came ; Nor visible Angels mourn'd with droop- Nor didst thou mount on high With all thine own redeem'd out bursting For thou didst bear away from earth Nor o'er thy cross the clouds of vengeance A little while the conscious earth did shake While thou didst sleep within the tomb, Ere yet the white-robed Angel shone And when thou didst arise, thou didst not With Devastation in thy red right hand, ful few. Then calmly, slowly didst thou rise In the interval which elapses between the commencement of Salone's Bridal-song and the final alarm, Miriam, who is standing in her father's gate, meets with an old Jew, who recounts to her that he had been present when Christ was led to the cross -that he had mingled in the fierce outcries of the Jews against the Messiah-and had heard with his own ears the last prophetic annunciation of the doom which awaits the city. The introduction of such a recital at that moment, shews great art in the poet, as it binds together the whole series of Mir. Here, here-not here-oh! any Not toward the fountain, not by this lone path. If thou wilt bear me hence, I'll kiss thy feet, I'll call down blessings, a lost virgin's blessings ruin, Upon thy head. Thou hast hurried me along, Oh, strangely cruel! Lay in its slumber on the slumbering foun Ah! tain ? where art thou, thou that wert ever with me, Oh Javan! Javan! The Soldier. When was Javan call'd By Miriam, that Javan answer'd not? Forgive me all thy tears, thy agonies. Mir. What's here ? on earth, The sad, the desolate, the sinful earth. And thou could'st venture amid fire and death, Amid thy country's ruins to protect me, Dear Javan! Jav. 'Tis not now the first time, Miriam, That I have held my life a worthless sacrifice For thine. Oh! all these later days of siege I've slept in peril, and I've woke in peril. For every meeting I've defied the cross, On which the Roman, in his merciless scorn, Bound all the sons of Salem. Sweet, I boast not; But to thank rightly our Deliverer, We must know all the extent of his deliver ance. Mir. And I can only weep! Jav. Ay, thou should'st weep, Lost Zion's daughter. Mir. Ah! I thought not then Of my dead sister, and my captive fatherSaid they not" captive" as we pass'd ?-I thought not Of Zion's ruin and the Temple's waste. Javan. My own beloved! I dare call For Heaven hath given thee to me-chosen out, As we two are, for solitary blessing, us And it is now no more, Nor ever shall be to the end of time, Even so shall perish, Earth, behold! And in that judgment look upon thine own! The Christian spectators then sing together the following sublime chorus, which, as we have hinted before, completes, in the most felicitous manner, the whole of the tragic picture, by extending the interest of the catastrophe, and carrying on the mind of the reader to the contemplation of the greatAs a specimen of composition, it is, er catastrophe which it symbolizes. we think, superior to any thing Mr Milman ever has produced, and indeed inferior in very little to any thing we remember in the poetry either of his English or of his German contemporaries. When taken together with the passages we have already quoted, it cannot fail to impress our readers with this youthful poet, and to fill them a high sense of the native power of with the brightest hopes concerning what he may hereafter aspire and dare to execute. HYMN. Even thus amid thy pride and luxury, Oh Earth! shall that last coming burst on thee, The dead of all the ages round thee wait: The Saints shall dwell within th' unharm- Each white robe spotless, blooming every Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side, Bride, Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm. Yes, 'mid yon angry and destroying signs, Such is the conclusion of the Fall flight that Mr Milman has ever hithof Jerusalem-by far the most soaring erto sustained. As a master of the high, serene, antique flow of lyrical declamation, we are free to say, that we consider him as far superior to any living poet; and he should profit by his past experience, by devoting himself more to the rare path in which nature seems to have offered him success so pre-eminent. With regard to the drama, much as we admire Mr Milman's genius, we cannot say that we entertain for him any so very sanguine expectations. He is a poet highly refined, and sometimes his conceptions are profound; but he has not as yet exhibited any proof of that noble reliance on the simplicity of natural associations, without which we cannot hope to see the slumbering spirit of the British stage bidden from its lethargy. Throughout the whole of his dialogue, the language is rather elaborately poetical, and artificially moulded, than inspired by the immediate feelings and impulses of the passing scene. To qualify, in some measure, these remarks, it