e them, and, after reading them,
he gave them back to her with the comment that they were "good." She
playfully asked him if he would not give her a bigger word to take home
to the family. He laughed, and said he did not know of any; but he
went on to tell her that he had taken it up, not expecting to read it
through, and had not been able to put it down. Every word and line told
of richness in the poetry, he said, and as far as he could judge
the play had great dramatic opportunities. Early in the autumn "The
Spagnoletto" appeared,--a tragedy in five acts, the scene laid in Italy,
1655.

Without a doubt, every one in these days will take up with misgiving,
and like Mr. Emerson "not expecting to read it through," a five-act
tragedy of the seventeenth century, so far removed apparently from the
age and present actualities,--so opposed to the "Modernite," which has
come to be the last word of art. Moreover, great names at once appear;
great shades arise to rebuke the presumptuous new-comer in this highest
realm of expression. "The Spagnoletto" has grave defects that would
probably preclude its ever being represented on the stage. The denoument
especially is unfortunate, and sins against our moral and aesthetic
instinct. The wretched, tiger-like father stabs himself in the presence
of his crushed and erring daughter, so that she may forever be haunted
by the horror and the retribution of his death. We are left suspended,
as it were, over an abyss, our moral judgment thwarted, our humanity
outraged. But "The Spagnoletto" is, nevertheless, a remarkable
production, and pitched in another key from anything the writer has
yet given us. Heretofore we have only had quiet, reflective, passive
emotion: now we have a storm and sweep of passion for which we were
quite unprepared. Ribera's character is charged like a thunder-cloud
with dramatic elements. Maria Rosa is the child of her father, fired at
a flash, "deaf, dumb, and blind" at the touch of passion.

"Does love steal gently o'er our soul?"

she asks;

"What if he come,
A cloud, a fire, a whirlwind?"

and then the cry:

"O my God!
This awful joy in mine own heart is love."

Again:

"While you are here the one thing real to me
In all the universe is love."

Exquisitely tender and refined are the love scenes--at the ball and in
the garden--b