The character of _Bianca Visconti_ is drawn with marked power. She is truly a fond, doting, enthusiastic lover; a woman who devotes her present and eternal peace to love, and breaks her heart in the unrequited sacrifice. Hers is an enthusiasm which all must admire, and still regret, in pity. _Sforza_ is a bold, not heartless, but ambitious hero. His love for Bianca is concealed beneath the grand passion of his soul. It is shut out for a time, only to burst forth at last with dazzling but hopeless splendor. The quaint _Pasquali_, the courtly poet and the philosophic lover, is a creation worthy the pen of a KNOWLES. He is to this tragedy what _Fathom_ is to the 'Hunchback;' a bright gleam of sunshine ever and anon breaking through the darkness of the rising storm, in striking contrast to the gloom of the gathering clouds. His admirer, _Fiametta_, although not an apt scholar in the mazes of poetry and philosophy, is, like the _Audrey_ of 'As You Like it,' most willing to learn, and ambitious to share in the laurelled honors of her sage teacher. As a literary composition, 'Bianca Visconti' abounds with beauties. The images are clear, and radiant with poetical and delicate imaginings; and there are occasionally those fine bursts of feeling, which seem to come fresh from the soul, and to raise up a kindred sentiment, with their spirit-stirring words, in the souls of all who listen. What, for example, can be more like the picture of the bright thoughts of a young, enthusiastic girl, than Bianca's rapturous anticipation of a life of love: 'Oh, I'll build A home upon some green and flowery isle In the lone lakes, where we will use our empire Only to keep away the gazing world. The purple mountains and the glassy waters Shall make a hush'd pavilion with the sky, And we two in its midst will live alone, Counting the hours by stars and waking birds, And jealous but of sleep!' Or what more glorious to the fancy that would clothe the delicacy of the female character in the gorgeous robes of heroic majesty, than Sforza's description of the fair Giovanna: 'Gods! what a light enveloped her! She left Little to shine in history; but her beauty Was of that order, that the universe Seemed governed by her motion. Men look'd on her As if her next step would arrest the world; And as the sea-bird seems to rule the wave He rides so buoyantly, all things around her-- The glittering army, the spread gonfalon, The pomp, the music, the bright sun in heaven-- Seemed glorious by her leave!' Bianca's picture of the two Sforzas, though often quoted, is too beautiful and striking to be here omitted: