effort made to uphold the dying power of Venice; or it may be reckoned as a useless waste of blood and treasure. It certainly did not tend to conciliate the French towards the inhabitants of Verona; and it gave Bonaparte an excuse for avenging the blood of his soldiers--an excuse he was not the man to forget. Heavy taxes were laid on the city; citizens of renown and high degree were executed; and wherever tyranny and oppression were possible they were indulged in freely. The French yoke became so obnoxious that when in 1798 the town was handed over to the Austrians it seemed to the Veronese as though a stroke of good fortune had befallen them. The Austrian possession this time lasted till the peace of Luneville, early in 1800, when the city was divided between the French and Austrians, the French retaining the half on the right bank of the Adige, the Austrians reserving that on the left bank. This condition of affairs lasted till 1805, when the whole town was declared to be French, and when Napoleon caused himself to be proclaimed king of Italy, appointing Eugène de Beauharnais as his viceroy. In 1814 Verona again changed hands, being placed once more under the Austrian dominion, after Napoleon was fallen from his high estate, and when the might and determination of England had stopped him from enslaving and oppressing the greater part of Europe. For many years Verona belonged to Austria. The Lombard-Veneto kingdom, ruled over by the Archduke Rainer, brought outward peace to the country from which it took its name, though the longing to expel the foreigner and create a united and independent kingdom of Italy was growing and developing in the heart of every true patriot throughout the Peninsula. This longing took shape in 1848, when the war of independence was begun. The hopes of freedom and unification centred round Charles Albert and the small kingdom of Piedmont, and at the outset fortune smiled on the gallant undertaking. The Austrians however were not to be driven lightly out of the country; they reconquered Milan; possessed themselves anew of the “Veneto”; and inflicted a severe defeat on the Piedmontese army at Novara (March 23, 1849). No sooner were they firmly established again in Verona than they set to work to restore the fortifications and build new ones all around and about the town. They converted it into a fortress of the very first rank, and made certain that from the great quadrilateral--formed of Verona, Mantua, Legnano, and Peschiera--they had a base of operations which would render them impregnable against any attack. And indeed it seemed as though Austrian rule was fixed for all time in the North of Italy. Plots and intrigues, it is true, were constantly being formed, but they collapsed without accomplishing their aim, and were never sufficiently serious to unsettle the ruling powers.