ity; the scenic beauties of the background,
shifting from sculpture-gallery to pleasance, from pleasance to
banquet-hall; the pomp and glitter of the royal train, the melting
graces of Deidamia and her maidens; seemed, in their multiple appeal, to
develop in Odo new faculties of perception. It was his first initiation
into Italian poetry, and the numbers, now broken, harsh and passionate,
now flowing into liquid sweetness, were so blent with sound and colour
that he scarce knew through which sense they reached him. Deidamia's
strophes thrilled him like the singing-girl's kiss, and at the young
hero's cry--

Ma lo so ch' io sono Achille,
E mi sento Achille in sen--

his fists tightened and the blood hummed in his ears.

In the scene of the banquet-hall, where the followers of Ulysses lay
before Lycomedes the offerings of the Greek chieftains, and, while the
King and Deidamia are marvelling at the jewels and the Tyrian robes,
Achilles, unmindful of his disguise, bursts out

Ah, chi vide finora armi piu belle?

--at this supreme point Odo again turned to his neighbour. They
exchanged another look, and at the close of the act the youth leaned
forward to ask with an air of condescension: "Is this your first
acquaintance with the divine Metastasio?"

"I have never been in a play-house before," said Odo reddening.

The other smiled. "You are fortunate in having so worthy an introduction
to the stage. Many of our operas are merely vulgar and ridiculous; but
Metastasio is a great poet." Odo nodded a breathless assent. "A great
poet," his new acquaintance resumed, "and handling a great theme. But do
you not suffer from the silly songs that perpetually interrupt the flow
of the verse? To me they are intolerable. Metastasio might have been a
great tragic dramatist if Italy would have let him. But Italy does not
want tragedies--she wishes to be sung to, danced to, made eyes at,
flattered and amused! Give her anything, anything that shall help her to
forget her own abasement. Panem et circenses! that is always her cry.
And who can wonder that her sovereigns and statesmen are willing to
humour her, when even her poets stoop to play the mountebank for her
diversion?" The speaker, ruffling his locks with a hand that scattered
the powder, turned on the brilliant audience his strange corrugated
frown. "Fools! simpletons!" he cried, "not to see that in applauding the
Achilles of Metastasio they are smiling at the allegory o