ve that it is not ignorantly careless,
but learnedly needful. One other objection, and I have done. No man is
an utter inexcusable, irremediable villain; there is a spot of light,
however hidden, somewhere; and, notwithstanding the historian's picture,
it may charitably be doubted whether we have made due allowance for his
most reasonable prejudice even in Nero's case. Human nature has produced
many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially
lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider the
corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming in
the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better
perceptions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career.
Not that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, or to
gild the brass brow of vice; and verily, I have not spared my odious
hero; nevertheless, in selecting so unamiable a subject, (or rather
emperor,) I wished not to conceal that even in the worst of men there is
a soil for hope and charity; and that if despotism has high
prerogatives, its wealth and state are desperate temptations, whose
dangers mightily predominate, and whose necessary influences, if quite
unbiased, tend to utter misery.

Now to introduce our _dramatis personae_, with their "cast,"--for better
effect--rather unreasonably presumed. _Nero_--(Macready, who would
impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or not
by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as every
Numismatist will vouch,)--a naturally noble spirit, warped by sensuality
and pride into a very tyrant; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in passion;
not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden changes,
and at times tempestuously cruel. _Nattalis_--(say Vandenhoff,)--his
favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still wearing
the Eastern costume: a sort of Iago, spiriting up the willing Nero to
all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise
mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and
glory, to subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and
licentiousness, and to avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own
country on the chief of her destroyers. _Marcus Manlius_--(who better
than Charles Kean?--supposing these artistic combinations not to be
quite impossible,)--a fine young soldier, of course loving the heroine,
captain of Nero's b