within them—who have some accessible place in
their natures to which appeal may be made—
there may be hope even within the prison-
walls. But even those who may be trusted no
more with their liberty should still have hope
held out to them. There should be relaxations
of discipline for such as were doing well in
prison though they could no more be trusted
out of it.

To keep the criminal from committing more
crimes, and, if possible, to reform him—these
are, of course, two of the chief objects to be
borne in mind in his treatment. Both being
little likely of attainment in old cases, his
conduct must be viewed with a mistrustful
eye, and, above all, his professions of
penitence and reform must be regarded with
suspicion. If I were chaplain of a jail, and a convict
were to say to me, " It seems to do me good,
like, sir, to hear you talk," or if he were to
profess that my last sermon in chapel had brought
tears into his eyes, or were to ask for a loan of
it that he might read it in his cell—that
particular sinner would be an object of special
mistrust with me, and over that man I should
counsel the prison authorities to keep an eye of
particular watchfulness. And even supposing
the penitent to be for the moment sincere, I
should feel that I must not think of him as he is
now, nor even of the first week or two of his
restored freedom; I must look onward, and with
my imagination picture that man to myself,
solicited first by one small temptation and then
by another. I must think of him when idleness
has again become a possible thing to him; I
must think of him when labour is hard to obtain,
or attended by circumstances of special hardship
and difficulty; I must think of him when evil
companions are near him, when a good
opportunity of eking out his resources by dishonest
means occurs—above all, when Time, that tries
all, has weakened the memory of his prison
sufferings and his prison professions.

Speaking not as a prison-chaplain, but as a
I mere outside-layman, with a head to be broken
and a watch to be dragged away (not to take
the liberty of mentioning my wife or my
daughter, for whose personal security I have,
however, some selfish regard), I venture to
contend that we must not have these ill-
reformed felons sent back among us. If they can
be made by their very bad labour to pay their
own expenses, so much the better, but if not,
we must even make up our minds to pay for
their maintenance and safe keeping, as we pay
for the maintenance of hospitals and other
asylums, and for the safe keeping of idiots and
lunatics.

Perhaps, it may be thought that this theme
on which I have ventured to speak, is somewhat
beyond the limits of Small-Beer Chronicling,
and it may be held to belong to those officials
who have to do with older and stronger liquors.
I am sorry if this be so; but the fact is that
events which have lately occurred in connexion
with this subject of convict liberation, have

caused my small-beer so terribly to work and
ferment, that I have been in a manner compelled
to take the spigot out, and open a safety-valve.

THE DUCHESS VERONICA.
IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER III. ANOTHER FLORENTINE HOME.

THE Villa Salviati, still universally called by
that name, though many years ago it passed into
the hands of the wealthy Borghesi (who sold it
to the present Lord Bexley, by whom it was
again sold, on his ceasing to reside at Florence, to
Signer Mario), is one of the most conspicuous and
the best known of the thousand villas that stud
the olive-covered hills of the Valdarno around the
"City of Flowers." It stands on the lowest spur
of the Apennines, some two or three miles from
the city, to the north, between the great Bologna
road and the little stream of the Mugnone. In
its outward aspect, the Villa Salviati, backed
against its aged cypress grove, has more of a
mediaeval castellated appearance than perhaps
any other of the Florentine villas. And its
general appearance is very little, if at all, changed
from that which it wore when it was inhabited
by Duke Jacopo and the Duchess Veronica.

That lady was, as the daughter of a sovereign
prince, superior in rank to any other of those
who composed the court of the Grand-Duke of
Tuscany. She was the daughter of Prince Carlo
Cybo, the reigning sovereign of the little
dominion of Massa and Carrara: a mountainous
and exceedingly beautiful tract of coast and
Apennine, between the frontier of the Genoese
republic and that of Lucca. The name of
Salviati fills a nobler space in the page of history
than that of Cybo, notwithstanding its pope and
dozens of cardinals of the name, and its little
morsel of rocky principality. But the Salviati
greatnesses had been of the civic, not the dynastic
kind, and had been achieved in the old days,
when citizens counted for more and princelings
for less, in Italy. And the Salviatis had been
sinking in the latter generations into the
subjects of a despot, while the Cybos had been rising
into being despots themselves. Jacopo Salviati,
therefore, wealthy, young, brilliant, admired, and
Duca di San Giuliano into the bargain as he was,
was considered to have " made a great match"
when he married the Lady Veronica Cybo.

But "great matches" are advantages which
generally have to be paid for at a very heavy
rate. We have had a peep at the interior of one
Florentine home, which assuredly did not appear
to possess any of the elements of a happy home.
Yet there also, had there been a " great match,"
for such, of course, the marriage of the ruin-
stricken dyer's daughter with the comfortably-
circumstanced patrician, Signor Canacci, must be
considered to have been. Some excuse poor
Caterina had for saying yes, when she should
have at all hazards said no. For, want of bread
is as irresistible as dangerous a counsellor. Yet
her fate could hardly, even as to such matters as