FRA DIAVOLO is the popular name given by his countrymen to the most notorious and dreaded of modem Italian brigands; and the name, associated during his lifetime with the political revolutions of southern Italy, has acquired a world-wide celebrity since it became the title of a favourite French opera. His real name was Michele Pezza. It would be as hopeless to fix the precise dates in his career as to determine those in the lives of Rob Roy or Jonathan Wild. He is stated, however, to have been born at ItrL His crimes became invested with a more general and political interest in 1799. At that time, from the frequency and audacity of his robberies and murders along the frontier of the Terra di Lavoro, he became known as Fra Diavolo, the popular superstition investing him with the blended attributes of a monk and a demon. When the kingdom of Naples was overrun by the troops of the French Republic, Fra Diavolo, acting in concert with the head of the Bourbon partisans, Cardinal Ruffo, waged a fierce aud untiring war against the French soldiers, whenever his superior knowledge of the localities afforded the prospect of his being able to do so with effect. He continued for a considerable period in absolute possession of the line of communication from the Garigliano to Portello, falling upon and massacring the French Government couriers, and all whom he suspected of conveying information to the military or civil functionaries of the Republic. At one moment he succeeded in completely interrupting all communication between Naples and Rome. Like his fellow agents under Cardinal Ruffo—like Mammone, Pronio, Sciarpa Guar-riglia—he styled himself “the faithful servant and subject of his Sicilian Majesty.” As the turning point in Fra Diavolo’s career must be regarded the ...