MILAN. Et Mediolani mira omnia; copia rerum AUSONIUS. ALTHOUGH, since the times of Ausonius, Milan has been subjected more than any city in Italy, or perhaps in the world, to the evils attending upon the greatest scourges of humanity,-war and plague, yet the praises which the poet bestows upon it are still, in a great degree, applicable to that city. If there be not a circus and moles cuneata theatri, there are yet theatres of modern fashion, and that of La Scala, both for size and beauty, is one of the first in the world. There is no place dedicated to Hercules, but there are churches of very remarkable beauty, not to mention the cathedral, inferior in size only to St. Peter's at Rome, and superior even to that edifice in ornaments. Marble is there as plentiful as it was in the time of Ausonius. It is true that there is no longer opulens moneta there; yet the mint (zecca), under the late kingdom of Italy, was one of the best, and the coins which were struck there were superior, and still are, to all others in elegance of design. A few thousand francs worth of coins issued by Maria Luigia, Duchess of Parma, Napoleon's widow (which may perhaps be said to excel even the coins of the Italian kingdom), were struck at Milan. 66 Milan was a city of great importance in the time of the Romans, particularly towards the latter end of the empire, when it was even the seat of some of the emperors before the invasion of the barbarians. It was destroyed by Attila so completely that its archbishop, St. Ambrose, emphatically copying one of Cicero's expressions, said of it, and of some other cities destroyed by that conqueror, that they were tot semirutarum urbium cadavera." It was however rebuilt, and, in the twelfth century, it was, as it still is, the most flourishing and powerful of all the cities of Lombardy. The emperor, Frederic I. (Barbarossa), found in the Milanese a people determined to resist his tyrannical pretensions, and his German legions would have in vain attempted to reduce that city to a slavish obedience, had not many of the other cities of Lombardy joined the emperor against their own countrymen. Frederic, assisted by Pavia, Cremona, Lodi, and other neighbouring cities, in addition to his own Germans, besieged Milan, and, in seven months succeeded in taking it, the citizens being reduced to the last extremities, and the emperor insisting on their unconditional surrender. Having taken possession of the city, he ordered all the inhabitants to leave it, and having delivered it up to plunder, he caused it to be razed to the ground. The executors of this abominable order were Lombards. Milan was divided into six parts, and six of |