By way of episode-and a romantic though true episode it is to this history of "The Nuns' War," we are presented with the fortunes of one sister; which well deserve our attention, as another proof that truth is often stranger than fiction. We allude to Adelaide, Baroness of Wartz; whose husband was implicated in the murder of the emperor, Albert I., in 1308. He seems to have been unjustly implicated; having, though present at the catastrophe, had no knowledge of the design, and being merely a spectator of the act. That, however, was no justification in the eyes of Albert's daughter, the implacable Agnes of Hungary. "This princess," says Pfeffel, (whom our authoress does not cite,) "acquired a melancholy celebrity by her cruel vengeance, not only on her father's assassins, who all escaped her pursuit, and who ended their days in exile and obscurity, but on their families, friends, and allies, whom she pitilessly sacrificed to the shade of Albert, though they were innocent of complicity in the crime which laid him in the tomb." The head of the conspirators, Albert's own nephew, John of Swabia, (whom our author, we know not why, calls Don John,) died in misery, at the early age of twenty-five.

in a short time the exiled condition of the sisters | ward, and dropping on her knees implored the exattracted the sympathy of the citizens. That the ecutioner to permit her to remain. She was the successors in question should fail to be liberal, wife of the victim! Naturally of a gentle retiring need not to be wondered at-for, in truth, they had nature, the Baroness of Wartz had mingled but not the power. As the title-deeds of many manors little in the haughty court of the Emperor Allert: -probably most of them-had been cunningly ab- and after she became a mother she withdrew yet stracted, and the tenants secretly encouraged to more from its gaieties, though her youth and pay no rent, the revenues were fearfully dimin- beauty, high rank, and amiable qualities had ever ished. This stroke of policy was followed by insured her a distinguished place in its patrician others equally able; until the noble relatives of circle. She was residing at the Castle of Balm, a the exiled recluses openly armed in their behalf, little hamlet in the parish of Gunsperg in Argovia, and Basle was invested by formidable armed unconscious of impending evil, when the emperor bands. This demonstration was as fatal to the met his death; and she first learnt the fatal news citizens, whose commerce it destroyed, as it was by seeing her castle invested by armed troops, in favorable to the nuns, whose letters and intrigues search of her husband and brother. Her baby, an at length enlisted in their favor the mighty of the infant of twelve months old, asleep in its cradle at earth, whether ecclesiastic or secular. The end her foot, was murdered in her presence by the exmay be easily foreseen. In 1483, they were re- press order of Agnes, Queen of Hungary, Albert's stored to their convent, allowed to choose their daughter, as the child of a regicide; and she was own advocates, and indemnified for their losses. commanded, under penalty of instant death, to declare where her husband had found a shelter. Her paroxysms of fright, astonishment, and grief answered for her ignorance of the dreadful catastrophe; and after leaving a strong escort in the castle, and planting another around it to prevent all possibility of his escape if there concealed, the officer sent on this expedition departed. Adelaide of Wartz had ceased to be a mother, and her affections as a wife nestled yet more strongly in her heart she had no link to bind her to life but that of wife, none to love but her husband. She deceived the vigilance of her guards, at the risk of her life made her way to the royal château, and, penetrating into the presence of the widowed Empress Elizabeth and her daughter Agnes, threw herself at their feet imploring the life of her hus band. Her prayer was sternly refused; she then begged a mitigation of his sufferings-that also was denied; to share his prison-each petition was fiercely rejected; and she was repulsed from the castle to wander around the dungeon which would so soon open to deliver that husband to an ignominious and frightful death. She was present during all the sickening details of his horrible sentence, supporting him through his agonies by the assurance of her unabated attachment, and "There is also a tradition so popular that it has belief in his innocence; and when the executioner attained a place in many Swiss annals, that during had finished his fatal office, and one by one the his wanderings in the wild mountains of the coun- silent multitude withdrew as night closed in, she try to which he was born heir, the wretched prince crept under the wheel where he was left to die in was supported by a young female peasant, to lingering torments; the coup de grace, or final whose industry and ingenuity he owed his preser- blow of mercy, by which the sufferings of the vicvation for so long a period.-Seventy years after- tim were usually finished when each limb was wards, an aged, poverty-stricken man, of majestic broken, having been expressly forbidden. Mornmien, whose silver hair shaded features of great ing dawned on the miserable pair-Wartz was in beauty, might be seen in the streets of Vienna: the prime of life, of noble athletic form, and though almost blind, he seldom begged—but at in-though each member was doubly fractured, his tervals, when he fancied he recognized a face of vital energy remained. Three nights and three uncommon benevolence, he would approach, and days, without food, without sleep, she watched say in a low voice, Pity the miserable son of the in the valley of the shadow of death,' suffering miserable Don John of Swabia.'" neither the birds of the air to rest on him by day, nor the beasts of the field by night; wiping from his dying brow the big drops of anguish that burst from every pore. Nature wrestled long with death; on the third evening he grew too faint to thank her for her love, and as the morning of the fourth day dawned, he died. Her earthly task was accomplished: she rose from her knees, and directed her tottering steps to Klingenthal, whose prioress was the baron's sister. How she got there she could not tell she fainted at the portal, and was carried in as an object of charity, so emaciated by famine, so changed by woe, that the

After victims so illustrious, the Baron de Wartz could not hope for favor. He was betrayed by a nobleman, and his fate brings before us the extraordinary attachment of his wife. The following graphic description is painfully interesting:

"The niserable man was extended on the scaffold, on the point of receiving the first blow, when the horror-stricken crowd, assembled to witness this fearful sight, made way for a female in deep mourning, whose wan pale face, and eager efforts to approach the scene of suffering, overcame all obstacles to her desire. She walked steadily for

But who will speak to thee, of her! The grave-Oh!

