dotes of his earlier
virtues, and in fact striving to make the most of him, a very gentle
monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, blacker shadows. After
disputation, the father and lovers walk off, leaving Galba alone for a
moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the terminal altar, unseen Sibyl
hails him Caesar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his
own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so
forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out
of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero. Sibyl, still
unseen from behind the altar, again hails Galba as future Caesar; who, no
longer doubting his ears, and all present taking the omen, they conspire
at the altar with drawn swords, and as the Sibyl suddenly
presides--_tableau_--and down drops the soft green baize. This first
act, you perceive, is stirring, introductory of many characters; and the
picture of the seven-hilled city, seen in a transparent blaze, might
give the followers of Stanfield a triumph.

_Second_: The senate scene, producing another monstrous crime of Nero's,
also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero discovered
enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately chapleted, and
holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, a pancratist, the
world's acknowledged champion. Nattalis, ever foremost in flatteries,
after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, like Paris
in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero _had_ gloriously fired Rome;
he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble; (so, the catafalque at
the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, as well as
blessing, he had asserted his divinity; any after due allusions to
Phoenixes, and fire-kingships, and _coups-de-soliel_ falling from the
same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that Nero should be
worshipped, and calls on the priest of Jupiter to set a good example.
None dare refuse, and the senate bend before him; whereupon enter, in
clerical procession, augurs, and diviners, men at arms with pole-axes,
and coronaled white bulls, paraded before sacrifice: all this pandering
to present love of splendour and picturesque effect. In the midst of
these classical preparations, enters, with a bevy of attendants, the
haughty queen-like Agrippina, whom Nero, having sent for to complete his
triumph, commands to bend too; but she stoutly refusing, and taking him
fierce