tion sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic man ners and feelings, of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus having invited the statue-ghost of the governor whom he had murdered, to supper, which invitation the marble ghost accepted by a nod of the head, Don John has prepared a banquet.

"D. JOHN.-Some wine, sirrah! Here's to Don Pedro's. ghost-he should have been welcome."

"D. LOP.-The rascal is afraid of you after death."

(One knocks hard at the door.)

"D. JOHN-(to the servant)-Rise and do your duty." "SERV. Oh the devil, the devil!" (marble ghost enters.) "D. JOHN Ha! 'tis the ghost! Let's rise and receive him! Come Governor you are welcome, sit there; if we had thought would have come, we would have staid for

you

you..

Here Governor, your health! Friends put it about! Here's excellent meat, taste of this ragout. Come, I'll help you, come eat and let old quarrels be forgotten."

(The ghost threatens him with vengeance.)

"D. JOHN.-We are too much confirmed-curse on this dry discourse. Come here's to your mistress, you had one when you were living: not forgetting your sweet sister." (devils enter.)

“D. JOHN.—Are these some of your retinue? Devils say you? I'm sorry I have no burnt brandy to treat 'em with, that's drink fit for devils." &c.

Nor is the scene from which we quote interesting, in dramatic probability alone; it is susceptible likewise of a sound moral; of a moral

that has more than common claims on the notice of a too numerous class, who are ready to receive the qualities of gentlemanly courage, and scrupulous honor (in all the recognized laws of honor,) as the substitutes of virtue, instead of its ornaments. This, indeed, is the moral value of the play at large, and that which places it at a world's distance from the spirit of modern jacobinism. The latter introduces to us clumsy copies of these showy instrumental qualities, in order to reconcile us to vice and want of principle; while the Atheista Fulminato presents an exquisite portraiture of the same qualities, in all their gloss and glow, but presents them for the sole purpose of displaying their hollowness, and in order to put us on our guard by demonstrating their utter indifference to vice and virtue, whenever these, and the like accomplishments are contemplated for themselves alone.

Eighteen years ago I observed, that the whole secret of the modern jacobinical drama, (which, and not the German, is its appropriate designation,) and of all its popularity, consists in the confusion and subversion of the natural order of things in their causes and effects: namely, in the excitement of surprise by representing the qualities of liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour (those things rather which pass amongst us for such) in persons and in classes where experience teaches us least to

expect them; and by rewarding with all the sympathies which are the due of virtue, those criminals whom law, reason, and religion have excommunicated from our esteem.

This of itself would lead me back to Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand; but, in my own mind, this tragedy was brought into connection with the Libertine, (Shadwell's adaptation of the Atheista Fulminato to the English stage in the reign of Charles the Second,) by the fact, that our modern drama is taken, in the substance of it, from the first scene of the third act of the Libertine. But with what palpable superiority of judgment in the original! Earth and hell, men and spirits, are up in arms against Don John: the two former acts of the play have not only prepared us for the supernatural, but accustomed us to the prodigious. It is, therefore, neither more nor less than we anticipate when the Captain exclaims: "In all the dangers I have been, such horrors I never knew. I am quite unmanned;" and when the Hermit says, "that he had beheld the ocean in wildest rage, yet ne'er before saw a storm so dreadful, such horrid flashes of lightning, and such claps of thunder, were never in my remembrance." And Don John's bursts of startling impiety is equally intelligible in its motive, as dramatic in its effect.

But what is there to account for the prodigy

of the tempest at Bertram's shipwreck? It is a mere supernatural effect without even a hint of any supernatural agency; a prodigy without any circumstance mentioned that is prodigious; and a miracle introduced without a ground, and ending without a result. Every event and every scene of the play might have taken place as well if Bertram and his vessel had been driven in by a common hard gale, or from want of provisions. The first act would have indeed lost its greatest and most sonorous picture; a scene for the sake of a scene, without a word spoken; as such, therefore, (a rarity without a precedent) we must take it, and be thankful! In the opinion of not a few, it was, in every sense of the word, the best scene in the play. I am quite certain it was the most innocent: and the steady, quiet uprightness of the flame of the waxcandles which the monks held over the roaring billows amid the storm of wind and rain, was really miraculous.

The Sicilian sea coast: a convent of monks: night: a most portentous, unearthly storm: a vessel is wrecked: contrary to all human expectation, one man saves himself by his prodigious powers as a swimmer, aided by the peculiarity of his destination

Prior❝ All, all did perish

1st Monk-Change, change those drenched weeds

Ss

Prior-I wist not of them-every soul did perish-
Enter 3d Monk hastily.

3d Monk-No, there was one did battle with the storm
With careless desperate force; full many times

His life was won and lost, as tho' he recked not-
No hand did aid him, and he aided none-
Alone he breasted the broad wave, alone
That man was saved."

Well! This man is led in by the monks, supposed dripping wet, and to very natural enquiries he either remains silent, or gives most brief and surly answers, and after three or four of these half-line courtesies," dashing off the monks" who had saved him, he exclaims in the true sublimity of our modern misanthropic

heroism

"Off! ye are men-there's poison in your touch.

But I must yield, for this (What?) hath left me strengthless."

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. Does e'en thy age bear

Memory of so terrible a storm?

Hugo-They have been frequent lately.