of his house, by the fact that he prevented the murder of Doria, in his palace, and by the conspiracy itself, the fury of which was directed against the ships of Doria, sparing those of the Republic. It was necessary for Doria that black designs should be attributed to Fieschi, otherwise his fearful vengeance would have been unjustifiable. The slander was profitable also to the Spanish Cæsar, for it took away from his path a powerful family opposed to the Aragonese power in Italy. And as matter of fact, these idle tales, written in Genoa and diffused in France and Spain, were never believed among us. The greater part of the patricians did not credit them for they were Fieschi’s friends and would have saved him if the overbearing spirit of Doria had not imposed his will upon the senate. Such slanders found no credit with the people, who placed their love upon that philanthropic family and perpetuated its memory in national songs. Catiline and Fieschi intended to awaken in their native lands the love of expiring liberty, and in that aim they had the support of many nobles and of the people. The pride of Roman patricians could bend to an alliance with the people, but they scorned to share their rights with foreign slaves. The Count of Lavagna grasped the hand of the people, but he refused the alliance of France. This fact testifies for both to the honesty of their designs; for to a traitor all paths are good so they but lead to his end. Catiline, slandered by Cicero upon the rostrum, fulminates in his turn against his detractor, and though he quits Rome unattended, his exit is imposing and momentous. Fieschi, bending to the necessities of his time, found more quiet and secret paths to his end; and when accused by the minister of Cæsar with seeking to foment a revolution, he confronted Andrea Doria with a frankness which eluded the Admiral’s keen vigilance. From the blood of Catiline sprung the dictatorship of Cæsar; from that of Fieschi, the oligarchic government and the Spanish dominion in Genoa. Doria, becoming the supporter and partisan of Charles V. and Phillip II. prevented Genoa from entering into the league of the Italian Republics against the Spanish yoke. Genoa, united to the enemies of Florence and Siena in the time of those memorable sieges, allied with the enemies of Naples when that people was rising for liberty, the friend of all the enemies of Italy, dates from that period her unfortunate decline. The movement of Fieschi, if he had accepted the alliance of France, might have averted the catastrophe. The French and Republican league might have extirpated the Spanish power in the Peninsula, and saved Italy from forging her own chains. It might have spared Genoa her struggles with the Barbary states, the revolt of the Corsicans, the decline of her commerce with the East and the most disastrous of all her civil tumults.