st, heighten our enjoyment of the present: and
this would be indeed a day of _pleasure_, of such pleasure as I think
I am capable of feeling--of imparting--of remembering with unmixed
delight. Such was _not_ yesterday.

* * * * *

M** brought with him this evening, for our amusement, an old man, a
native of Cento, who gains his livelihood by a curious exhibition of
his peculiar talents. He is blind, and plays well on the violin: he
can recite the whole of the Gerusalemme from beginning to end without
missing a word: he can repeat any given stanza or number of stanzas
either forwards or backwards: he can repeat the last words one after
another of any stanzas: if you give him the first word and the last,
he can name immediately the particular line, stanza, and book: lastly,
he can tell instantly the exact number of words contained in any given
stanza. This exhibition was at first amusing; but as I soon found that
the man's head was a mere machine, that he was destitute of
imagination, and that far from feeling the beauty of the poet, he did
not even understand the meaning of the lines he thus repeated up and
down, and backwards and forwards, it ceased to interest me after the
first sensations of surprise and curiosity were over.

* * * * *

After I had read Italian with Signior B** this evening, he amused me
exceedingly by detailing to me the plan of two tragedies he is now
writing or about to write. He has already produced one piece on the
story of Boadicea, which is rather a drama than a regular tragedy. It
was acted here with great success. After giving his drama due praise,
I described to him the plan and characters of Fletcher's Bonduca; and
attempted to give him in Italian some idea of the most striking scenes
of that admirable play: he was alternately in enchantment and despair,
and I thought he would have torn and bitten his Boadicea to pieces, in
the excess of his vivacity.

The subject of one of his tragedies is to be the Sicilian Vespers.
Casimir Delavigne, who wrote _Les Vepres Siciliennes_, which obtained
some years ago such amazing popularity at Paris, and in which the
national vanity of the French is flattered at the expense of the
Italians, received a pension from Louis XVIII. B** spoke with contempt
of Casimir Delavigne's tragedy, and with indignation of what he called
"his wilful misrepresentation of history." He is determined to give
th