careful revision suggested. It is no rough sketch hastily thrown off by an unknown youthful adventurer in the field of literature, but the elaborately finished production of a writer who many years ago gained some distinction by his "Orion." Viewed in this light, we are constrained to say it cannot be considered satisfactory. Its appearance so soon after Tennyson's "Queen Mary," with which, as an historical tragedy, it naturally suggests comparison, is not to its advantage. If Mr. Tennyson's chief character was unattractive, and, in the estimation of many, unsuitable for dramatic purposes, it had at least the merit of enabling him to introduce persons and events belonging to one of the most critical periods in our national history. On the other hand, Mr. Horne's Cosmo is so little known that he is in danger of being confounded with his ancestor, the first of that name, who underwent various vicissitudes of fortune, and by his great wealth, his liberal patronage of literature, art, and science, his enlightened government, and his skilful diplomacy, acquired considerable historical importance. The other characters in the play are even more insignificant, and the incidents of the plot belong to family rather than national history. It is hardly necessary to remark, that there is a still greater disparity of treatment than of subject in the two dramas. Attention was called to the unevenness of some of Mr. Tennyson's lines, but his roughness was polished smoothness compared with Mr. Horne's rugged clumsiness, which, on some occasions, even falls short of grammatical correctness. One line stands thus: "On others thou has darted glances fierce." Whether the responsibility for this solecism rests with the author or the printer, we cannot pretend to determine; but the following, taken at random, is not much better: : "Bury him!-bury him—to be sure-that's right! This is what Garcia, the second son of Cosmo, is made to say after having inadvertently slain his elder brother in a quarrel. The appropriateness of the matter is about on a par with the elegance of the form. If these were the only instances of the kind, instead of being samples of many more, or if feebleness and faultiness of expression were redeemed by powerful conception of character, skilful construction of plot, depth, or originality of thought, and intensity of feeling, they might be overlooked; but unfortunately we can discern none of these redeeming features in the play, which gives far more indication of effort than of effect. The author evidently means to be sublime in one passage, pathetic in another, startling in another, and witty and humorous occasionally; but his sublimity takes the form of raving rhapsody, his passion is torn to tatters, bis most striking hits fall flat, and his wit and humour degenerate into mere buffoonery. Lest we should be thought unduly severe in our judgment, we will quote a passage or two by way of illustration and confirmation. Take the following as a specimen of intended sublimity. Cosmo (advancing slowly and abstractedly). My lofty and firm motives that once held This world's a bubble: see! where it now bursts, Now will its monstrous constellation blazon We are bound to confess, that the author here soars to a height which we have not sufficient strength of wing to reach. How rays from heaven can moisten or move dust, is beyond our comprehension. But let us pass on to the speech of Garcia on discovering that he has killed his brother. GAR. He is not dead!-he is not surely dead? [After a pause, during which the sky darkens. Yes-he is surely dead-he must be dead! Would that were stone too!-God! make me a stone, These root-cold fingers-fallen jaw-this hair Streaming the grass-Oh death! death! death is here! O where-where shall I go? The following attempt at wit and humour is more suitable for the broadest farce than tragedy of any sort. It is part of a conversation between some courtiers and gentlemen who, having lost the princes in the hunt, are taking a quiet picnic in the forest beside a wood fire. GEN. There's nothing like forest cookery! COR. Besides, you can replenish your dish from the next thicket. Which now, gentlemen, do ye think the best;-the game that runs, or the game that flies? DAL. That flies away, do you mean? COR. No, no; but which ? 2ND GEN. Why, if you were very sharp set, that game is best which you can first catch. COR. Dalmasso, I'll settle the question. I do think that game best which flies away: it leaves so much to the imagination. All. Ha ha ha!-it does-it does! [They drink.] COR. Dalmasso-here's more venison ! DAL. Not a morsel-I hate the sight of it! All. Oh! oh! DAL. I'm an exhausted receiver. COR. I think you must be, by this time. DAL. 'Tis well I have escaped all blown conceits in the shape of a retort; but hand me yon flask instead-I wish to try an experiment with its neck. 1ST GEN. He's getting pleasant with his chemistry! DAL. A tri-unal content now fills my carbonic trunk; an oxy-hydrogenicazotic perfection! COR. What jargon of science is this? DAL. Jargon to you, I make no doubt: ahem! COR. What do you mean, sir?-explain your "hem!" 1ST GEN. Explain, sir! 2ND GEN. Enlighten us! [All laugh and fill glasses. COR. Expose your darkness! No response? He blossoms inward like the fig, its best beauty, both of colour and taste, is the inside of the bottle. DAL. Peace! what know you of taste or colour? COR. Thus much by negation: your wit hath no more colour than the nails and knee-caps of a drowned man; a child's tongue that's cutting its teeth; or a drawing in white chalk on a ghost's forehead. If once in the year it entertain a touch of colouring, 'tis green as a colt's nether lip when the daybreak fields are reeking. As to thy taste-another wedge o' the pasty; thank you— 1ST GEN. Mass! how you do eat, while you talk! COR. As to your taste, 'tis my belief, were half a dozen Pharaoh mummies chemically expressed in a stick of Spanish liquorice, the very conceit of it would make you glory in the suction! DAL. Oh, antithetical sublimation of humanity! Do I sit here to be insulted