should, however, be held in remembrance, that the sacredness and dignity of the subject may perhaps have acted, in the present instance, as a species of more than common restraint on the flow of the poet's imagination-still more of his language. With every deduction the rigour of criticism can make, there still remains abundance of praise, which no one can refuse to this performance. The highest compliment to the genius of the author is to be found, not in the admiration excited by any particular passage, but in the deep gravity and grandeur of the impression which the whole tenor of the poem is calculated to produce. The Terror and the Pity which agitate the mind throughout the earlier parts of the drama are subdued and softened, in the closing scene, into a profound repose of humility and Christian confidence; and he that lays down the volume will confess, that Mr Milman has, in the first fruits of his genius, offered a noble sacrifice at the altar to whose service he has devoted his life. R TALES OF THE CLOISTER. MR NORTH, FROM the perusal of "the Monastery," and the gratifying annunciation of an approaching sequel, under the title of "the Abbot," I was lately induced to turn back to a collection of Catholic legends already introduced to your notice-the "Prato Fiorito di varj Esempj"-and have found it to contain (as might be expected) a great number of stories relative to the different monastic orders, calculated not more for the edification of pious believers, than for the amusement of such infidels as may chance to have enrolled themselves among the "lovers of hoar antiquity," to whom, and to yourself, I shall make no apology for thus briefly introducing a few specimens to their notice. " TALE THE FIRST. Of the terrible chance that befell one who, with evil design, took upon himself the religious habit." Marianus, in his Chronicle of the Minorites, relates of a certain sorry and wicked person, whom we shall name Bernardin, that, after having consumed his substance, and wasted the better years of his life in vain and riotous living, immersed in sin and iniquity, under the guidance of his sovereign lord and master the devil, he was at length induced, by the suggestions of the same terrible potentate, to seek admission into the order of minor friars, for the express purpose of disturbing the peace and contaminating the morals of that holy brotherhood. With this view he addressed himself to St Anthony, who was then preaching at Padua, and who, having examined him touching his pretensions, and finding him (as he thought) sufficiently apt for the sacred functions of the profession, received him accordingly, and afterwards perceiving him to have some knowledge of human sciences, constituted him a clerk, and took upon himself the charge of preparing him, by his efficacious instruction and exhortation, to become a shining light among those of the order to which he had thus been admitted. Bernardin, on his part, pushed his dissimulation to the utmost extremity, in the semblance of devout humility with which he listened to the saint's teaching, while he secretly plotted the destruction of that religion to which he appeared to be so zealous a convert; but Satan, whose jealousy is ever awake, and who began to entertain serious apprehensions lest the lessons to which he was a daily listener might, in the end, prevail with him to become a practiser also, began to devise means to secure his allegiance, or at least to deprive St Anthony of the glory of a conquest, by cutting short the days of the sinner before he should have lived to extricate himself from the toils of hell, in which he had hitherto remained a willing captive. He, therefore, infused into his ears a beginning fastidiousness of the religious life to which he had addicted himself, and a contempt of the instructions to which he had listened till he had almost yielded to the conviction they were calculated to produce; and, having thus infected his mind with the desire of change, he at last appeared before him one day in the likeness of a beautiful horse, ornamented with the fairest trappings, and furnished with every accoutrement necessary to the equipment of an honourable cavalier, which, when the false novice saw, as he issued forth from his cell to cross a meadow that lay between it and the refectory of his monastery, he cast thereon an admiring and covetous eye, accounting it the best and most gallant steed that it had ever fallen to his lot to behold. Accordingly, finding himself alone and unobserved, he went up to the noble animal and began to caress him, from whence he fell to examine his harness and accoutrements, when, in a portmanteau which was appended to the saddle, he discovered a complete suit of armour, with rich vestments, suited to a person of honour-and