FIELD OF FORTY STEPS.
(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
I should feel obliged if you could give some account of the story attached to the Brothers' Steps, a spot thus called, which formerly existed in one of the fields behind Montague House. The local tradition says, that two brothers fought there on account of a lady, who sat by and witnessed the combat, and that the conflict ended in the death of both; but the names of the parties have never been mentioned. The steps existed behind the spot where Mortimer Market now stands, and not as Miss Porter says, in her novel of the Field of Forty Steps, at the end of Upper Montague Street. In her story, Miss Porter departs entirely from the local tradition.
H.S. SIDNEY.
ITALIAN IMPROVISATRI.
(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
Allow me permission, if consistent with the regulations of your interesting miscellany, to submit to you a literary problem. We are informed that there exists, at the present day, in Italy, a set of persons called "improvisatri," who pretend to recite original poetry of a superior order, composed on the spur of the moment. An extraordinary account appeared a short time back in a well known Scotch magazine, of a female improvisatrice, which may have met your notice. Now I entertain considerable doubt of the truth of these pretensions; not that I question the veracity of those who have visited Italy and make the assertion: they believe what they relate, but are, I conceive, grossly deceived. There is something, no doubt, truly inspiring in the air of Italy:
For wheresoe'er they turn their ravish'd eyes,