by the pictures of thine own nightmare fantasy? COR. No; you sit here to eat and drink, like the rest of us. The general observations put into the mouths of the various characters -if the lifeless undistinguishable shadows that flit across the stage can be so called-are singularly "stale, flat, and unprofitable," and the chief sufferer of the tragedy must be the reader, for it is hardly likely to have either performers or audience. If the present edition is an improvement upon the preceding one, that must have been poor indeed, and the work might as well, both for Mr. Horne's credit and the public advantage, have been suffered to remain undisturbed in its oblivion. The first of the other poetical pieces in the volume is "Arctic Heroes. A fragment of naval history." Like Cosmo, it is spasmodic rather than powerful. However opportune in its appearance just at the time of the Arctic expedition, it is too dismal in its tone to accord with the hopes we all indulge as to the success of our brave countrymen, and we therefore refrain from quotation. The remaining occasional poems, though more correct in versification than the tragedy, do not often rise above the level of mediocrity, or contain-as Emerson says in the extract quoted by the author-"a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing." Poems and Translations. By W. Starkey. Dublin: G. Herbert. London: Simpkin and Co., 1875.-Most of these poems are of a religious character, and are in a pleasing strain, though not strongly marked by originality or power. There is a vein of tender amiable feeling running throughout the volume, and finding expression in musical lines. The fol lowing may serve as a favourable specimen of the work : "HOME OF THE HAPPY. "Where bide the blest in calm and peace- Where cares shall end and troubles cease- I fain would reach your quiet shore, "No aching heart is found in thee, Sin must an endless exile be, Sorrow and sighing-strangers they; "What glorious things are told of thee, Thy beauty and thy melody, Home of the happy! Mr. Starkey's translations of "Horace are pleasing paraphrases rather than rigid translations. This is especially the case with his version of Diffugere nives, which resembles the original only in the general outlines of thought, and does not give a sufficient idea of its curiosa felicitas. Mr. Starkey is more successful in his rendering of O, Venus regina Gnidi Paphique, but even here fails, as many have done before him, to reproduce Horace's compact and most expressive terseness. Few, indeed, are so gifted as to translate Horace with a fidelity pleasing to the English ear. Hence, most translations are but paraphrases at best, Pope's notably but in what Mr. Starkey has attempted, it is fair to say he has commendably succeeded. HUMANITARIANISM. MR. JOHN S. STUART-GLENNIE has written to complain of the notice of his work, Pilgrim-Memories, which appeared in our August number. He says: "My attention has been called by Messrs. Longmans to a review of my 'Pilgrim-Memories' in the current DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, in which it is affirmed that in that work I represent the institutions of marriage, property, and government as of questionable utility, and destined to speedy destruction! "A more grossly false affirmation with respect to the opinions expressed in my book there could hardly be, and more especially in face of the note at the end of the Armageddon chapter." Mr. Stuart-Glennie uses impertinent language while he does not quote correctly from the notice of which he complains. He is not represented as affirming that the institutions of marriage, property, and government are of questionable utility, and destined to speedy destruction. The whole paragraph in which the sentence complained of occurs runs thus:"For a lawyer, Mr. Stuart-Glennie writes in a strangly revolutionary tone. He avows a decided sympathy with the Parisian Communists, and says that in the atrocities of the reign of terror on the capture of Paris, we have had but too lamentably strong proof that the spirit with which, since its establishment, Christianity has ever met serious attack on its institutions is still unchanged.' He calls the Flag_of_the Revolution,' which he predicts with undisguised satisfaction, the Flag of Brotherhood with the Outcast,' and talks of marriage, property, and government as institutions of questionable utility, and destined to speedy destruction!" Thus, Mr. Stuart-Glennie is represented not as affirming anything about the institutions of marriage, property, and government, but the allegation is that he "talks "-no doubt writes would be more critically correct-about them as of "questionable utility, and destined to speedy destruction." Whether he does so or not, in his zeal for his new creed of Humanitarianism, a few extracts will enable the reader to judge. Mr. Stuart-Glennie contempletes a revolution that will totally overthrow our present social fabric, and he clearly intimates that he considers such a revolution desirable. He says: 66 For, though in the spring of 1862, it was still possible for a man of Mr. Buckle's school to imagine that the Modern Revolution might get accomplished -the supernatural Christian ideal be destroyed, and the natural Humanitarian ideal be established-without a battle of Armageddon, a prolonged and frightfully tragic conflict; hardly, I should think, is such a fancy possible now, even for such dreamers as are in general the so-called 'practical' people, who consider only material interests, &c. "But differing from Mr. Buckle as to the importance of Moral Forces as historical causes, I naturally differed from him also as to the possibility, in the present state of human development, of a peaceful solution of religious and social questions, not only so fundamental as those now agitating society, but so necessarily, as it seemed to me, bringing Moral Forces into the most violent antagonism."-Pp 366, 367. This "Modern Revolution" so desirable for the destruction of the Christian and the establishment of the Humanitarian ideal, and which, inca |