[93] The so-called Grand Sanhedrim of 1806 was a council summoned by Napoleon for the 20th of October of that year, consisting of representatives of the chief synagogues of France, Italy and Europe. The object of its deliberations was to point out to the Government means of enabling the Jews to participate in the civil and political rights of England, by modifying such of their habits and doctrines as kept them isolated from their fellow-citizens. The sittings of the Grand Sanhedrim, which consisted of 71 members, opened on the 9th of February and ended on the 9th of March 1807. The most notable clause, from Napoleon's point of view, in the solemn public declaration issued on the latter date, is that dispensing Jews who are performing military service from all religious observances that are irreconcilable with such military service.—T.
[94] Leopoldo Conte Cicognara (1767-1834), a distinguished diplomatist and antiquarian. He became President of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice in 1812. His principal work, the Storia della Scultura, was published in 1813-1818.—T.
[95] It is clear to my eyes that the ogive, whose so-called mysterious origin men go so far to seek, was born casually of the intersection of two semicircular arches; therefore it is found everywhere. Later architects have done no more than release it from the designs in which it originally figured.—Author's Note.
[96] See the previous note.—Author's Note.
[97] Bartolommeo Gamba (1780-1841), a learned Italian bibliographer and biographer. His chief work is the Serie dell' Edizioni dei Testi di Lingua Italiana (1812-1828).—T.
[98] Fra Mauro (fl. 15th Century), a monk of the Camaldule Order, who drew his famous map of the world between 1457 and 1459.—T.
[99] Here for instance, is Charles Dickens' lurid description of the Pozzi, or Prisons, which he pretends to see in a dream:
"I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each had a loophole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day a torch was placed—I dreamed—to light the prisoners within, for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with the rusty nail's point had outlived their agony and them, through many generations.
"One cell I saw in which no man remained for more than four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the Confessor came—a monk brown-robed and hooded—ghastly in the day and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's extinguisher and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door—low-browed and stealthy—through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net." (Pictures from Italy: An Italian Dream.)—T.
[100] . . . . . . "Into that hideous den,
With one blow of the axe, admitted light again."—T.
[101] Silvio Pellico (1788-1854) was imprisoned in Milan and Venice from 1820 to 1822 and at the Spielberg, near Brünn, from 1822 to 1830. His Mie Prigioni had only lately been published (1833) and Chateaubriand was much struck with them. During his previous journey to Italy, in a letter dated Basle, 17 May 1833, he wrote to Madame Récamier: