Pure nature guides the clearness of thy ways, See! see!- see what a piteous height she rose ! Hales me by the hair before Christ's spurning foot! A cold shape rises - it is Annihilation! Oh, thou cold glare! frore, eyeless Altitude! Receive this wasted being! No, no, no! I would fain live, and save my sinking soul. The shrine bursts forth in light! I am turned black Oh, thou sweet-featured Christ! look not upon me And most sincerely fell. Give me the cords! I must dive deep down through the icy air! Gre. Am I the shape I was the thing called power, that? you the gravest dwarf Though you disguise yourself like Gregory! With all the Tuscan forces: they're not like But steel-shod cattle to tread empires down: They're coming!—they bring the perfect humanity, With skeleton morals and a full-fed doom. Pity me, pity me! where shall I fly The howl of Christian souls? It faints on the wind. (With steady earnestness.) We do not make ourselves, but we are made right. My flesh is ague, and my bones are ice; And therefore have I led a perfect life, Which reason, chastity, and Heaven approve. You look at me as if you knew me not; Or do I see thee far, far off i'the mist? I've been confused with deep conflicting thoughts, [Exit, with a moaning anguish. Gre. Wheel on, ye spheres! intensest particles I take thee by the hand; but save my sight From that wan face-mine ears from those lost cries! We do not like commenting on such writing, because the reader must feel it equally with us; but we cannot help admiring with him the intense truth and pathos of the last lines of her speech,— I am the ruins Of the city of Magdala! Woe and alas! Now this last line is a clear recurrence to Gregory's dreadful words, which, with wonderful truth, she never can get out of her mind, and it is a true Shaksperian touch. The struggle goes on-Gregory is defeated; and we extract the last scene, wherein his unquenchable spirit, even in its last embers, still flames forth above them all, wonderful, and we exclaim "So stirbt ein Held, anbetungs-würdig!" GREGORY, mortally wounded, is borne in by DAMIANUS and Monks; followed by Brazute and other Cardinals. Rejoice, great line of kings! the serf-born breath, That sullied your enshrined memories, Now hovers o'er the gulf! And bid the clarions cease! Set him down here, Dami. Lay him down gently. Gre. (dying). I hear the roaring of the Vatican flames! Die, heart! die quickly! Braz. Clement the Third, we name, Duly by us elected, Sovereign Pontiff! Braz. It is done. Voices. Vivat Sanctus Pater Clemens Tertius! Dami. Let not our voices drown his parting sigh; Oh, be our silence an intense heart's prayer! Distant Voices. Vivat Sanctus Pater Clemeus Tertius! Gre. (faintly to Dami.). We have not failed; my breath fills all the place. Emp. What hath he murmured, monk, into thy breast? Gre. (faintly.) Approach, thou perfect hero, who hath ruled This day of swords! Approach me with thine ear— Stoop nearer I wax faint. Emp. (stooping to listen). What wouldst thou say ? Gre. (raising himself). Kiss thou the dust from off thy master's feet! [Dies. [Funeral Mass without. The body of MATILDA, extended upon a bier, is borne across at the back, while the EMPEROR speaks over the body of GREGORY. Emp. All falsehood follow thy descending soul! And in thy fall more reason shall we find To bow with reverence to the See of Rome, We have thus given a meagre and insufficient analysis of this great tragedy, with which we ourselves are not content; but it is so difficult to criticise in a manner that shall be intelligible, unless the reader is familiar with the play; and even now we cannot say that he is familiar with it—no, indeed, he has only got a wooden image of the original marble; still we hope that this wooden image is beautiful enough to make him purchase, without delay, the original, and be like us beyond measure delighted with it. But from this outline, perhaps, the following remarks will be tolerably intelligible. Mr. Horne has then produced a play, which, as a work of art, will live amongst the best dramas so long as a dramatic literature shall exist in England: its success will be slow, but it will be indestructible. No one who has made a long study of the drama, and is therefore competent to judge without having seen it acted, or without his attention being called to it by the authority of "what the world says," can mistake its grandeur, power, and poetry. It has its faults, and serious ones. There is too much sustained power and passionate writing, with no relief of beauty or gentleness. The "etheriality" of Guido and Damianus are exquisitely introduced, as we before noticed, to image the time and the want of such a man as Gregory; but they are too subordinate, and exhibit no emotions sufficient to obviate our charge. As before noted, the canvas is too crowded, and the language too uniform; there is too great a profusion of images, and these images seldom graceful, but powerful, emote, or deep: they nearly all talk the same language-the Empress, Matilda, Gregory, Godfrey, Emperor, all make use of the same tremendous language and images; so that a want of flexibility of variety of chiaro-oscuro, is visible throughout, and the whole has the appearance of effort. of effort. We notice these things because Mr. Horne has genius enough to avoid them if his attention be so directed, and because we expect a series of great works from his pen, which we would have as free from fault as possible: let us also hope, that with the impetuous abandonment of his soul to passion he may be more favoured in the selection of passionate subjects, where the interest shall be individual, not general, and that he will moderate that very rare fault of being too poetical. The economy we recommend, however, is no tonly beneficial to himself, but to the readers; for in "Gregory" the magnificent lines and images with which it abounds do not sufficiently stand out: breadth of colour has a fine effect, but how if it be all breadth? There are finer things to be found in his writings than in any dramatist since the age of Elizabeth; and yet these most awful, comprehensive, or powerful lines have not their due effect, and will be passed over by many- and this surely is missing the mark. We are thus free in our remarks, which we have no wish to put forth but as individual opinions,- very likely erroneous, but still our opinions,—as a set-off against the unfeigned and hearty admiration of the great powers manifested in this play, convinced that he is above the "kind encouragement" of critics, and can afford to be told the truth. Had space allowed us, we should have gone over the ground with him in his thoughtful and thought-inciting "Essay on Tragic Influence," which we cordially recommend to the attention of dramatists and critics: it is an essay worthy to be placed side by side with Percy Shelley's "Defence of Poetry," - beautiful in language, noble in matter, and elevating in tendency. NOTE. - We think it right to observe, that we differ widely from the able author of this paper on some very material points touching the philosophical history of religion. It is enough, however, for all purposes that we should express our dissent generally, without raising any controversy on such a subject; and we are too well assured of the independence and liberality of the writer, not to be convinced that he will frankly concede to us the privilege of simply objecting to opinions which we hold to be, in some degree at least, erroneous. ED. MON. CHRONICLE. ONE of the most exquisite moments the writer of this paper ever enjoyed was when he caught the first view of the Spanish coast from the Bay of Biscay. Italy is replete with all the glorious recollections of classic heroism, but Spain is the region of romantic story. There is a severity in the beauty of the one which loses, in his mind, half its fascination by the side of the simple yet graceful loveliness of the other. Was that indeed Spain whose undulating outline relieved the distant horizon? Was that indeed Spain which, from childhood upwards, had been the country he had yearned to look upon? At the distance of years he well remembers the delight which the first sight of the yet distant and shadowy Pyrenees excited within him; it was like a shock of electricity. He gazed as if he feared it would melt away from before his sight, upon the dim outline of those hills, so renowned in song and tale. He stood upon the deck, and beheld the full and glowing moon rise over the eternity of waters. All his companions were asleep below, and none but the man at the helm and himself were watching above. Four hundred human beings were on board, but they were all slumbering on the deck. The sea was smooth as glass, and the beautiful vessel, with an equal and steady motion, "walked the waters like a thing of life." He outwatched the night, and thought his eye and soul could never take in sufficient of the scene before him. The hours flew by unheeded, and the moon waned away like a beautiful maiden in the last moments of consumption; and the light of morning shed its tender radiance along the vast horizon, like the first gentle glory of another and a brighter world, awakening the slumber of her who hath passed away, in innocence and loveliness, from the coldness and dreariness of this; and the stars went out, one by one, before he thought that even midnight had come. Roncesvalles, Fuentarabia, lay within those hills which the impatient