A given number of hours on the treadmill would probably be deemed by most extant men far more endurable, than a similar number spent in reading the pages thus industriously put together. Nevertheless, if these sentences can help her on for a year or two more in her fight against oblivion, she is heartily welcome to the lift. [Sidenote: HER IMMORTALITY.] The dialogues are on similar themes, and of exactly similar quality. I have read one (being probably the only living man who has done so), between Palamedes and Cleopatra, entitled, "An amorous dispute respecting a fainting fit caused by love." It is truly wonderful to consider, that human beings, with minds similarly constituted to our own, did read these writings with admiration and delight! And when one looks on the long, long road that human intellect must have travelled over, since that was possible, one cannot but reflect on the probability, that a yet more extended career must lie before it. These are the means by which the beautiful Isabella Andreini sought to "avoid death," as she phrases it in one of her prefaces, and to live in the memory of mankind; means which have been successful, so far as to insure the registering of her name in the folio pages of those gatherers of literary crumbs, who have been more abundant in Italy than in any other country. But it is evident that in the day when she was really famous, her fame was that of a great actress. Of all the modes by which one mind may influence its fellows and obtain their admiration, it has been said that that of the histrionic artist is, from its nature, necessarily the most evanescent and perishable. The poet's song, the sculptor's statue, the architect's building, the historian's history, the painter's picture, remain to us, and their authors "being dead, yet speak" to after generations. But the actor, whose immediate power over his public is more intense, perhaps, than that of any of these! His triumphs, however much involving the necessity of intellectual power, having been achieved by means of a perishable machine, are condemned to be equally mortal. The only manner in which some memory of his power, and some conception of its working may be retained in the minds of men, is by attaching his name to that of the characters he has represented. It is thus that the great names of our own dramatic annals have still a real meaning and significance.