Page:Francesca Carrara 1.pdf/57

Rh of dreams! By the eyes of our beautiful Queen, I hate to look on their serge cloaks and close-cropped crowns."

"And yet, methinks," answered the other, "I could as ill have brooked the hypocrisy and the oppression more delicately clad in cloth of silver and embroidery of gold."

"Why, one would suppose you thought my father was listening," interrupted his brother. "Loyalty may well be an old song in England, when a young cavalier like yourself wears a sheathed rapier and a grave brow, and talks sagely of oppression!"

"I have lived long enough in Italy to loathe the tyranny of old prescription. What, there, is the result of the exclusive privilege of one class, and the hereditary bondage of another, and the ignorance of both—what but cruelty, indolence, and debasing superstition? I stayed at Venice, and even in that gay city my blood ran cold to retrace the crime and craft which are the staple of her annals. And yet her people were once free and bold, winning adventurous wealth from the sea, which they mastered. Now, to what a state of crippled slavery are they reduced! and by what, but the depression of a gradual and secret despotism? Ah! my brother, we do well to watch our