That hold a draught of different effects.)



CHAPTER 1.I.

Vergina era
D' alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
....
Di natura, d' amor, de' cieli amici
Le negligenze sue sono artifici.

"Gerusal. Lib.," canto ii. xiv.-xviii.

(She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
love, and by the heavens.)

At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist named
Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great genius,
but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions
something capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of the
Dilettanti of Naples. He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he
introduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those
who listened. The names of his pieces will probably suggest their
nature. I find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles: "The Feast
of the Harpies," "The Witches at Benevento," "The Descent of Orpheus
into Hades," "The Evil Eye," "The Eumenides," and many others
that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and
supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy with