities of the city, looking down the western line of the valley of Pulcevera, the eastern on that of the Bisagno, till they meet as I have said on the summit of the mountains, where the hills cease to rise from the sea and become more or less of a table-land, running off towards the interior at the distance, as well as I remember, of between two and three miles from the outside of the city. Thus a very large open space is inclosed within the lines, and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming a vast entrenched camp, holding not so much a garrison as an army. In the autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven the French out of Lombardy and Piedmont; their last victory of Fossano or Genola, had won the fortress of Coni or Cuneo close under the Alps, and at the very extremity of the plain of the Po. The French clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa, the narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea, which extends from the frontiers of France almost to the mouth of the Arno. Hither the remains of the French force were collected, commanded by General Massena, and the point of chief importance to his defence was the city of Genoa.