So end the three first scenes. In the next (the Castle of St. Aldobrand,) we find the servants there equally frightened with this unearthly storm, though wherein it differed from other violent storms we are not told, except that Hugo informs us, page 9—

"PIET.-Hugo, well met. Memory of so terrible a storm?

Does e'en thy age bear

HUGO. They have been frequent lately.
PIET. They are ever so in Sicily.

HUGO. So it is said. But storms when I was young
Would still pass o'er like Nature's fitful fevers,

And rendered all more wholesome. Now their rage,
Sent thus unseasonable and profitless,

Speaks like the threats of heaven.'

A most perplexing theory of Sicilian storms is this of old Hugo and what is very remarkable, not apparently founded on any great familiarity of his own with this troublesome article. For when Pietro asserts the "ever more frequency of tempests in Sicily, the old man professes to know nothing more of the fact, but by hearsay. 'So it is said."-But why he assumed this storm to be unseasonable, and on what he grounded his prophecy, (for the storm is still in full fury), that it would be profitless, and without the physical powers common to all other violent sea-winds in purifying the atmosphere, we are left in the dark; as well concerning the particular points in which he knew it, during its continuance, to differ from those that he had been acquainted with in his youth. We are at length introduced to the Lady Imogine, who, we learn, had not rested "through" the night; not on account of the tempest, for

"Long ere the storm arose, her restless gestures
Forbade all hope to see her blest with sleep."

Sitting at a table, and looking at a portrait, she informs usFirst, that portrait-painters may make a portrait from memory, "The limner's art may trace the absent feature."

For surely these words could never mean, that a painter may have a person sit to him who afterwards may leave the room or perhaps the country? Secondly, that a portrait-painter can enable a mourning lady to possess a good likeness of her absent lover, but that the portrait-painter cannot, and who shall

"Restore the scenes in which they met and parted?"

The natural answer would have been-Why the scenepainter to be sure! But this unreasonable lady requires in addition sundry things to be painted that have neither lines nor colours

"The thoughts, the recollections, sweet and bitter,

Or the Elysian dreams of lovers when they loved."

Which last sentence must be supposed to mean; when they were present, and making love to each other.-Then, if this portrait could speak, it would "acquit the faith of womankind." How? Had she remained constant? No, she has been married to another man, whose wife she now is. How then? Why, that, in spite of her marriage vow, she had continued to yearn and crave for her former lover

"This has her body, that her mind:
Which has the better bargain?"

The lover, however, was not contented with this precious arrangement, as we shall soon find. The lady proceeds to inform us that during the many years of their separation, there have happened in the different parts of the world, a number of "such things; even such, as in a course of years always have, and till the Millennium, doubtless always will happen somewhere or other. Yet this passage, both in language and in metre, is perhaps amongst the best parts of the play. The lady's love companion and most esteemed attendant, Clotilda, now enters and explains this love and esteem by proving herself a most passive and dispassionate listener, as well as a brief and lucky querist, who asks by chance, questions that we should have thought made for the very sake of the answers. In short, she very much reminds us of those puppet-heroines, for whom the showman contrives to dialogue without any skill in ventriloquism. This, notwithstanding, is the best scene in the Play, and though crowded with solecisms, corrupt diction, and offences against metre, would possess merits sufficient to out-weigh them, if we could suspend the moral sense during the perusal. It tells well and passionately the preliminary circumstances, and thus overcomes the main difficulty of most first acts, to wit, that of retrospective narration. It tells us of her having been honourably addressed by a noble youth, of rank and fortune vastly superior to her own of their mutual love.

heightened on her part by gratitude; of his loss of his sovereign's favour; his disgrace; attainder; and flight; that he (thus degraded) sank into a vile ruffian, the chieftain of a murderous banditti; and that from the habitual indulgence of the most reprobate habits and ferocious passions, he had become so changed, even in appearance, and features,

"That she who bore him had recoiled from him,
Nor known the alien visage of her child,
Yet still she (Imogine) lov'd him.”

She is compelled by the silent entreaties of a father, perishing with "bitter shameful want on the cold earth," to give her hand, with a heart thus irrecoverably pre-engaged, to Lord Aldobrand, the enemy of her lover, even to the very man who had baffled his ambitious schemes, and was, at the present time, entrusted with the execution of the sentence of death which had been passed on Bertram. Now, the proof of "woman's love," so industriously held forth for the sympathy, if not for the esteem of the audience, consists in this, that, though Bertram had become a robber and a murderer by trade, a ruffian in manners, yea, with form and features at which his own mother could not but "recoil," yet she (Lady Imogine) "the wife of a most noble, honoured Lord," estimable as a man, exemplary and affectionate as a husband, and the fond father of her only child--that she, notwithstanding all this, striking her heart, dares to say to it—

"But thou art Bertram's still, and Bertram's ever."

