offered to resign; but that, deeming his services needful to his country, he should not now yield except to the general wish loudly and clearly expressed. At a reiterated and sterner decree of the Council of Ten, he retired with dignity from the ducal palace, giving up at the same time the ducal ring, which was broken before him. On the 30th of October, 1457, Pasquale Malipieri was elected his successor. The bell of St. Mark's, announcing the election, was a voice to Foscari summoning him to the grave, for on the morrow he died. He was a true patriot, a sagacious statesman, a vigorous ruler, though not free from the abominable arts and iniquitous doings which have always disgraced Italy. His misfortunes, in connection with those of his son, have furnished to Byron and others a subject for poetical treatment.—W. M—l.
FOSCARINI, Marco, born of a noble Venetian family in 1695. His station in life brought him soon on the political stage; and from his earliest youth he occupied the most important dignities in the state. Having been sent as ambassador to many European powers, by his suavity of manners and powerful mental capacities he became the favourite of many princes; and it was easy to anticipate his elevation to the highest honour which that republic could bestow on him. Foscarini had been entreated by the Council of Ten to continue the history of Venice, resuming it from where his predecessor, Michele Foscarini, had left it; his long absence from Italy delayed for several years the execution of that colossal work, for which, however, he had collected immense materials. The plan of that work was divided into four parts, in the first of which Foscarini proposed to treat of the progress made by that republic in civil and canon law, astronomy, navigation, and history; and although he only published eight books in a volume, yet it served as a model to Giovanni degli Agostini in the compiling of his biographical work, Scrittori Veneziani, whilst Cardinal Quirini, in three Latin letters, commends in the highest degree Foscarini's style and erudition. It is to be regretted, however, that the great occupations and duties incumbent on Foscarini prevented him continuing that most important labour; but the direction of St. Mark's library and the inspectorship of public monuments prevented him giving his mind to any other subject. Having been called to the supreme dignity of the state on the 28th of May, 1762, he enjoyed his elevation only for ten months, and died on the 31st of March, 1763.—A. C. M.
FOSCARINI, Michele, born at Venice in 1632. Having filled with distinction, and in early life, the most important dignities, he was at last elected historiographer of that republic, and continued the history to which Cardinal Bembo and Battista Nani had previously contributed up to the end of the siege of Candia in 1669. He was also elected a member of the academy, Degl' Incogniti, and wrote two novels entitled "Novelle amorose degl' Incogniti." To his "History of Venice," however, he owes his renown, a work which he could not complete, having been suddenly struck by death on the 31st of May, 1692.—A. C. M.
FOSCHINI, Antonio, was born June 14, 1743, at Corfu, but taken soon after to Ferrara, of which place his parents were natives. He was educated as a civil engineer, but turned his attention to architecture, and was appointed professor of architecture in the university of Ferrara. His teaching is said to have been eminently judicious and successful; but he was removed from his post by an intrigue, after having held it for several years. The chair of architecture in the university of Pavia was offered him, but he refused to leave Ferrara. The building on which his fame rests is the theatre of Ferrara, which is one of the largest, and has generally been regarded as one of the most convenient and elegant in Italy. He designed several other theatres, but the only one executed appears to be that of Lendinara. His other works include the great hospital at Commachio, and the grand staircase of the university of Ferrara. He died at Ferrara, December 14, 1813.—J. T—e.
