On sacred history: "The miraculous passage of the Red Sea."
On mythology: "Why does mythology represent Love to be blind, while at the same time it gives him a bow and arrows to shoot a certain mark?"
SECOND AND THIRD DAYS.
On legislation: "An European endeavouring to instruct a savage in the advantages of legislation."
On these subjects "the learned poetess fully satisfied with her sublime song the utmost expectation of the public. She sang in various choice Tuscan metres upon each of the enumerated topics, mixing them up occasionally one with another;" which, considering the nature of them, must have produced at all events some originality of treatment, it may be supposed.
On this occasion, also, the inexhaustible shepherdess, having made an end of this supply, demanded more. Whereupon one of the twelve virtuous ladies suggested, "The death of Pyramus and Thisbe;" and another, "the elegant problem, Whether constancy was most found in men or in women?"
"The new and spontaneous graces which Corilla manifested in singing on these themes were truly prodigious; and by her treatment of the first, several of the audience"—some of the renowned monks, perhaps—"were visibly moved to tears."
On the third and last evening the audience was so great, that not only the saloon prepared for the purpose, but the adjoining rooms were "filled with literature and the nobility." And the following were the subjects given.
On the fine arts: "Which among them is the most useful and delightful?" "And a charming thing it was to hear how the able improvisatrice extolled them all, but awarded the highest place to painting."