which moons spin round planets, planets round suns, and suns in due degrees round the eternal centre. Every fine play is reducible to a passion, which is a centre or circle; for different as these two definitions may appear at first glance in mathematics, yet in metaphysics they are one and the same thing, or rather, we ought to say, one includes the other. They are indissolubly connected; the centre is the soul of the circle, and the circle is the body of the centre.

If we take Othello, we shall find jealousy the controlling power; in Hamlet, indecision; Macbeth, superstition—not ambition, as commonly supposed, for this is developed in Richard the Third; in Lear, the great idea is not ingratitude, but a prudential reserve of rights and a warning against dotage. This is the test of a great dramatist. The soul of a drama is its controlling passion; its body is the plot; the actors are the faculties; its life is the progress; and the catastrophe is the death. Judged by this rule, we need scarcely observe that Longfellow has no pretension to be considered a dramatist.

In the very first scene there is an incident so absurd as almost to stamp upon the very first page-this is no play.

The scene turns upon the purity of a danseuse, one Preciosa, the heroine of a play: she is a gipsy.

66 LARA.

"Then I must try some other way to win her!

Pray, dost thou know Victorian?

A man of dramatic genius would never so palpably make a giant merely to kill him, nor would he invent a jeweller on purpose to have two rings exactly alike. There is too much of the make-believe, as children term it, to throw an air of nature over the scene.

In the second scene there is an attempt at humor, but of a very dismal kind. Chispa says, among other witticisms,

"And now, gentlemen," (addressing the serenaders,) “pax vobiscum, as the ass said to the cabbages."

.....

"Now look you, you are gentlemen who lead the life of crickets. You enjoy hunger by day, and noise by night!"

Were

We are introduced to the heroine in the third scene. she only a dancer, or singer, or actress, we might possibly accept her opening words as a key-note to her character; but she is meant to be any thing but either of those characters, and the reader will judge how undramatic are the introductory tokens of her dramatic existence. They are, singularly enough, a complete contradiction to her character. We do not analyse this play thoroughly on its own account, for that would hardly be fair, seeing that Mr. Longfellow does not assume to be a dramatist, but chiefly to develope our theory of a drama.

"How slowly through the lilac-scented air
Descends the tranquil moon; like thistle down
The vapory clouds float in the peaceful sky:

And sweetly from yon hollow vaults of shade

The nightingales breathe out their souls in song.

And hark! what songs of love, what soul-like sounds,
Answer them from below!"

Then follows a very fine scene between the dancer and her lover Victorian. We quote part of the lover's speech.

66 VICTORIAN.

"What I most prize in woman

Is her affection, not her intellect.

The intellect is finite, but the affections

Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted.

Compare me with the great men of the earth:

What am I? Why, a pigmy among giants!

But if thou lovest ?-Mark me

-I say, lovest!

The greatest of thy sex excels thee not!

The world of affection is thy world,

Not that of man's ambition!

In that stillness

That most becomes a woman, calm and holy,

Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart
Feeding its flame."

In the fourth scene, Crispa, the comic gentleman, again appears, but with the exception of devouring a supper, he does nothing very laughable. We generally notice that the finest fun at Niblo's comes off when Francis Ravel is eating his own or somebody else's supper. By way of critical objection, we may say that the drama does not take one single step forward in this scene.

In the next scene between the gipsy girl's lover Victorian and an intimate, we have very pleasant writing, but there is no action; as the sailors say, "all are at anchor." Victorian's praise of Preciosa is well said:

“The angels sang in heaven when she was born!

She is a precious jewel I have found

Among the filth and rubbish of the world.

I'll stoop for it; but when I wear it here,

Set on my forehead like the morning star,
The world may wonder, but it will not laugh!"

This scene is full to overflowing with the most excellent

writing. We wish the author of "Jacob Leisler" would study this drama; we feel sure he would learn something that would vastly improve his writings.

There is a skill in the grouping of the following thought which almost makes it seem original, although it is merely versified from a thought of Carlyle:

"Hast thou e'er reflected

How much lies hidden in that one word, now?

"Yes; all the awful mystery of Life!

I oft have thought, my dear Hypolito,

That could we, by some spell of magic, change
The world and its inhabitants to stone,

In the same attitudes they now are in,

What fearful glances downward might we cast

Into the hollow chasms of human life!

What groups should we behold about the deathbed,
Putting to shame the group of Niobe!
What joyful welcomes, and what sad farewells!
What stony tears in those congealed eyes!
What visible joy or anguish in those cheeks!
What bridal pomps, and what funereal shows!.
What foes, like gladiators, fierce and struggling!
What lovers with their marble lips together!"

We have been told that the following lines are not original. As we were not informed from whom they were taken, we shall treat