“Before I go, partly lest the innocent should be brought into question for acts almost exclusively mine, but still more lest the lesson and the warning which God, by my hand, has written in blood upon your guilty walls, should perish for want of its authentic exposition, hear my last dying avowal, that the murders which have desolated so many families within your walls, and made the household hearth no sanctuary, age no charter of protection, are all due originally to my head, if not always to my hand, as the minister of a dreadful retribution.

“That account of my history, and my prospects, which you received from the Russian diplomatist, among some errors of little importance, is essentially correct.  My father was not so immediately connected with English blood as is there represented.  However, it is true that he claimed descent from an English family of even higher distinction than that which is assigned in the Russian statement.  He was proud of this English descent, and the more so as the war with revolutionary France brought out more prominently than ever the moral and civil grandeur of England.  This pride was generous, but it was imprudent in his situation.  His immediate progenitors had been settled in Italy—­at Rome first, but latterly at Milan; and his whole property, large and scattered, came, by the progress of the revolution, to stand under French domination.  Many spoliations he suffered; but still he was too rich to be seriously injured.  But he foresaw, in the progress of events, still greater perils menacing his most capital resources.  Many of the states or princes in Italy were deeply in his debt; and, in the great convulsions which threatened his country, he saw that both the contending parties would find a colorable excuse for absolving themselves from engagements which pressed unpleasantly upon their finances.  In this embarrassment he formed an intimacy with a French officer of high rank and high principle.  My father’s friend saw his danger, and advised him to enter the French service.  In his younger days, my father had served extensively under many princes, and had found in every other military service a spirit of honor governing the conduct of the officers.  Here only, and for the first time, he found ruffian manners and universal rapacity.  He could not draw his sword in company with such men, nor in such a cause.  But at length, under the pressure of necessity, he accepted (or rather bought with an immense bribe) the place of a commissary to the French forces in Italy.  With this one resource, eventually he succeeded in making good the whole of his public claims upon the Italian states.  These vast sums he remitted, through various channels, to England, where he became proprietor in the funds to an immense amount.  Incautiously, however, something of this transpired, and the result was doubly unfortunate; for, while his intentions were thus made known as finally pointing to England, which of itself made