. He is a member of
the Borghese family, and proves to be the very nobleman whose carriage
had accidentally occasioned the death of his mother. Antonio becomes the
protege of the Borghese, returns to Rome, receives an education, and is
raised into the high and cultivated ranks of society. He is put under
the learned discipline of Habbas Dahdah--an excellent name, we confess,
for a fool--in whose person, we presume, he takes a sly revenge upon his
late rector of Slagelse. But he has not been fortunate in the invention
of parallel absurdities in his Italian pedagogue to those which he may
have remembered of some German prototype. He describes him as animated
with a sort of insane aversion to the poet Dante, whom he decries on
every occasion in order to exalt Petrarch. A Habbas Dahdah would be much
more more likely to feign an excessive admiration for the idol and glory
of Italy. However, his pupil stealthily procures a Dante; reads him, of
course _dreams_ of him; in short, there is an intolerable farago about
the great poet.

But the time now comes when the great business of all novels--love--is
brought upon the scene. And here we have an observation to make which we
think may be deserving of attention.

Antonio, the Improvisatore, is made, in the novel, to love in the
strangest fashion imaginable. He loves and he does not love; he never
knows himself, nor the reader either, whether, or with whom, to
pronounce him in love. Annunciata, the first object of this uncertain
passion, behaves herself, it must be confessed, in a very extraordinary
manner. We suppose the exigencies of the novel must excuse her; it was
necessary that her lover should be plunged in despair, and therefore she
could not be permitted to behave as any other woman would have done in
the same circumstances. She has a real affection for Antonio; yet at the
critical moment--the last moment he will be able to learn the truth, the
last time he will see her unless her response be favourable--she behaves
in such a manner as to lead him inevitably to the conclusion that his
rival is preferred to him. This Annunciata, the most celebrated singer
of her day, loses her voice, loses her beauty,--a fever deprives her of
both;--and not till her death does Antonio learn that he, and not
another, was the person really beloved. Meanwhile, in his travels,
Antonio meets with a blind girl, whom he does or does not love, on whom
at least he poetises, and whose forehead, _bec