And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst

A

grove which springs through levell'd battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;-
But the gladiator's bloody circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.-

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which soften'd down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up,
As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries:
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old!

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.--

'T was such a night! 'Tis strange that I recal it at this time; But I have found our thoughts take wildest flight Even at the moment when they should array Themselves in pensive order.

Enter the ABBOT.

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.-Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learn'd the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering,-upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsar's palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bow-shot-where the Cesars dwelt,

MANFRED.

I simply tell thee peril is at hand, And would preserve thee.

What dost thou see?

Not I;

ABBOT.

What dost mean? MANFRED.

Look there!

ABBOT.

Nothing.

MANFRED.

Look there, I say,

Then I must summon up my brethren.—Rise!

ABBOT.

MANFRED.

Thou false fiend, thou liest!

My life is in its last hour,-that I know,
Nor would redeem a moment of that hour;
I do not combat against death, but thee
And thy surrounding angels: my past power
Was purchased by no compact with thy crew,
But by superior science-penance-daring-

And length of watching- strength of mind—and skill
In knowledge of our fathers-when the earth
Saw men and spirits walking side by side,
And gave ye no supremacy : I stand
Upon my strength-I do defy-deny-
Spurn back, and scorn ye!-

What are they to such as thee?
Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes,
And greater criminals?-Back to thy hell!
Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within

A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts-
Is its own origin of ill and end-

And its own place and time-its innate sense,
When stripp'd of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.

Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me ;

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey-
But was my own destroyer, and will be

My own hereafter.-Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me-but not yours:
[The Demons disappear.

ABBOT.

Avaunt! ye evil ones!-Avaunt! I say,Ye have no power where piety hath And I do charge ye in the name-

SPIRIT.

power,

MANFRED.

"T is over--my dull eyes can fix thee not;
But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well-
Give me thy hand.

ABBOT.

Cold-cold-even to the heart:

But yet one prayer-alas! how fares it with thee?

MANFRED.

Old man! 't is not so difficult to die.

[MANFRED expires.

Nor will I hence, while I have earthly breath

To breathe my scorn upon ye-earthly strength To wrestle, though with spirits; what ye take Shall be ta'en limb by limb.

SPIRIT.

Reluctant mortal! Is this the Magian who would so pervade The world invisible, and make himself Almost our equal?-Can it be that thou Art thus in love with life! the very life Which made thee wretched!

ABBOT.

He's gone-his soul hath ta'en its earthless flightWhither? I dread to think-but he is gone.

NOTES.

Note 1. Page 232, lines 124 and 125.

the sunbow's rays still arch

The torrent with the many hues of heaven.

THIS Iris is formed by the rays of the sun over the

window, and wished to give him another occupationthat Helen lost Troy-that Lucretia expelled the Tarquins from Rome-and that Cava brought the Moors to Spain-that an insulted husband led the Gauls to Clusium, and thence to Rome-that a single verse of Frederic II of Prussia on the Abbé de Bernis, and a jest on Madame de Pompadour, led to the battle of Rosbach -that the elopement of Dearbhorgil with MacMurchad conducted the English to the slavery of Ireland-that a personal pique between Marie Antoinette and the Duke of Orleans precipitated the first expulsion of the Bourbons and, not to multiply instances, that Commodus, Domitian, and Caligula fell victims, not to their public tyranny, but to private vengeance—and that an order to make Cromwell disembark from the ship in which he would have sailed to America, destroyed both king and commonwealth. After these instances, on the least reflection, it is indeed extraordinary in Dr Moore to seem surprised that a man, used to command, who had served and swayed in the most important offices, should fiercely resent, in a fierce age, an unpunished affront, the grossest that can be offered to a man, be he prince or peasant. The age of Faliero is little to the purpose, unless to favour it.

The young man's wrath is like straw on fire,
But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire.»

Young men soon give and soon forget affronts,
Old age is slow at both.

