ms the new pleasure
to consist in _showing mercy_, Nero's utter wrath, his hurricane of
hate, revoking that hasty promise, and hurrying away old Publius to die
at the same stake with his daughter.

_Seventh_: the catastrophe scene lies in the Coliseum amphitheatre; (I
mean the older one, anterior to Vespasian's:) bloody games pictured
behind, and those "human torches" at fiery intervals. Nero, enthroned in
side front, surrounded by a brilliant court, amongst whom are some of
the conspirators: at other side Publius and Lucia, tied at one stake in
white robes, back to back, to die before Nero's eyes, Manlius and
soldiers guarding them: he, Manlius, having nobly resolved to test
miraculous assistance to the last, but now tremblingly believing the
chance of a Providence interfering, since Lucia's escape from Nero at
the golden house. Just as the emperor, after a sarcastic speech,
characteristically interlarded with courtier conversation, is commanding
the fagot to be lighted, and Lucia's constant faith has bade Manlius _do
it_--a rush of Nattalis with attendant conspirators and Rufa the Sibyl,
up to Nero; Nattalis strikes him, but the sword breaks short off on the
hidden armour; Nero's majestic rising for a moment, asserting himself
Caesar still, the inviolable majesty;--suddenly stopped by a centripetal
rush of the conspirators; who kill him, (after he has vainly attempted
in despair to kill himself,) and Galba sits on the throne, while Nero,
unpitied and unhelped, gasps out in the middle his dying speech.
Meanwhile, at the other side, Manlius has killed Nattalis for his
treachery, cut the bonds of Publius and Lucia, and all ends in moral
justice for the triumph of good, and the defeat of evil; Manlius and
Lucia, hand in hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands blessing
them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies persecuted
by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Caesar by the assembled
Romans. So, upon a magnificent _tableau_, slowly falls the lawny
curtain.

Patient reader, what think you of my long-winded tragedy? No quibbling
about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the murder of
Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his innocence
of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy in the matter
of London's; spare me, I pray you, learned pundit, your suspicions about
Galba's too probable _alibi_ in Spain. Tell me rather this: do I falsify
histo