rmance--altogether only an hour
long, but managed by as many as ten people, for we saw them all go
behind, at the ringing of a bell. The saving of a young lady by a good
fairy from the machinations of an enchanter, coupled with the comic
business of her servant Pulcinella (the Roman Punch) formed the plot of
the first piece. A scolding old peasant woman, who always leaned forward
to scold and put her hands in the pockets of her apron, was incredibly
natural. Pulcinella, so airy, so merry, so life-like, so graceful, he
was irresistible. To see him carrying an umbrella over his mistress's
head in a storm, talking to a prodigious giant whom he met in the
forest, and going to bed with a pony, were things never to be forgotten.
And so delicate are the hands of the people who move them, that every
puppet was an Italian, and did exactly what an Italian does. If he
pointed at any object, if he saluted anybody, if he laughed, if he
cried, he did it as never Englishman did it since Britain first at
Heaven's command arose--arose--arose, &c. There was a ballet afterwards,
on the same scale, and we really came away quite enchanted with the
delicate drollery of the thing. French officers more than ditto."

Of the great enemy to the health of the now capital of the kingdom of
Italy, Dickens remarked in the same letter. "I have been led into some
curious speculations by the existence and progress of the Malaria about
Rome. Isn't it very extraordinary to think of its encroaching and
encroaching on the Eternal City as if it were commissioned to swallow it
up. This year it has been extremely bad, and has long outstayed its
usual time. Rome has been very unhealthy, and is not free now. Few
people care to be out at the bad times of sunset and sunrise, and the
streets are like a desert at night. There is a church, a very little way
outside the walls, destroyed by fire some 16 or 18 years ago, and now
restored and re-created at an enormous expense. It stands in a
wilderness. For any human creature who goes near it, or can sleep near
it, after nightfall, it might as well be at the bottom of the uppermost
cataract of the Nile. Along the whole extent of the Pontine Marshes
(which we came across the other day), no creature in Adam's likeness
lives, except the sallow people at the lonely posting-stations. I walk
out from the Coliseum through the Street of Tombs to the ruins of the
old Appian Way--pass no human being, and see no human habitation but