pile is even now erecting.  Once I believed myself one of the most courageous of men; I have beheld death in many terrible shapes, and feared it in none; but, oh! to burn,—­to burn! this is a thing from which the startled spirit recoils in speechless horror, and vainly, vainly strives to wrench itself by forceful thought from the shuddering, encumbering frame!  Even now, do I seem to behold the finger of scorn pointed at me;—­ay,—­at ME! whilst bound to the firm stake with thongs, strong as the iron bands of death, I cannot even writhe under the anguish of shame, wrath, and apprehended bodily torture!  The pile is lighted,—­the last words of the reckless priest have died upon mine ear, and his figure and countenance, with the myriad forms and faces, of the insulting multitude around me, are lost in suffocating volumes of uprising, dense, white smoke!  The blaze enfolds me like a garment! my unspeakable tortures,—­my infernal agonies have commenced!—­the diabolical shouts and shrieks of the fiendish spectators—­the crackling and hissing of my tender flesh—­the bursting of my over swollen tendons, muscles, and arteries, with the out-gush of the crimson vital stream from every pore,—­I hear,—­I see,—­I feel,—­and in my morbid imagination, die many deaths in one!  I fancied myself brave; alas!  I never fancied myself—­burning! But, no more; since I have taken up my pen solely to wile away these last, brief, melancholy hours, in narrating those circumstances of my past life, which shall have tended to shrivel ere long, amidst diabolical agonies, the trembling hand that records them, like a parched scroll, and to scatter the ashes of this now vigorous body, to the winds.

ROME,—­the beautiful—­the Eternal,—­was my birthplace; and those, whom I was taught to consider as my parents, said, that the blood of its ancient heroes filled my veins.  If so,—­and if Servilius and Andrea, were indeed my progenitors, our family must have suffered the most amazing reverses of fortune; they were venders of fruit, lemonade, and perfumed iced waters, in the streets, but a kind-hearted pair, and for their station, well-informed.

In the clear moon-light of our Italian skies, in those soft nights, when, instead of ingloriously slumbering away the cool calm hours, all come forth who are capable of feeling the beauties and sublimities of nature, and of inhaling inspiration with the rich, odorous breeze,—­in those fresh, fragrant, and impassioned hours, did Servilius and Andrea delight to lead me through ROME, and to read the Eternal City unto me, as a book; and then fell upon me, in that most sacred place, a portion of divine enthusiasm, of holy inspiration, until, in a retrospect of the thoughts, feelings, schemes, and aspirations of that infantile era, freely could I weep, and ask myself, were such things in sober earnest, ever?