Not a few, comparing Pasquale Paoli with the old tragic Corsican heroes, have accused him of weakness. Paoli's own estimate of himself appears from the following extract from one of his letters:--"If Sampiero had lived in my day, the deliverance of my country would have been of less difficult accomplishment. What we attempted to do in constituting the nationality, he would have completed. Corsica needed at that time a man of bold and enterprising spirit, who should have spread the terror of his name to the very _comptoirs_ of Genoa. France would not have mixed herself in the struggle, or, if she had, she would have found a more terrible adversary than any I was able to oppose to her. How often have I lamented this! Assuredly not courage nor heroic constancy was wanting in the Corsicans; what they wanted was a leader, who could combine and conduct the operations of the war in the face of experienced generals. We should have shared the noble work; while I laboured at a code of laws suitable to the traditions and requirements of the island, his mighty sword should have had the task of giving strength and security to the results of our common toil." On the 12th of June 1769, the Corsican people submitted to French supremacy. But while they were yet in all the freshness of their sorrow, that centuries of unexampled conflict should have proved insufficient to rescue their darling independence; and while the warlike din of the French occupation still rang from end to end of the island, the Corsican nation produced, on the 15th of August, in unexhausted vigour, one hero more, Napoleon Bonaparte, who crushed Genoa, who enslaved France, and who avenged his country. So much satisfaction had the Fates reserved for the Corsicans in their fall; and such was the atoning close they had decreed to the long tragedy of their history. [A] Thus referred to by Boswell in his _Account of Corsica_:--"The Corsicans have no drums, trumpets, fifes, or any instrument of warlike music, except a large Triton shell, pierced in the end, with which they make a sound loud enough to be heard at a great distance.... Its sound is not shrill, but rather flat, like that of a large horn."--_Tr._ BOOK III.--WANDERINGS IN THE SUMMER OF 1852. "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, Che la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura. Questa selva selvaggia, ed aspra, e forte-- Ma per trattar del ben, ch 'ivi trovai Dirò dell' altre cose, ch' io v'ho scorte." DANTE. CHAPTER I.--ARRIVAL IN CORSICA. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate.--DANTE.