A COMING CHANGE IN EUROPE.

THE political grievances of Italy, which have so long arrested the progress of that renowned country, and exposed her to the evils of a discontented population and a suspicious government, may be divided into two classes. The first and greatest is the reluctance or the incapacity of most of the Italian governments to promote the welfare of their dominions. The abuses which are known to exist in the Papal States, in several of the minor principalities, and to some extent in the kingdom of the two Sicilies, are a sufficient cause of the contempt and hatred by which those governments are held by a large portion of their subjects. The courts of Florence and of Turin have indeed already endeavored to distinguish themselves by a less vicious administration and a less illiberal policy. Tuscany and Piedmont, in their present comparatively flourishing condition, are, however, but faint indications of what the Italian states might readily become under the direction of vigorous and enlightened governments. But the weakness and the inefficiency of the national governments of Italy have tended not only to cramp their own resources, and to sacrifice the welfare of their states to the prejudices and fears of an obsolete system of policy, but they have also established and perpetuated the second great grievance of which the Italian patriots complain-namely, the ascendancy of a foreign power south of the Alps, and the domination of an Austrian viceroy, not only in Lombardy, but less directly in every part of the Peninsula. But whatever may be said of the anomaly of an Austrian government in Milan, the results of that government give us no just reason to regret the arrangement made at the Congress of Vienna; and, in comparison with the condition of the southern states of Italy, that of the Milanese territory is highly creditable to the Austrian administration. Milan is now the most stirring and prosperous city in all Italy. Venice has, within the last few years, regained much of that activity which seemed to have quitted her forever; railroads have been commenced on a large and liberal scale; public instruction has been promoted, and the order of the Jesuits has not been reinstated in its colleges. As long as the Austrian administration is one of the best in Italy, the mere passion of political independence will never excite the people to make a serious effort to throw off that form of government.

increased in Europe, and their prosperity and security no less augmented at home. Good gov ernment, in one word, on the part of the Italian cabinets, would at once redress the national grievances of the population, and it would tend, more than any other course of policy, to prepare the whole country for an independent administration of its affairs, into which more liberal institutions of state might hereafter be gradually introduced. It is no longer a secret that these views have for some time past been entertained by two or three of the Italian sovereigns, but by none more than by the illustrious head of the House of Savoy. This ambition of extending its ascendancy by the most legitimate means in the north of Italy has excited the jealousy and the fears of Austria, but it deserves to command the applause of Europe; for the means which the court of Turin appears to be disposed to take in the prosecution of its independent policy are identified with the real interest of the people and of Italy. The governments of Naples and of Piedmont have been amongst the earliest European converts to new principles of mercantile policy. Nor have the sovereigns and princes of these countries, as well as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, been slow to follow in the same track. The Austrian government, on the contrary, provoked by these manifestations of independence, has just imposed a prohibitive duty on the introduction of the wines of Piedmont into Lombardy, and has done all it can to prevent the extension of the Piedmontese railroads.

The immediate effect of these modifications of the policy of the court of Piedmont which appears most to have surprised and displeased the cabinet of Vienna, has been the marked improvement of the relations between that state and the French government. It is one of the chief proofs of the skill and sagacity of M. Guizot's administration of the foreign affairs of France, that he has everywhere succeeded in reviving the most essential portions of the traditional policy of his country, even where it had been in abeyance since the revolution of 1789, or revived, only to be annihilated again by the violence of Napoleon. M. Guizot has labored with great success to restore what may be regarded as the ancient position of France upon the continent of Europe, not by crushing or invading Spain, or by annexing Belgium or Savoy and Piedmont, but by steadily endeavoring to connect those countries by their interests and their policy with the modern policy But we by no means contend that this state of of the crown of France. In Italy, nothing is more things is to last forever, or that events may not consonant to these historical principles than the occur and men arise well calculated to promote the foundation of a good understanding between the regeneration of Italy by very different means from French government and the House of Savoy. those which have been suggested by the revolu- That alliance is connected with the most glorious tionary party. If, instead of taking their cue from recollections of the family which reigns in Turin ; Austria, and holding their dominions almost as fiefs and without doubt, in the present condition of the of the empire, the reigning princes of Italy had Italian states, nothing is better calculated than the the spirit and the sagacity to follow a line of na-support of France, to emancipate them from the tional policy of their own, they would have as little tutelage of Austria. to fear from insurrection at home as from foreign If we were to scrutinize with a searching and a invasion. The natural relation in which they prophetic eye the present condition and the future might be supposed to stand towards a state like destinies of that great empire which extends from Austria, which occupies so formidable and prepon- Semlin to Milan, we should be filled with unwonted derating a position in their own country, would and melancholy forebodings as to the trials it may appear to be, not one of servility and subjection, have at no distant period to undergo. A childish but of free rivalry. And if this rivalry were emperor, a decaying minister, a bigoted family directed by able statesmen, not into the channels council, an aristocracy ill-acquainted with its of political intrigue or military hostility, but into duties and its rights, a peasantry which is in some the broad tract of public improvement, the impor-provinces imbued with the most anti-social doc tance of the Italian states would be immeasurably |trines, an unformed middle class, an embarrassed