officer. The officer, upon reading it, immediately stayed the farther progress of the execution, and Jeronimo was led back to his prison. "What is all this?" exclaimed the crowd. "Have the friends of Jeronimo at length raised a sum of money which our just judges have required of them; and is his punishment thus bought off? Happy inhabitants of Padua, where to be rich is to be able to commit any crime with impunity."

cause.

It is time, however, to inform the reader of the true Jeronimo was scarcely led to execution, when the confessor of the prison demanded access to the president, and immediately laid before him the confession of a prisoner who had died under a fever the preceding night. The wretched malefactor hereupon acknowledged that he was one of a party of coiners who had carried on the trade of making false money to a very great extent; that Jeronimo's clerk was at the head of the gang; that all the false money was delivered to this clerk, who immediately exchanged it for good money from his master's coffers, to all of which he had private keys, and in which coffers, on the apprehension of Jeronimo, he had deposited the instruments of coining, lest they should be found in his own possession. The confession terminated with enumerating such of the gang as were yet living, and pointing out their places of asylum and concealment.

The execution of Jeronimo, as has been related, was

in its actual operation. The first step of the president,' therefore, was to hurry one of the officers to stop its progress, and in the same moment to send off two or three detachments of the city guard to seize the accused parties, before they should learn from public report the death of their comrade.

The guards executed their purpose successfully; the malefactors were all taken and brought to the tribunal the same evening. The result was, that one of them became evidence against his comrades, and thus confirmed the truth of the confession, and the innocence of Jeronimo.

The president, in order to make all possible atone-` ment, ordered a public meeting of all the citizens of Padua to be summoned on the following day. Jeronimo was then produced, upon which the president, descending from his tribunal, took him by the hand, and led him up to a seat by the side of him, on the bench of justice; the crier then proclaimed silence. Upon which the president rose, and read the confession of the malefactor who died in the prison, and the transactions of the others; concluding the whole by declaring the innocence of Jeronimo, and restoring him to his credit, his fortune, and the good opinion of his fellow-citizens.

Thus ended the misfortunes of a man who had provoked the chastisement of heaven by his vanity and self

glory. The course of Providence is uniform in all ages of the world; when blessings are contemned, they are withdrawn-when the man unduly elevates himself, the moment of his humiliation is at hand.

X

VOL. II.

LEGEND OF MARSEILLES.

THERE is a tradition in Marseilles that, on a particular night, about two hundred years ago, all the clocks of that city were put forward one hour, which is said to have had its origin in the following story.

There lived in the vicinity of that city a Monsieur Valette, a gentleman of ancient family and of considerable fortune. He had married Maria Danville, daughter of the mayor of the city, a young lady, who was from her beauty called The Rose of Marseilles,' and who united to every personal charm dispositions the most amiable, and a mind the most accomplished. He had the happiness of seeing himself beloved by the most charming of her sex, a happiness not always enjoyed in France, where marriages are usually contracted by the parents with too little regard to the affections of their children, and where the heart, therefore, is but too seldom given with the hand. It is on this account, perhaps, that the marriage state in that country is considered as one of more freedom to both parties than with us, where the affections are left less constrained in the choice of

their object. M. Valette was blest with two sons and two daughters, the fair fruit of a happy union, and he dwelt in a beautiful villa, commanding an extensive view of the fine bay of Marseilles, a seat which had been the favourite residence of his ancestors.

As his children grew up, however, he was induced to remove to Paris, which both he and Madam Valette conceived to be more favourable to the education of their family, though he was himself fond of rural retirement; a rare taste amongst a people where all the noble and opulent flock to the capital, the seat of the court, and leave almost deserted one of the most beautiful and picturesque countries in the world. The removal of M. Valette to Paris was deplored by his tenantry, to whom he had been as a father; but particularly as M. le Brun, whom he had left factor on his estate, was, though a just and religious man, of harsh manners, and of a precise and unaccommodating temper.

M. Valette found it necessary in Paris, as all persons of distinction do, to mix with the gay and the fashionable; the time that had been given to the enjoyment of domestic retirement was now consumed in the giddy round of fashion and amusements, and his open and generous temper led him into a mode of life which but ill accorded with the moderation of his fortune. He made frequent demands on his factor for renewed remittances; and this man was forced to use rigorous and oppressive measures to procure for his master the necessary means of