eye could but just discover; and his thoughts wandered to the south, to Grenada, with its palaces, — and Cordova, with its magnificence, and Seville, with its baths and its aqueducts, and Valencia, the paradise of the earth, with its gardens, and its fruits, and its perfumes, and its fountains sparkling in the sun, and its unclouded sky! And he thought of La Mancha, and of the immortal tale which "smiled Spain's chivalry away;" and he gloried in the hope that he might trace, step by step, in all his wanderings, the knight, whose amiable madness was to do excessive good to his fellow-men, and prove, by his own examination, that the manners and the habits depicted three centuries ago by him of Saavedra remained the same even to the present hour; and that Time, in changing all things, VOL. VI. D had, for the honour of human genius, left untouched the scenes of the exploits of Don Quixote, and the exquisite and inimitable drollery of Sancho; and then he wandered to Burgos, and he dreamed of the glories of her Cid, -not the Cid of Corneille, but the Cid of the old, simple, and pathetic chronicler, and of his banishment at the age of sixty-seven years, by order of the ungrateful tyrant Alphonso, and of his separation from his wife, and from his sons, and when, "with the tears rolling from his eyes, in spite of his strength of soul, he turned his head, and looked upon his house: he beheld the door open, and without the padlock, the perches of the falconry empty, without the snares, and without falcons, and without the gentle goshawks. My Cid sighed deeply, for in truth he was oppressed with exceeding great grief. My Cid spake well, and with a voice very calm, Thanks be to thee, O Lord, Almighty Father, who art in heaven, my wicked enemies have taken all away!' Then he hastened to depart, and he loosened the reins of his horse. My Cid led forward the men, and he raised his head. My Cid, Ruy Dias, entered Burgos; sixty lances followed in his train: all the men and women, their eyes red with weeping, placed themselves at the window, they were oppressed so with grief! And they said very often, as they looked at him, God! what a noble vassal, if he had but a good lord!' but no person durst invite him to stay, such mighty power had the King Alphonso; for before the night came, his order, written and sealed, was brought to Burgos, announcing that no man should give a lodging to my Cid, and that any one who might speak to him, even one word, should lose his ears, and the eyes from out his head. The Christian men were much grieved thereat, that they did not dare say a word to my Cid. The Cid went straight to his former lodging; he found the door strongly barred, through terror of King Alphonso, who had ordered it thus, so that unless it was broken open by force, no one should dare undo it. The people of my Cid called out with a loud voice; the people of the house did not answer one single word. Cid approached nigh to the gate; he drew his foot from the stirrup, and struck a blow; the door did not open, for it was well bolted. A little girl of nine years old was within, watching him, and she said when he knocked, 'Cid, you have girt on your sword long ago in a happy moment, but now the King has commanded us not to receive you: last night his order arrived here, with a mighty message, and strongly sealed: we dare not open for you, nor receive you for any thing in the wide world; if we did so we should lose all we have, our substance, and our house, and, moreover, the eyes from out our head: Cid, you can gain nothing by causing evil to us; - but may the Almighty Creator favour you with all his blessings.' The little girl said that, and returned within the house. The Cid then saw that he had no favour in the eyes of the King, and my Cid wept a little at the ingratitude of his lord; and he passed through the silent streets of Burgos without speaking more." My Those are the recollections which impart a character of fascination to the history of that most beauteous land, and which even the hazards and dangers of warfare cannot efface. It is no doubt true that the picture which the fancy paints to itself of the romantic pleasure of a military life in active service is far different from what that life in reality is. It is not, however, amidst the din and horror of the battle-field that this charm is entirely destroyed; it is in the slow and painful march, the want of food and lodging, the exposure to the pitiless elements, the cold and comfortless bivouac, and in other annoyances of a similar nature, which, at the commencement, are little dreamt of, that the spirit of romance is exorcised. These same hardships which occur in active service are, however, rendered, by time and use, |