A Monk now enters, and entreats in his Prior's name for the wonted hospitality, and "free noble usage" of the Castle of St. Aldobrand for some wretched shipwrecked souls, and from this we learn, for the first time, to our infinite surprise, that notwithstanding the supernaturalness of the storm aforesaid, not only Bertram, but the whole of his gang, had been saved, by what means we are left to conjecture, and can only conclude that they had all the same desperate swimming powers, and the same saving destiny as the hero, Bertram himself. So ends the first act, and with it the tale of the events, both those with which the tragedy begins, and those which had occurred previous to the date of its commencement. The second displays Bertram in disturbed sleep, which the Prior, who hangs over him, prefers calling a

"starting trance," and with a strained voice, that would have awakened one of the seven sleepers, observes to the audience

"How the lip works! How the bare teeth do grind !

And beaded drops course 1 down his writhen brow!"

The dramatic effect of which passage we not only concede to the admirers of this tragedy, but acknowledge the further advantages of preparing the audience for the most surprising series of wry faces, proflated mouths, and lunatic gestures that were ever "launched" on an audience to "sear the sense."?

"PRIOR.-I will awake him from this horrid trance. This is no natural sleep! Ho, wake thee, stranger ! "

This is rather a whimsical application of the verb reflex we must confess, though we remember a similar transfer of the agent to the patient in a manuscript tragedy, in which the Bertram of the piece, prostrating a man with a single blow of his fist, exclaims-" Knock me thee down, then ask thee if thou liv'st." Well; the stranger obeys, and whatever his sleep might have been, his waking was perfectly natural; for lethargy itself could not withstand the scolding Stentorship of Mr. Holland, the Prior. We next learn from the best authority, his own confession, that the misanthropic hero, whose destiny was incompatible with drowning, is Count Bertram, who not only reveals his past fortunes, but avows with open atrocity, his Satanic hatred of Imogine's lord, and his frantick thirst of revenge; and so the raving character raves, and the scolding character scolds—and what else? Does not the Prior act? Does he not send for a posse of constables or thief-takers to handcuff the villain, or take him either to Bedlam or Newgate? Nothing of the "The big round tears

1

Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase,'

says Shakespeare of a wounded stag hanging its head over a stream: naturally, from the position of the head, and most beautifully, from the association of the preceding image, of the chase, in which "the poor sequester'd stag from the hunter's aim had la'en a hurt." In the supposed position of Bertram, the metaphor, if not false, loses all the propriety of the original.

2 Among a number of other instances of words chosen without reason, Imogine in the first act declares, that thunder-storms were not able to intercept her prayers for "the desperate man, in desperate ways who dealt”

"Yea, when the launched bolt did sear her sense,
Her soul's deep orisons were breathed for him;

that is, when a red-hot bolt, launched at her from a thunder-cloud, had cauterized her sense, in plain English, burnt her eyes out of her head, she kept still praying on. "Was not this love? Yea, thus doth woman love!"

kind; the author preserves the unity of character, and the scolding Prior from first to last does nothing but scold, with the exception indeed of the last scene of the last act, in which, with a most surprising revolution, he whines, weeps, and kneels to the condemned blaspheming assassin out of pure affection to the high-hearted man, the sublimity of whose angel-sin rivals the star-bright apostate, (that is, who was as proud as Lucifer, and as wicked as the Devil), and, "had thrilled him," (Prior Holland aforesaid), with wild admiration.

Accordingly in the very next scene, we have this tragic Macheath, with his whole gang, in the Castle of St. Aldobrand, without any attempt on the Prior's part either to prevent him, or to put the mistress and servants of the Castle on their guard against their new inmates; though he (the Prior) knew, and confesses that he knew, that Bertram's "fearful mates" were assassins so habituated and naturalized to guilt, that

When their drenched hold forsook both gold and gear,
They griped their daggers with a murderer's instinct;"

and though he also knew, that Bertram was the leader of a band whose trade was blood. To the Castle however he goes, thus with the holy Prior's consent, if not with his assistance; and thither let us follow him.

No sooner is our hero safely housed in the Castle of St. Aldobrand, than he attracts the notice of the lady and her confidante, by his "wild and terrible dark eyes,' ""muffled form, ," "fearful form," "darkly wild," "proudly stern," and the like common-place indefinites, seasoned by merely verbal antitheses, and at best, copied with very slight change, from the Conrade of Southey's JOAN OF ARC. The lady Imogine, who has been, (as is the case, she tells us, with all soft and solemn spirits,) worshipping the moon on a terrace or rampart within view of the Castle, insists on having an interview

"

1 This sort of repetition is one of this writer's peculiarities, and there is scarce a page which does not furnish one or more instances-Ex. gr. in the first page or two. Act I, line 7th, "and deemed that I might sleep."--Line 10, "Did rock and quiver in the bickering glare."-Lines 14, 15, 16, "But by the momently gleams of sheeted blue, Did the pale marbles glare so sternly on me, I almost deemed they lived."Line 37, "The glare of Hell."-Line 35, "O holy Prior, this is no earthly storm.' -Line 38, "This is no earthly storm."-Line 42, "Dealing with us."-Line 43, "Deal thus sternly."-Line 44, "Speak! thou hast something seen!"-" A fearful sight!"-Line 45, "What hast thou seen? A piteous, fearful sight."-Line 48, quivering gleams."—Line 50, "In the hollow pauses of the storm."-Line 61, "The pauses of the storm, &c."