and of her belief that her own murder had been intended. This deposition of Santi's, was sent to the cardinal, Ferdinando, who made no present use of it, for political reasons, but put it away carefully for future use if necessary.

woman expecting momentarily to be-authentic declaration of the fraud, of come a mother; and the duke, full of the horrible fate which had overtaken anxiety, quitted not the room for a those who had been employed in it, moment, till, at length, exhausted by fatigue and watching, the night being far advanced, he was prevailed on to retire, and to leave his beloved mistress with her nurse and attendants. Bianca contrived, on some pretence, to rid herself for a few moments of the physician, who waited in her chamber, and who seems not to have been in the plot; and in the interval, surrounded only by her confidential friends, pretended to have brought forth a son. Francesco, who had just laid down to repose, hastened, on the joyful intelligence, to the chamber of his mistress, from whose arms he received the boy, which he acknowledged as his own; in compliment to Saint Anthony, whom he believed had been propitious to the prayers of Bianca, the child received from the duke the name of Antonio."

The fraud was successful. Now mark the result, the fate of the poor wretches, the dupes, and accomplices of the grasping ambition of a merciless woman. Naturally, after a while, the Venetian sought to rid herself of the witnesses of her falsehood. The wetnurse, with a waiting-woman who knew part of the secret, were flung into the Arno; the real mother, ignorant of the fate of her baby, was conveyed to Bologna by an agent in the pay of Bianca. This man some years after, when at the point of death, told her the secret, and warned her to be mindful of her own safety. In terror of her life, she wandered through Italy, under a feigned name, for twelve years; and after Bianca's death, when confessing, revealed the whole transaction to a Bolognese priest whose interest she begged with Francesco's successor, to enable her to return to Florence.

Doubts of the deception practised, however, were whispered in the grand duke's ear, by the physician who had attended her and others, but Francesco appeared to give no credit to the tale, and publicly acknowledged the little Antonio as his son, while Bianca omitted nothing that might tend to endear the boy to his reputed father. She did not long remain in ignorance of the stories of her fraud which had been told to her lover, and fearing that eventually the truth would come out, some years afterwards she had the audacity to confess the whole affair to the duke. "Thus was the secret disclosed that had cost so many precautions and so much blood."

She managed by her adroitness to preserve the affections of the infatuated prince, who still continued to own the child in public.

To the depositions of the real mother and the confidant, as to this singular transaction, were added the testimony of Pietro Capello, the physician who attended her, the confession of Bianca, and the subsequent communication of Francesco to his confessor, all of which are authenticated facts. Ferdinando preserved a discreet silence in this matter, which so nearly concerned his interests, perhaps because of the enmity that existed between him and his brother, or it might be in remembrance of Bianca's good offices, and her ascendancy over the grand duke.

Since the birth of Antonio, the Grand Duchess Joanna had constantly appealed to Maximilian II., her brother, and he and another brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, interested themselves in her unhappy situation, Ferdinand menacing Francesco, saying he would avenge his sister, when the rupture

The confidant and principal agent, Santi, about a year after the birth of the child was sent to Bologna, and was assaulted by ruffians, on her passage over the Apennines, from whom she received several wounds. Notwithstanding her injuries she reached Bologna alive, and in revenge made an between the States, which seemed im

from the hour of birth, seemed to heal while from the interment he went the breach between his parents, while straight to an entertainment at her the Florentines were in triumph, and house.

clamored loudly for the disgrace and "Give me your hand," said Bianca removal of the mistress, who, to avoid to the confidant who brought her the more bitter mortifications, wisely with-news of the duchess's death, "it will drew to a villa she had near Bologna, now be in my power to make your forpretending to give up her relations tune; I have the promise of the duke with the duke. Her absence only to become his wife-my views are all added fuel to the flame of her lover's accomplished."

Bianca returned to Florence the following year, and by her exterior pru-duty and inclination, and against the To conciliate the Florentines, Fran- | assist at the coronation, but sent two cesco sent a splendid embassy to the of his chamberlains instead, which Venetian Senate, begging it to confer slight to his beloved wife Francesco the title of "Daughter of the Repub- resented, withdrawing from his brother d'Este of Ferrara, and the son of the in the family vault, after a private

Duke of Mantua, pleased him greatly. The friendship of the brothers did not last long, the harmony of the Medici family, always precarious, was again interrupted by the cardinal's distrust of Bianca, which gave great offence to Francesco, and it was long before the grand duchess, with all her tact and cleverness, could restore peace between them. The duke promised to forget the past, and receive the overtures of his brother, on the condition that the cardinal should pay a visit to them at Florence.

ceremony. Two days later the remains of the duchess were brought to the city, and were met by the clergy of St. Lorenzo, bearing tapers in their hands, and by the guard of German lancebearers, and the household of the late duke, at the gate, while all the streets through which the procession passed were brilliantly lighted up. The body was opened, by order of the cardinal, in the presence of Don Antonio, the daughter and son-in-law of Bianca, and death was declared to have been the result of dropsy.