Laugier's reflections are more philosophical :-« Tale fu il fine ignominioso di un uomo, che la sua nascita, la sua età, il suo carattere dovevano tener lontano dalle passioni produttrici di grandi delitti. I suoi talenti per lungo tempo esercitati ne' maggiori impieghi, la sua capacità sperimentata ne' governi e nelle ambasciate, gli avevano acquistato la stima e la fiducia de' cittadini, ed avevano uniti i suffragi per collocarlo alla testa della repubblica. Innalzato ad un grado che terminava gloriosamente la sua vita, il risentimento di un' ingiuria leggiera insinuò nel suo cuore tal veneno che bastò a corrompere le antiche sue qualità, e a condurlo al termine degli scellerati; serio esempio, che prova non esservi età, in cui la prudenza umana sia sicura, e che nell' uomo restano sempre passioni capaci a dísonorarlo, quando non invigili sopra se stesso.»-LAUGIER, Italian translation, vol. iv, pp. 30, 31.

Where did Dr Moore find that Marino Faliero begged his life? I have searched the chroniclers, and find nothing of the kind; it is true that he avowed all. He was conducted to the place of torture, but there is no mention made of any application for mercy on his part; and the very circumstance of their having taken him to the rack seems to argue any thing but his having shown a want of firmness, which would doubtless have been also mentioned by those minute historians, who by no means favour him: such, indeed, would be contrary to his character as a soldier, to the age in which he lived, and at which he died, as it is to the truth of history. I know no justification at any distance of time for calumniating an historical character: surely truth belongs to the dead and to the unfortunate, and they who have died upon a scaffold have generally had faults enough of their own, without attributing to them that which the very incurring of the perils which conducted them to their violent death renders, of all others, the most improbable. The

black veil which is painted over the place of Marino Faliero amongst the doges, and the Giant's Staircase, where he was crowned, and discrowned, and decapitated, struck forcibly upon my imagination, as did his fiery character and strange story. I went in 1819, in search of his tomb, more than once, to the church of San Giovanni e San Paolo; and, as I was standing before the monument of another family, a priest came up to me and said, « I can show you finer monuments than that.» I told him that I was in search of that of the Faliero family, and particularly of the Doge Marino's. «Oh,» said he, «I will show it you;>> and, conducting me to the outside, pointed out a sarcophagus in the wall, with an illegible inscription. He said that it had been in a convent adjoining, but was removed after the French came, and placed in its present situation; that he had seen the tomb opened at its removal; there were still some bones remaining, but no positive vestige of the decapitation. The equestrian statue of which I have made mention in the third act as before that church, is not, however, of a Faliero, but of some other now obsolete warrior, although of a later date. There were two other Doges of this family prior to Marino: Ordelafo, who fell in battle at Zara, in 1117 (where his descendant afterwards conquered the Huns), and Vital Faliero, who reigned in 1082. The family, originally from Fano, was of the most illustrious in blood and wealth in the city of once the most wealthy and still the most ancient families in Europe. The length I have gone into on this subject will show the interest I have taken in it. Whether I have succeeded or not in the tragedy, I have at least transferred into our language an historical fact worthy of commemoration.

It is now four years that I have meditated this work, and, before I had sufficiently examined the records, I was rather disposed to have made it turn on a jealousy in Faliero. But perceiving no foundation for this in historical truth, and aware that jealousy is an exhausted passion in the drama, I have given it a more historical form. I was, besides, well advised by the late Matthew Lewis on that point, in talking with him of my intention, at Venice, in 1817. «If you make him jealous,>> said he, «recollect that you have to contend with established writers, to say nothing of Shakspeare, and an exhausted subject;-stick to the old fiery Doge's natural character, which will bear you out, if properly drawn; and make your plot as regular as you can.»— Sir William Drummond gave me nearly the same counsel. How far I have followed these instructions, or whether they have availed me, is not for me to decide. I have had no view to the stage; in its present state it is, perhaps, not a very exalted object of ambition; besides, I have been too much behind the scenes to have thought it so at any time. And I cannot conceive any man of irritable feeling putting himself at the mercies of an audience :-the sneering reader, and the loud critic, and the tart review, are scattered and distant calamities; but the trampling of an intelligent or of an ignorant audience on a production which, be it good or bad, has been a mental labour to the writer, is a palpable and immediate grievance, heightened by a man's doubt of their competency to judge, and his certainty of his own imprudence in electing them his judges. Were I capable of writing a play which could