Peisse, with respect to reality in painting, and the laws of material illusion. Speaking of the Roman _burattini_, “These,” he says, “are little figures worked by a man placed above the stage, which is arranged exactly like that of our theatres. For some minutes after the rising of the curtain, the puppets preserve their true dimensions, but soon they grow larger to the eye, and in a short time they have the appearance of real men. The space in which they move, the furniture, and all the surrounding objects, being in exact proportion with their stature, the illusion is perfect, and is sustained so long as the eye has no point of comparison. But if, as sometimes happens, the hand of the manager shows itself amongst the little actors, it seems that of a giant.... If a man suddenly came amongst the marionettes, he would appear a Gargantua.” Another well-known and esteemed French writer on Italy, M. Beyle (Stendhal),[5] tells of the realisation of this last ingenious supposition. He relates, that after the performance (at the Palazzo Fiano at Rome) of _Cassandrino allievo di un pittore_ (Cassandrino pupil of a painter), a child coming upon the stage to trim the lamps, two or three strangers uttered a cry; they took the child for a giant. In all the principal towns of Italy through which he passed, M. Beyle waited upon the marionettes—now in theatres, then in private houses—and the pages he devotes to them are full of that fineness of observation which characterised his charming talent. We can hardly do better than extract his first impressions. “Yesterday, towards nine o’clock,” he says, “I quitted those magnificent saloons, adjacent to a garden full of orange trees, which are called the _Café Rospoli_. The _Fiano_ palace is just opposite. At the door of a sort of cellar stood a man, exclaiming, ‘_Entrate, ô signori!_ it is about to begin!’ For the sum of twenty-eight centimes (three-pence), I was admitted to the little theatre. The low price made me fear bad company and fleas. I was soon reassured; my neighbours were respectable citizens of Rome. The Roman people is perhaps in all Europe that which best loves and seizes delicate and cutting satire. The theatrical censors being more rigid than at Paris, nothing can be tamer than the comedies at the theatre. Laughter has taken refuge with the marionettes, whose performances are in great measure extemporaneous. I passed a very agreeable evening at the Fiano palace; the stage on which the actors paraded their small persons was some ten feet broad and four high. The decorations were excellent, and carefully adapted to actors twelve inches in height.” The pet character with the Romans is Cassandrino, an elderly gentleman of fifty-five or sixty years of age, fresh, active, dandified, well powdered, well dressed, and well got up, with excellent manners, and much knowledge of the world, whose only failing is, that he falls in love with all the women he meets. “It must be owned,” says M. Beyle,