Accordingly in the October of 1587, After the examination, it was reFerdinando made a voyage to Florence, moved to the church of St. Lorenzo. and was received by the duke and But Ferdinando, when questioned duchess with every sign of friendship respecting its exhibition in public, and affection. Bianca repaired, with adorned with the ducal coronet, said, her husband and brother-in-law, to "No, she has worn the crown long Poggio-à-Cajano, a hunting-box of the enough." And he refused to allow it duke's, where the duchess occupied to be interred in the family vault of the herself solely in preparing amusements Medici; so the remains were deposited for the cardinal, and where every min-under the church of St. Lorenzo, while ute was given up to luxurious pleas- he ordered her escutcheon to be removed from public buildings, and that of Donna Joanna of Austria to replace it.

ures.

But the serenity of the visit received a sudden interruption. On the 13th of October Ferdinando dined with his brother and sister-in-law, and towards the end of the repast Francesco was seized with horrible pains, and what appeared to be an intermittent fever, which increased hourly, while his strength sank. Feeling that his end was nigh, he named the cardinal his successor, recommended to him his wife and reputed son, Don Antonio, delivered to him the plans of his fortresses, and succumbed ere long to the violence, it was supposed, of poison, at forty years of age; while Bianca, who had sickened almost at the same time of the same disorder, expired nineteen hours after the death of her husband, in her forty-fifth year.

Who was the author of this frightful catastrophe is a historical problem which has not yet been resolved, but suspicion not unnaturally rested on Ferdinando, as he was the person most interested, and most likely to benefit by their deaths. The body of the duke was taken to Florence, and deposited

The premature death of the duke and duchess gave rise to various reports, and some writers assert that Bianca meant to poison the cardinal by a tart, which she offered him at dinner, and which he refused, suspecting her design, upon which the grand duke reproaching his brother for his distrust, unwarily tasted it, and Bianca, unable to prevent the fate of her consort, determined to share it, swallowing the remainder of the confection. Others say the cardinal alone was the author of the catastrophe, would not allow any assistance to be given to his victims, insulting them while in their expiring agonies.

One writer says:

"On a survey of the life of Bianca Capello, whatever may be thought of the qualities of her heart, which it must be confessed are doubtful, it is impossible not to be struck with the powers of her mind, by which, amidst innumerable obstacles, she maintained undiminished, through life, that ascen

a

dancy which her personal charms had | necessity, and stepped back, with first given her over the affections of a rough and rugged insistance on the capricious prince. She was fitted to change, to the plain living of Saxon take part in political intrigues, to suc- times. Are our tables worse furnished, ceed in courts, and rise to the pinnacle or is our roof-tree colder? I think of power, but, stained with cruelty, not. We kill our own swine, brew our

and debased by falsehood, if her talents excite admiration, they produce no esteem, and while her accomplishments dazzle the mind, they fail to interest the heart."

She was of majestic stature, eloquent, clever, insinuating, but her beauty was impaired at an early age from ill-health, and of the many portraits that remain of her there is not one which represents her in the bloom of her youthful beauty. They were all taken after she became grand duchess, when her charms had somewhat faded. There are several in the Pallazzo Pitti at Florence, one, said to be the best, in the Pallazzo Capara at Bologna, and a beautiful portrait of her in the ducal robes used to be preserved in the palace of the Capelli at Padua.

From The Spectator.

SUNDOWN IN SHOTLEY WOOD.

SHOTLEY WOOD is marked on the county map. Sometimes, though rarely, when there was enough spare money in the county to keep a three-days-aweek pack, it figured among the less poprlar meets of the season. Now it is forgotten by the world, even the world of county sport. Yet it has stood or rather it has been felled and risen again - since the days of King John. From the time of Magna Charta till the Christmas of 1893, no plough or harrow has cut the virgin

own ale, and press our cider; bake our dark but palatable bread, and pay our men and our dwindling "tradesmen's bills" from the narrow yield of our own fields. The owner of the "big wood" finds it a little silver-mine. Frugality begins at home - a coy but lasting friend - and when once won is never lost by the countryman who lives on his own acres. The coal-grates have been pulled out in hall and dining-room, and the old bars rescued from rust in the out-house are piled with the surplus branches of the oaks; and on Christmas day the green ashen faggot will blaze and sputter with a lively warmth that mocks the dull caloric of the coal, as young laughter leaps above the book-bound wit of ages. The wood supplies our table with its daintiest fare. Never was there such a year for wild-bred pheasants; and the stub-rabbits are no longer despised. Just now the wood-pigeons come in to roost in large flocks, and pay a daily tribute to the gun. The poor still look for rabbits at Christmas, and on our way to the wood before dusk, to lie in wait for the pigeons, we overhear the rabbiter and the bailiff in consultation; the former deep in the yawning ditch, under the stubbs, the other with his ear to the bolt-hole in the field above. The rabbiter is calm and professional, as becomes one finishing a long day's work. The bailiff - a schoolboy friend of the poorer man, long since risen in the social

soil within its fences; and every de- scale, a stern and unbending Nonconcent piece of building in the parish, formist, but with a suppressed but from the church roof-set on in the uncontrollable love of sport-is as exyear of grace 1507 to our new barn cited as a boy. They have dropped floor, has been fitted with the timber the ceremonious "mister" of East

grown on its seventy acres of deep yellow clay. "Us be all despret poor now," as the exciseman (the only rich man in the parish) truly says; and those who had sense to read the signs of the times have made treaty with

Anglian address, and for the moment have forgotten that the world contains anything but themselves, the hapless rabbit in the bury, and the ferret at the end of the line. "Eddard," says the bailiff; "Eddard, I can hear it a-scrab