I have dwelt on the fact that the sentimental intention in “Il Fuoco” quite bewilderingly fails, in spite of the splendid accumulation of material. We wait to the end to see it declare itself, and then are left, as I have already indicated, with a mere meaningless anecdote on our hands. Brilliant and free, each freighted with a talent that is given us as incomparable, the parties to the combination depicted have, for their affection, the whole world before them—and not the simple terraqueous globe, but that still vaster sphere of the imagination in which, by an exceptionally happy chance, they are able to move together on very nearly equal terms. A tragedy is a tragedy, a comedy is a comedy, when the effect, in either sense, is _determined_ for us, determined by the interference of some element that starts a complication or precipitates an action. As in “Il Fuoco” nothing whatever interferes—or nothing certainly that need weigh with the high spirits represented—we ask why such precious revelations are made us for nothing. Admirably made in themselves they yet strike us as, esthetically speaking, almost cruelly wasted. This general remark would hold good, as well, of “Le Vergini,” if I might still linger, though its application has already been virtually made. Anatolia, in this tale, the most robust of the three sisters, declines marriage in order to devote herself to a family who have, it would certainly appear, signal need of her nursing. But this, though it sufficiently represents _her_ situation, covers as little as possible the ground of the hero’s own, since he, quivering intensely with the treasure of his “will,” inherited in a straight line from the _cinque-cento_, only asks to affirm his sublimated energy. The temptation to affirm it erotically, at least, has been great for him in relation to each of the young women in turn; but it is for Anatolia that his admiration and affection most increase in volume, and it is accordingly for her sake that, with the wonderful moral force behind him (kept as in a Florentine casket,) we most look to see him justified. He has a fine image—and when has the author not fine images?—to illustrate the constant readiness of this possession. The young woman says something that inspires him, whereupon, “as a sudden light playing over the dusky wall of a room causes the motionless sword in a trophy to shine, so her word drew a great flash from my suspended _volontà_. There was a virtue in her,” the narrator adds, “which could have produced portentous fruit. Her substance might have nourished a superhuman germ.” In spite of which it never succeeds in becoming so much as a question that his affection for her shall _act_, that this grand imagination in him shall operate, that he himself is, in virtue of such things, exactly the person to come to her aid and to combine with her in devotion. The talk about the _volontà_ is amusing much in the same way as the