Silvio de la Selva, son of Amadis of Greece and a certain Finistea, is the hero of the twelfth and last book of the Amadis series. He first came into prominence by the gallant display he made against the Russians at the siege of Constantinople, and when the Tsar of that turbulent folk showed a desire to plunge Europe into the distractions of war once more he was not the last to unsheath his falchion and assure the twelve dwarfish ambassadors of the Muscovite that the confederacy of one hundred and sixty monarchs which he had brought together had a small chance of returning to their respective dominions. The resultant siege, with its sallies and combats à outrance, we shall forbear to describe, only remarking en passant that, in the mercantile phrase, its details are 'up to sample.' But if the Greek princes bethought them to escape the consequences of having incurred the enmity of the turbulent Russ merely by defeating him in the field, they were destined to receive a rude awakening, for by one fell stroke of necromantic art the entire galaxy was spirited away. Once more the inhabitants of the romantic city on the Bosphorus were plunged into the deepest consternation; but, nothing daunted at the task which now confronted them, the knights and paladins of the family--in themselves an army of no mean dimensions--set out in search of their honoured relatives. But we are not yet liberated from the tangle of plot and counter-plot excogitated by the expiring hackery of Castile, and the dying candle of the great romance of Amadis does not flare up and flicker out with the rescue of the heroes and heroines who have swaggered through its pages in almost immortal sequel of intrigue and battle. For, the princesses having been brought safely back to Constantinople, it was discovered that during their absence some of them had been blessed with little olive branches, many of whose adventures are related, until the bewildered reader, lost in the maze of their story, like Milton's Satan, looks round in desperation for any outlet of escape, exclaiming with the fallen great one: "Me miserable, which way shall I fly?" But, like the doomed archangel, he must 'dree his weird,' and wade through the adventures of Spheramond, son of Rogel of Greece, and Amadis of Astre, son of Agesilan--or, better still, he may do as we did, and, reverently closing the worm-eaten volume, restore it to the library, where its embossed back is, perhaps, rather more appreciated than its grotesque contents.