I should feel obliged if you could give some account of the story attached
to the _Brothers' Steps_, a spot thus called, which formerly existed in
one of the fields behind Montague House. The local tradition says, that
two brothers fought there on account of a lady, who sat by and witnessed
the combat, and that the conflict ended in the death of both; but the
names of the parties have never been mentioned. The steps existed behind
the spot where Mortimer Market now stands, and not as Miss Porter says, in
her novel of the _Field of Forty Steps_, at the end of Upper Montague
Street. In her story, Miss Porter departs entirely from the local
tradition.

H.S. SIDNEY.



* * * * *

ITALIAN IMPROVISATRI.

_(To the Editor of the Mirror.)_


Allow me permission, if consistent with the regulations of your
interesting miscellany, to submit to you a literary problem. We are
informed that there exists, at the present day, in Italy, a set of persons
called "improvisatri," who pretend to recite original poetry of a superior
order, composed on the spur of the moment. An extraordinary account
appeared a short time back in a well known Scotch magazine, of a female