ance! for me, Ces. Spare me the agony of utterDimly I see it, and with horror freeze. Arist. Nothing disastrous apprehend Be thy vain terrors by this smile dispell'd. Ces. That smile? Thou can'st not know howghastly 'tis. It terrifies me. Thoughts whence spring Oh, change them, such smiles, Cannot be innocent. change them! Oh, fly me not, but look upon me! See, 'Tis I implore thee-Gods! he listens not. Frenzied he stands—I am undone─Oh, Listen, I follow thee. stay! [ARISTODEMUS, by threatening signs, forbids her following him, and rushes out. Alas! alas! Am I forbidden thus ?-That sign, that glance, Have stunn'd my senses. Oh, the gods be praised! A deity, Gonippus, sends thee hither. The king is frantic-Fly, pursue his steps, Preserve him from the frenzy of his soul. unhappy father's recent visit to the interior of the tomb, and is seized with terror, lest he should have returned to a spot so well calculated to exasperate his previously frenzied feelings. After a moment's hesitation, proceeding from dread of the spectre, which she has learnt to believe inhabits the sepulchre, she resolves to enter it in quest of the royal penitent. She has scarcely disappeared in execution of her enterprise, when Aristodemus comes upon the stage, armed with a dagger, and after a very brief monologue, stabs himself. Argia, Gonippus, and Eumæus, rush in, and the wretched man is presently informed, that in his beloved Cesira, he beholds his long-lost, and vainly-regretted daughter, Argia. He exclaims, in despair at thus discovering, too late, what happiness had been within his reach, And thus must I recover thee! Oh, now Of heav'n's revenge the direful consummation Gonippus silently obeys, and after this powerfully-conceived and striking scene, Cesira remains alone, overwhelmed with grief and terror. In this condition, she is found by Eumæus, the guardian of her infancy, who, upon being liberated from his Spartan imprisonment, has forthwith hurried home. It can hardly be necessary to say what his arrival immediately reveals to Cesira, or, as she is thenceforward called, Argia, the mystery of her birth, and extorts from the still unwilling Lysander, a confirmation of the important discovery. Argia, delighted at learning her near affinity to him she already so filially loves, flies to seek her father; and the Spartans take their final departure from Messenia, which the good-natured Palamedes has no longer any object in retarding. Thus ends the fourth Act. with the anxieties and alarms of Argia The fifth is very short. It begins and Gonippus, neither of whom has been able to find Aristodemus. Argia desires Gonippus to prosecute the search, promising to wait the result where she is, the hall, containing Dirce's monument, being the king's favourite haunt. She is no sooner alone, however, than she recollects her All colour fades. Arist. Oh, whither do ye drag me? Where am I? What a darksome solitude! Remove those pallid phantoms. Say for whom nius could, without an attentive perusal of the whole play, enable them to make it for themselves. It is this-to not a soul of the dramatis persona, from the commencement of the first Act to the close of the fifth, does it ever occur to suggest as a topic of consolation to the grieving monarch, the good use he has made of his royal au Gonippus? See'st thou thy daughter? ter ? Well, what would my daughIf I destroy'd, have I not wept for her? Is't not enough of vengeance? Let her come, I'll speak to her myself. Look on her, see; Her tresses bristle on her brow like thorns, My sovereign, dost thou know me? Me, thority, however nefariously acquired; to dilate upon the battles he has fought for the protection of his people; upon the happiness he has diffused around him by wise government; or upon the grateful affection borne him by his subjects. Once indeed, Cesira, in combating his belief of being an object of divine wrath, observes, that on the contrary, the gods must be favourably disposed towards so good a father, citizen, and king. This, of course, is previous to her knowledge of her royal friend's guilt. And once Gonippus invites him, by way of a diversion to his sorrows, to walk forth, and see how the people rejoice in the peace concluded with Sparta. This last is the only passage in which we find the slightest intimation of what ought to constitute the enjoyment of sovereignty, or the slightest tendency towards what might have been conceived to be the topics best adapted for soothing the pangs of the miserable criminal with hopes that his unnatural deed had been in any degree expiated. Through the whole play, the pomp and exaltation of royalty seem to be the principal, if not the only ideas connected with the kingly office, or, to speak more in the spirit of the work we are reviewing, with the kingly title; and the remorse, tears, and secluded melancholy of the sorrowing penitent, including, we cannot but apprehend, the at least occasional dereliction of duties which neither nature nor fortune had thrust upon him, are the sole grounds upon which he is encouraged to hope for pardon. We suspect that this marvellous apparent deficiency of all philosophical conceptions of public virtue, love of fame, or even of generous ambition, as at least not incompatible with high station, must be ascribed rather to the moral and political mal aria of the fair, but degraded land, where our poet's "young idea" first learned "to shoot," than to any vulgar or jacobinical prejudices appertaining more idiosyncratically to it Cavaliere Vincenzo Monti. Those dreadful scourges are design'd? Eum. Unhappy king! Gon. The agony of death Causes insanity. Aristodemus, And in those empty sockets, eyes are none ! Who tore them out? Why do her nos- Rivers of blood! Alas!-O'er all the rest ments Rend, crush the diadem her blood distains, And with the remnants of its dust bestrew The thrones of earth. Proclaim to haughtiest kings, That royal state by guilt is dearly purchased That I-expired— — —[Dies. Gon. Oh, what a dreadful end! We have in general little relish for a long critique, appended, epilogue fashion, to the end of the analysis of a drama. If the analysis and extracts be worth anything, the faults and merits of the piece in question must have been already made manifest; and moreover, in these enlightened days, when, whatever reading and writing may do, criticism indisputuably "comes by nature ;" all the labours of the Reviewer, whether laudatory or damnatory, but more especially explanatory of either sentence, might seem to be works of absolute supererogation. But notwithstanding these motives for suppressing all further reflections upon this extraordinary tragedy, and following our author's example by abruptly concluding our article as he does his drama, with the death of its hero, there is one remark with which we must trouble our readers; because, being perhaps rather of a negative than of a positive character, no power of ge AXEL, A FREE TRANSLATION FROM A POPULAR SWEDISH POEM. BY ESIAS TEGNER. PULTOWA'S fight was o'er-the royal Swede Eve closed at Bender, as its curtain falls Proud had been Axel, when the gracious hand That nurtured, join'd him to a chosen band Of seven bright youths, their Sovereign's trusty guard, Till seven proud foes lay vanquish'd on the field; How did the heart of Axel swell with joy, |