REMARKS ON MELO-DRAMATISTS.

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him—with liis left hand and arm he held him in a close fierceembrace ; then, with the right drawing a stilo,*he plungedit into the side of his victim four or five times —and finally,before he could be stopped, he drove the blade through andthrough his adversary’s loins into his own stout heart. Inone dread, horrid grasp, writhing entwined and wallowing ineach other’s blood, thus perished Parafanti and his adversary.

If the concoctors of melo-drames and story books wouldonly follow mere fact in the formation of their plots, theywould find such facts far preferable to the bald absurditiesand anachronisms with which they bamboozle the public.What is there, for instance, in the opera of Fra Diavolo thathas the slightest foundation in the reality of his birth, life,or death ? It would have been pleasant to have seen him onthe stage hanging, as I saw him at Naples on a gibbet fiftyfeet high ; and still more edifying to behold the grandpageant of his mock funeral at Messina, Sir Sidney Smith ,Sir Hudson Lowe , Captain Flinn, &c., in full uniform,being chief mourners!

The 1st day of January, 1811, was the last of the brigands’reign in the kingdom of Naples, save and always exceptinga few cases of robbery in the vicinity of Fondi and Terracina,where the high road passes through a territory of mountainson one side, and swamps on the other, which, under thebest possible system of police, must always furnish shelterto some evil doers, determined to brave death in preferenceto honest labour.

The operations of General Manhes have been much blamed,and even execrated. But nothing short of the inflexiblevisitation of an earthquake, a volcano, or a hurricane, couldhave stopped the evil which was more inveterate and terriblethan the remedy ! Manhes was inflexible, but consistent andjust,—and did only what he had previously threatened.

It was, I think, in 1811, that my friend Colonel Wolff,