FOSCOLO, Nicolo Ugo, Italian poet and patriot, born in 1778, in the island of Zante, of a Venetian father and a Greek mother, but Italian by right and education, his family having long been reckoned among the patricians of Venice. Of Andrea Foscolo, Ugo's father, we only know that he died while the child was very young, leaving three sons and one daughter to the care of his wife, Diamante. Of her let us say, once for all, that her noble, womanly love shed the only constant ray of light on Ugo's chequered career. "She foresees," he writes, "that she may not know on what spot of earth her tears must fall to bless my ashes. Yet she would have suffered still more bitter anguish if—forgetful of domestic example, unmindful of the heroes of antiquity whose lives she first taught me to read, staining through fear, venality, or low ambition, the life she had cherished—I could have preferred my safety to my honour." She died however in 1817, ten years before the close of her son's life-long exile. In order to understand the life of Foscolo, it is necessary first of all to dismiss from our minds a great portion of the materials which treacherous foes and hardly less treacherous friends have heaped together under the name of biography; and in the second place, to remember the epoch of Italian life with which he was contemporary—the revolution produced by the appearance of Napoleon after three centuries of slavery, and the apparent destruction of every hope at the re-establishment of Austrian power by the treaty of Vienna. From 1797 to 1813 Foscolo as soldier, poet, and man of letters, sustained a noble part; and not less noble were the last fifteen years of his life spent in exile, writing in a foreign tongue, and to satisfy, not the inspirations of his genius, but the bidding of editors and publishers, "non per fama ma per fame." Foscolo's first efforts were in a literary direction. "Tieste," his first tragedy, was performed at the theatre of St. Angelo in Venice, 4th January, 1797, and enthusiastically received. It is Alfierian in style; and the chief merit perhaps of this and his two other tragedies, lies in the manly aspiration after national unity. Foscolo soon found himself summoned before the inquisition of Venice on a charge of heresy, his noble mother whispering in his ear—"Die, my boy, rather than betray the name of a single friend." When the treaty of Campo Formio handed over Venice to Austria, Foscolo was among the proscribed. He who, in 1796, had penned his ode to Buonaparte Liberatore, wrote in 1797—"Many confide in the young hero, born of Italian blood, born where our tongue is spoken. I expect nothing beneficial, nothing lofty, to spring from a base and cruel soul. . . . . . I ever hated him, often esteemed, often despised him; but in my eyes he possessed one transcendent merit—he had united and educated in war six millions of Italians." In May, 1797, we find Foscolo enrolled in the Italian army; in 1798 employed in the war office at Milan, and a writer with Melchior Gioja, and others, in the Monitore Italiano. In 1779 he published his "Discorso sull' Italia" addressed to General Championnet, reminding him that France, without Italy, could not conquer and must therefore perish; urging France therefore to proclaim the independence of Italy. When war broke out in the same year, Foscolo was commander of the national guard of Bologna, was wounded at the taking of Cento, made prisoner in June, in a sortie from Port Urbano, and conducted to Mantua. It was at this period that Isabella Roncione, the object of his passionate love, and the Teresa of "Jacopo Ortis," was married to another. In the first volume of the "Epistolario" we find his dignified and tender adieu. Exchanged for other prisoners of General Macdonald's army, he fought with the 1st Hussars at the battle of Marengo, and at the battle of Novi, as aid-de-camp to General Fantuzzi. During the siege of Genoa he was at his post, night and day, until, at the taking of the fort of the Duc Fratelli, he was wounded in the leg. It was at this time that he composed his two odes, "All' amiea risanata" and "A Luigi Pallaviciani." Now too he wrote the famous letter accompanying his ode to Bonaparte. "It is our duty," he said, "to invoke your aid, it is yours to succour us; not only because your blood is Italian, and the Italian revolution is your work, but in order that the ages may be silent on that treaty which sold my country. . . . . . You are mortal, born in an age when universal scoundreldom places every obstacle in the way of magnanimous enterprises, and furnishes most potent excitement to evil doing. Hence, either the consciousness of superiority, or of the universal degradation, may lead you to that which you yourself abhor. . . . . Our age will have its Tacitus, who will transmit your sentence to stern posterity." After the siege of Genoa, Foscolo returned to Milan. The triumvirate which, under the title of Government Committee, had hitherto presided over affairs, commissioned Foscolo to write an address of thanks and praise to Bonaparte, in the name of the Cisalpine republic; but adulation to order was not Foscolo's forte. In language that reminds us of Tacitus, he points out how all the foundations of the republic were rotten at the core; he denounces the hiring of mercenary soldiers, and stigmatizes the depraved customs, all deriving their source from the putrid ulcer of slavery, inflamed by the turmoil of revolution. He