hard by a purse full of golden coin. Bernardin marvelled greatly at the sight, and began to conjecture who might be the fortunate possessor of such treasure, whom he imagined, without doubt, to be some one among the honourable knights of the vicinage. He did not, however, stop long in thinking about it, but soon threw off the religious rapture, he might win her and wear her as it listed him. The damsel's consent to become the bride of so rich and honourable a cavalier was gained with greater facility; and suitable arrangements being made for the suc ceeding nuptials, a chamber was prepared forthwith, to which the false monk retired with his mistress, little loath to indulge him in anticipating the sanction of a solemnity she knew not how ineffectual. It was already past midnight, when the devil, who had assumed the likeness of a horse to hurry the wretched Bernardin to his destruction, put on the human form for the purpose of accomplishing his work, and disturbed the slumbers of mine host (but not the repose of the lovers) by a loud and impetuous knocking at the door of the hostelry; which being at length open habit in which he was clad, and, rejoicing mightily in having so unexpectedly found that which he most desired, equipped himself speedily in those splendid arms, which fitted his person so exactly, that they appeared to have been just fashioned, by some master taylor, for his express use; as, indeed, true it was that the infernal artificer had so prepared them. He then sprang into the saddle right-gladly, and rode off as fast as the willing charger would carry him, with nothing to check his hilarity but the apprehension of meeting, on his way, with the true owner. This apprehension gradually died away, as league after league vanished with unequalled rapidity, from behind his tread-nor was he able, in the swiftness of his course, to keep any reckoning of the distance measured by him, until, to his unutterable astonishment, he founded by the landlord, he was immediatehimself, at night-fall, before the gates of the town of Bourges, in Berry, having traversed, since morning, a space which it would have taken any but an infernal courser a week to perform. He entered the town, and alighted at an hostelry, where he commanded a good supper to be set before him, which he ate with exceed ing good appetite. It chanced that he was waited on, at his meal, by a daughter of mine host, a very comely damsel, whose charms made such an impression on the senses of this carnal-minded apostate, that he set about devising how he might render them subservient to his dishonest pleasure. As soon as supper was ended, he therefore sent for mine host, and began to lay before him certain proposals of such a nature as to offend even the avaricious spirit of him to whom they were addressed, and to draw from him an indignant refusal. He then changed his tone, and offered marriage, which was, in like manner, resisted, until his ungoverned concupiscence, suborning all the suggestions of human prudence, as it had before stifled all remaining sense of religion, he displayed, to his greedy eyes, all the treasures of his purse and portmanteau, the sight of which finally wrought such a change in the sentiments of the astonished inspector, as to overcome all the repugnance he felt at the thoughts of delivering his beloved daughter to the arms of a stranger, insomuch that he exclaimed in ly interrogated by the unwelcome visitor, whether it indeed was true that he had, the evening before, given his daughter in marriage to a stranger? mine host answered in the affirmative, whereto his new guest rejoined, "a blessed day's work hast thou done, friend, with this marriage-seeing that thy most honourable son-inlaw hath deceived thee, and betrayed and ruined thy daughter; he being one of a religious order, and incapable of contracting marriage in any manner whatsoever; whereby he hath done thee a grievous injury, in despoiling the damsel of her chasti ty, under false pretences. Weigh well, therefore, the consequences of this rash deed, and resolve within thyself not to endure the so great contumely, which hath been thus cast upon thy name and household, by a miserable apostate, who hath broke away from his cloister, and robbed a worshipful knight of his horse and armour, together with a considerable sum of money, and now proposes to do the like to thyself, and to murder thee, and take all that thou hast, and carry away thy daughter, whom, after having satiated his carnal appetite, he will complete the measure of his villanies, by putting in like manner to death. Follow, then, my counsel, which I give thee as a friend, and one who knows thee to be a man of worth. Go up softly into the chamber, where he is now lying in bed with thy daughter, and where thou wilt dis |