Bayle remarks on the close juxtaposition of the statement of her profession, and her expectation of resurrection; and observes that the circumstance may serve to prove, that the severity of the Church on the subject of the sepulture of comedians had been much exaggerated. But it would be more correct to say, that it proves the action of the Church in carrying out its views and principles to have been fitful, irregular, and subordinated to circumstances, as it in truth ever has been. In the long, ceaseless battle of the Church through century after century, against all that is not–church, it has always known how to retire temporarily from a point likely to be too hotly contested, without by any means abandoning the hope of reconquering the ground at a more favourable moment. Always pushing on the advanced posts of its pretentions in accurate correspondence with the amount of resistance it has been met by, the polemical battle–front which it has shown to its enemies from Pekin to Peru, has never been straight drawn by the rule of immutable principles, but ever a wavy line, with undulations constantly in movement. And the startling fact that at Lyons, in the year 1604, Isabella Andreini, avowing her calling, was at the same time permitted to assert publicly, that she hoped for resurrection to life eternal, shows only, that so audacious a solecism was overlooked, because her standing in the public esteem, and the mood of the Lyons world at the moment, made it unwise to select that occasion for asserting the ecclesiastical claims. Isabella's published works consist of a pastoral drama called "Mirtilla," written when she was very young, and of which she herself speaks slightingly at a later period of her life;—a volume of poems, some of which are declared by Italian critics to have much merit;—a collection of "Letters," (not real correspondence, unfortunately, but essays written for the press);—and lastly, some dialogues collected, as the title–page tells us, by "Francesco Andreini, comico geloso, detto il Capitano Spavento." In a dedication of the "Letters" to the Duke of Savoy, she says, that they are the fruit of long vigils, and of hours snatched with difficulty from the avocations of her most laborious profession, and that her object in the composition of them was, as far as in her lay, to preserve her name from oblivion after death. With this view she has written some hundred and fifty little treatises on such subjects as "The force of friendship," "Of the constancy of women," "Lovers' prayers," "Prayers of an honourable lover," "Of jealousy," "Of marriage," "Of love and war," "Of lovers' suspicions," and the like. Poor Isabella! How desperately she must have struggled during those long night hours, after the labours of the day, against weariness and want of rest, as she toiled on in pursuit of immortal fame!