By another still more ingenious invention, all the strings, excepting those of the arms, were made to pass within the body and out at the top of the head, where they were assembled in a slender iron tube, which served at the same time as the rod to move the figures. A totally different system was subsequently introduced by Bartholomew Neri, a distinguished painter and mechanician. It was that of grooves, in which the marionettes were fixed. Their movements were directed by persons beneath the stage, who also pulled their strings. These various systems, sometimes combined, have produced the most astonishing results. One of our countrymen, passing through Genoa in 1834, was taken to the marionette theatre _delle Vigne_, and witnessed the performance of a grand military drama, _The Siege of Antwerp_, in which Marshal Gerard and old General Chassé vied with each other in sonorous phrases, rolling eyes, and heroism. The fantoccini of the _Fiando_ theatre at Milan are as celebrated and as much visited by foreigners as the dome, the arch of the Simplon, or the shrine of St Charles. In 1823, a correspondent of the _Globe_ newspaper spoke of them thus: “Such is the precision of movement of these little actors, their bodies, arms, head, all gesticulate with such judgment, and in such perfect unison with the sentiments expressed by the voice, that, but for the dimensions, I might have thought myself in the Rue de Richelieu. Besides _Nebuchadnezzar_, a classic tragedy, they performed an anacreontic ballet. I wish our opera-dancers, so proud of their legs and arms, could see these wooden dancers copy all their attitudes and graces.” Dancing is a department of their performances in which the Italian marionettes excel. A French author, Mr Jal, who published, nearly twenty years ago, a lively narrative of a ramble from Paris to Naples, was wonder-struck by what he saw at the _Fiando_. The grand romantic drama in six tableaux, _Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Siege of Temeswar_, which composed the bulk of the evening’s performance, astonished him much less than the ballet between its acts. “The dancing of these wooden Perrots and Taglionis,” he says, “is truly not to be imagined; horizontal dance, side dance, vertical dance, every possible dance, all the flourishes of feet and legs that you admire at the opera, are to be seen at the _Fiando_ theatre; and when the doll has danced her dance, when she has been well applauded, and the pit calls for her, she comes out from the side scenes, bows, puts her little hand on her heart, and disappears only when she has completely parodied the great singers and the proud dancers of _La Scala_.” But doubtless the greatest compliment these doll-dancers ever received, was the practical one paid them by the Roman authorities, who compelled the female marionettes to wear drawers! The completeness of the illusion in the case of these puppets suggested some curious reflections to a clever French critic, M.