_Lucia,_ (_you_ cannot be spared here, clever Helen Faucit)--the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love.

_Rufa_, a haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for detesting Nero and Nattalis: and all the fitting female attendants to conclude the list.
Each scene, in which each act will be included, should be pictorially, so to speak, a _tableau_ in the commencement, and a _tableau_ of situation in the end.

Let us draw up upon scene _the first_.
Back-ground, Rome burning; in front, ruins of fine Tuscan villa, still smoking; and a terminal altar in the garden.Plebs.running to and fro, full of conventional little speeches, with goods, parents, penates, and other lumber, rescued from the flames; till a tribune, (hight Curtius,) in a somewhat incendiary oration concerning poor men's calamities, and against the powers that be, sends them to the capital with a procession of flamines Diales and vestals, dirging solemnly a Roman hymn [some "_Ad Capitolium, Ad Jovis solium_," and so forth] to good music.

At the end of the train come in Publius and Lucia, to whom from opposite hurriedly walks Galba, full of talk of omens, direful doings, patriotism, and old Rome's ruin.

To these let there be added--to speak mathematically--open-hearted Manlius; and let there follow certain disceptatious converse about Nero, Manlius excusing him, extenuating his vices by his temptations, giving military anecdotes of his earlier virtues, and in fact striving to make the most of him, a very gentle monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, blacker shadows.