“The Podesta’s Daughter” is an Italian tale or legend, thrown into that dramatic form for which Mr. Boker has shown such a remarkable gift. The story is very briefly this. A lowly maiden is loved and wooed by one far above her in life, a son of the neighboring duke. The father and brother of the maid, believing the high-born youth to be merely selfish and insidious in his offers of love and marriage, seek to rescue her from what appears to them a fatal snare, and persuade her to reject his addresses and even pretend to be affianced to another, a country hind in her own walk in life. The young and uncalculating noble, stung to the quick by her apparent preference of a rival so utterly unworthy of him and of her, suddenly abandoned his home and castle, and engaged during all the prime and meridian of his days in distant foreign wars. In the evening of life he returns, alone and almost a stranger, to the scenes of his youth. On approaching his castle, he falls in with an old man, the “Podesta,” by whom he is not recognized. In the dialogue between them, the Podesta, being questioned by the apparent stranger, tells the story of himself and family, and especially of his “daughter,” by whose untimely grave they are standing. She died of a broken heart, after the abrupt departure of the young duke, years ago. It is the old story. True love, not left to its native instincts, but thwarted and driven devious by the manœuvres of the suspicious. Though Italian in manners, and dramatic in form, it is a true story of the heart. It is told with infinite skill, and must win for its author a bright addition to the chaplet which already surrounds his brow. The first scene in the “Podesta’s Daughter,” is a good instance of the quiet ease with which Mr. Boker makes an actor bring out the points of a story, so that the reader is at once posted up to the very moment of action. SCENE—_Before and within the gate of an Italian Churchyard. Enter (as if from the wars,)_ Duke Odo, Vincenzo, _and a train of men-at-arms_.