the Cimosco she chose to characterise; and she made thereby a very neat and happy comparison between the gun of Cimosco and the arrow of Cupid.  This talent of the improvisatori is certainly wonderful, and one for which there is no accounting.  It appears peculiar to the Italian nation alone among the moderns, but probably was in vogue among the ancient Greeks also.  It is certain that Rosa Taddei gives as fine thoughts as are to be met with in most poets, and I am very much tempted to incline to Forsyth’s opinion that Homer himself was neither more nor less than an improvisatore, the Greek language affording nearly as many poetic licences as the Italian, and the faculty of heaping epithet on epithet being common in both languages.

The other genius in this wonderful art is Signer Sgricci.  He is so far superior to Rosa Taddei in being five or six years older, in being a very good Latinist and hi improvising whole tragedies on any subject, chosen by the audience.  When the subject is chosen, he develops his plan, fixes his dramatis personae and then strikes off in versi sciolti.  He at times introduces a chorus with lyric poetry.  I was present one evening at an Accademia given by him in the Palazzo Chigi.  The subject chosen was Sophonisba and it was wonderful the manner in which he varied his plot from that of every other dramatic author on the same subject.  He acted the drama, as well as composed it, and pourtrayed the different characters with the happiest effect.  The ardent passion and impetuosity of Massinissa, the studied calm philosophy and stoicism of Scipio, the romantic yet dignified attachment of Sophonisba, and the plain soldierlike honorable behaviour of Syphax were given in a very superior style.  I recollect particularly a line he puts in the mouth of Scipio, when he is endeavouring to persuade Massinissa to resist the allurements and blandishments of love: 

  Che cor di donne e laberinto, in quale
  Facil si perde l’intelletto umano.

This drama he divided into three acts, and on its termination he improvised a poem in terza rima on the subject of the contest of Ajax and Ulysses for the armour of Achilles.

Wonderful, however, as this act of improvising may appear, it is not perhaps so much so as the mathematical faculty of a youth of eight years of age, Yorkshireman by birth, who has lately exhibited his talent for arithmetical calculation improvised in England and who in a few seconds, from mental calculation, could give the cube root of a number containing fifteen or sixteen figures.

Is not all this a confirmation of Doctor Gall’s theory on craniology? viz., that our faculties depend on the organisation of the scull.  I think I have seen this frequently exemplified at Eton.  I have known a boy who could not compose a verse, make a considerable figure in arithmetic and geometry; and another, who could write Latin verse with almost Ovidian elegance, and yet could not work the simplest question in vulgar fractions.  Indeed, I think there seems little doubt that we are born with dispositions and propensities, which may be developed and encouraged, or damped and checked altogether by education.