The history of a people is often detected in their popular amusements; one of these Italian pantomimic characters shows this.  They had a Capitan, who probably originated in the Miles gloriosus of Plautus; a brother, at least, of our Ancient Pistol and Bobadil.  The ludicrous names of this military poltroon were Spavento (Horrid fright), Spezza-fer (Shiver-spear), and a tremendous recreant was Captain Spavento de Val inferno.  When Charles V. entered Italy, a Spanish Captain was introduced; a dreadful man he was too, if we are to be frightened by names:  Sanqre e Fuego! and Matamoro!  His business was to deal in Spanish rhodomontades, to kick out the native Italian Capitan, in compliment to the Spaniards, and then to take a quiet caning from Harlequin, in compliment to themselves.  When the Spaniards lost their influence in Italy, the Spanish Captain was turned into Scaramouch, who still wore the Spanish dress, and was perpetually in a panic.  The Italians could only avenge themselves on the Spaniards in pantomime!  On the same principle the gown of Pantaloon over his red waistcoat and breeches, commemorates a circumstance in Venetian history expressive of the popular feeling; the dress is that of a Venetian citizen, and his speech the dialect; but when the Venetians lost Negropont, they changed their upper dress to black, which before had been red, as a national demonstration of their grief.

The characters of the Italian pantomime became so numerous, that every dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of comedy.  That loquacious pedant the Dottore was taken from the lawyers and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant who spoke the dialect of Bergamo, a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to further any wickedness; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello with his grotesque nose.  Moliere, it has been ascertained, discovered in the Italian theatre at Paris his “Medecin malgre lui,” his “Etourdi,” his “L’Avare,” and his “Scapin.”  Milan offered a pimp in the Brighella; Florence an ape of fashion in Gelsomino.  These and other pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the Tartaglia, a spectacled dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been gradually introduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to call forth his own peculiar talents.

The Pantomimes, or, as they have been described, the continual Masquerades, of Ruzzante, with all these diversified personages, talking and acting, formed, in truth, a burlesque comedy.  Some of the finest geniuses of Italy became the votaries of Harlequin; and the Italian pantomime may be said to form a school of its own.  The invention of Ruzzante was one capable of perpetual novelty.  Many of these actors