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:

'Mark the moral, Sir:
An eagle once, from the Euganean hills,
Soared bravely to the sky.
In his giddy track,
Scarce marked by them who gazed upon the first,
Followed a new-fledged eaglet, fast and well.
Upward they sped, and all eyes on their flight
Gazed with admiring awe: when suddenly
The parent bird, struck by a thunder-bolt,
Dropped lifeless through the air. The eaglet paused
And hung upon his wings; and as his sire
Plashed in the far-down wave, men look'd to see him
Flee to his nest affrighted!

Sforza.'Did he so?'

Bianca. 'My noble lord, he had a monarch's heart!
He wheeled a moment in mid air, and shook
Proudly his royal wings, and then right on,
With crest uplifted, and unwavering flight,
Sped to the sun's eye, straight and gloriously!'

There is a fine opportunity for the display of the power of the actress, in the scene where news is brought to Bianca of her father's death. The struggle between the joy which this event produces, by giving a chance of the coronet to her husband, and the sorrow which affection for her parent should cause, one acting against the other, present a scene which calls for the highest powers of the histrionic art to portray faithfully; and it is but just to say, that Miss Clifton did it justice. There is a great deal of quaint humor, and many truths wittily delivered, in the part of Pasquali. His exposition of the true meaning of the word imagination, to the homely understanding of his pupil, is as ingenious as true. One of Goldsmith's characters, if we do not mistake, reasons not unlike the Milanese bard, upon the same or a similar theme: