Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Bookshttps://books.google.com/books?id=xUtMAAAAcAAJ
(the New York Public Library)
There is a mountain pass, not far from the shores of the LagoMaggiore, which has been famous of late years for anything but fêtesand festivals. There, many an unfortunate traveller has been relievedof the burden of worldly wealth, and sometimes of all earthly cares;and there, many a postillion has quietly received, behind an oak-treeor a chesnut, a due share of the day's earnings from a body of thoseItalian gentlemen whose life is generally spent in working upon thehighways, either with a long gun in their hands or a chain round theirmiddles.
But, dear reader, the times I speak of were centuries ago--those named"the good old times," though Heaven only knows why they were called"good."
The world was in a very strange state just then. The resurrection ofart--the recovery of letters--the new birth of science, marked out theage as one of extraordinary development; but the state of societyfrom which all these bright things sprang--flowers rising from adunghill--was one of foul and filthy fermentation, where everywickedness that the corrupt heart of man can devise worked andtravailed for the birth of better things. That pass, in those "goodold times," saw every day as much high-handed wrong and ruthlessbloodshed as any pass in all Italy at the present time.
But such was not destined to be the case upon the present occasion,though the times of which I write were the end of the fifteenth andthe beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Guilt, and fraud, and evenmurder, often in those days covered themselves with golden embroideryand perfumed flowers; and, interposed between acts of violence,rapine, and destruction, were brilliant festivals, the luxuriousbanquet, and the merry dance.
Wickedness, like virtue, proposes to itself enjoyment for its object;and the Bible is right when, as it often does, it uses the word wisdomas synonymous with virtue, for in the wisdom of the means is thecertainty of the attainment. But the men of those days, as if theyfelt--how could they avoid feeling?--the insecurity of the ground onwhich they based their endeavours for the acquisition of happiness,were content to take the distant and doubtful payment by instalmentsof fruition, and let the revel, the pageant, the debauch go to thegreat reckoning as so much gained, without thinking of the terribleper contra.
That pass was well fitted to afford a scene for many of the dealingsof those or these days. There the robber might lurk perfectlyconce