sound of a lute and wild ecstatic cries. It is
Pachita "singing herself to death" outside the
hut. Her death has such an effect on Armando,
whose madness is growing upon him, that he at
once leaves the neighbourhood; and soon
afterwards the story and the author have a bout
of singing on their own account, under the
head of Lyrics, including Jupiter, or the Voice
of the Air; Saturn (the Earth); Vulcan (Fire);
Neptune (Water); Androgeus (the Voice of the
Spirit); and Pan (All Things). We cannot say
we think much of these specimens, but perhaps
they are intended to show what Armando
could do if he lost his head. When he
reappears on the scene he is in Rome, and about
to pay a visit to his old friend Pagolo the
sculptor. In a long and wearisome soliloquy
he mentions (for the first time) the name of
Clara—that "fiend in angel's mould" who has
blighted his existence. He becomes a suitor
for the hand of Arbella, the sculptor's daughter,
and half forgets "extinct Clara;" a dreadful
state of things when we remember that he has
a rendezvous with her ghost, in the later part
of the story. He falls asleep in Pagolo's studio
and dreams he is on Olympus. The statues of
the gods and goddesses sing, or when they
cannot sing, oblige the company with a recitation.
"Achilles," "Psyche," and "Prometheus"
are the best of their middling performances.

Up to this point the reader has had very little
insight into the madness of Armando. The reason
is that Armando has hitherto shunned the
society of ladies. His brain is oppressed by
ladies. They remind him of Clara's perfidy.
The fairer they are the more likely they are to
be false, and when he is most in love with
Arbella he is most suspicious of her good
qualities. In fact he secretly suspects her
of being a "flirt," and something worse,
and it is only when she talks to him and
thrills him with a glance of her beautiful eyes,
that he is persuaded of her innocence and
wishes to prove his good opinion of her by
committing suicide. There is a garden scene
in the second part of the poem which is worthy
of the hand of Fouqué. The Voice of the
Rose, is charming; so is The Butterfly Song.
But Arbella has discovered that her lover has
a secret. It appears that Armando has been
delirious between the first and second parts
of the story, and has called his kind nurse
(Arbella) the most awful names: "Clara,"
"damnable Clara," "fiendish Clara," &c., which
she didn't like.

We now come to the last part but one of the
book, the part which details, at great length, the
delirium or madness of Armando. It seems like
one protracted nightmare. The "Eumenides"
and a number of artizans sing songs on alternate
pages. Mastragabito (a "spiritualist" who
obtains money and palaces by a kind of fraud
not recognised in the police-courts) figures as
the Devil, and makes love, with great success,
to Arbella. The reader here should have
been forwarned that Armando is crazy, and
that it is Armando and not the author of the
book who is speaking. It must naturally
bother a gentleman (sensible on all other
points) to believe that he and the Devil are
making love to the same young lady, and that
the Devil is getting the best of it! Signor
Prati says,

From a variety of causes inherent in the human
soul and having an existence in the outer world,
certain natures, even strong ones, fall at certain
times, and in the midst of certain conditions of
society into a state of sloth, spleen, and dreaminess,
which assumes the character of a malady; and if to
this malady is coupled the remembrance of a lost
illusion or a tendency to dream and give way to
gloomy thoughts, the consequences may be very
deplorable and even lead to frightful catastrophes.

This is the text on which Prati has
written his book. He thinks his countrymen
require a little talking to, and that the strength
and vigour of the upper classes of Italian
society are being sapped by moral cowardice,
and the dolce far niente for which as a nation
they are so remarkable. He thinks they ought
to work more than they do, and tells them how
to get well when they are suffering from spleen.
"Work," says Signor Prati; "make a statue,
or a book. Be a tailor, a blacksmith. Do
something; you will have no time to be miserable."
This is the spirit of his teaching, and Armando
is the type of the man who would be all the
better for hard-handed toil; his hands being
soft, so is his head. The scenes in which he
fancies he sees that the devil is destroying his
happiness, under the name of Mastragabito,
alias a Spanish traveller, alias a German Prince,
alias Cardenius the sculptor, occupy nearly two
hundred pages, that is to say a third part of the
book. They lead onto a startling climax. The
author can summon goblins into his presence,
but he does not know what to do with them
when they arrive. He goes too far. The
result is a jumble of loftiness and absurdity
which it would be difficult to match in literature.
Some of the ghostly business is so badly
done that it provokes laughter instead of awe.
The fiends go off in blue lights; the fairies
strut and stagger about the stage as if their
wires were broken; and the showman (i.e. the
author) destroys all perspective by allowing his
hands to be seen among the puppets.
Mastrogabito himself is put away in his box long
before the play is over, and the reader is left face
to face with the real characters of the story
(Pagolo, Arbella, and Armando) in a very
unsatisfactory manner. Perhaps the most successful
part of the entre-acte is the crucifixion of
the devil. This nimble Mastragabito, this Italian
Mephistopheles seeks an interview with
Madreden (the Sphynx), and asks her how long he
(the devil) may torment mankind. He pleads
for another thousand years of life, but is
sentenced to death. He is conducted to the place
of execution, where thieves, murderers, and liars;
the spirits of pestilence and war—hunger,
fire, and misery, pass before him in grim
procession. To attempt this and to succeed in it is to