dent and interest, which are among the best characteristics of the English Drama; while in Byron's, in spite of the admirable force and beauty of the numerous striking passages which are scattered through it, we have too much of that cumbrous magnificence and polished languor with which the chefs-d'œuvre of the French school are justly chargeable. We are far from intending to place M. Delavigne upon a poetical equality with Lord Byron. As a poet, we hold him to be decidedly inferior; and in saying this, we do not conceive that we are passing a very heavy censure. Even in his imitations (translations, we might almost call them) of some of the most brilliant passages in the English play, he has not succeeded in retaining the force and splendour of the original; and has suffered many a fine image and powerful expression to escape unnoticed. With these defects, however, the will and talent of the French poet must not be wholly charged. Much must be attributed to the language in which he wrote. Nobody much conversant with French literature can have failed to observe the poverty and inadequacy of that language as a vehicle for poetry. Where Byron, in his mastery of a language combining force, flexibility, and abundance perhaps above all modern tongues, and which was the ready organ of his thick-coming fancies,' could condense a metaphor into a word, and pour into each glittering sentence the full tide of his magnificent imagery; his French imitator was condemned to the alternative of either relinquishing a portion of this poetical treasure, or feebly and tediously introducing it through the medium of a spiritless paraphrase-ushering in the compressed and exuberant sentiments of his original with such a long-drawn retinue of words, that their absence became preferable to their insertion. We know the difficulty of imitating, in English, the force, comprehensiveness, and conciseness of Greek poetry; and a similar, though perhaps greater, difficulty must be felt by the French translator of English. If, therefore, M. Delavigne may be convicted of some failures in his execution of the more purely poetical parts of his works, these failures may, in some degree, be attributed to the insufficiency of the language which he was constrained to employ. But he has amply redeemed his credit by his performance of the other parts of his task. He has produced a work more essentially dramatic than that of his prototype. The Marino Faliero of Byron is a better poem; but we hold that of Delavigne to be a better play. We have not the eloquent anathema which Byron's Doge pours forth at the place of execution, but we have a parting scene more powerfully affecting, and, we may add, more natural. We have not the beautiful night scene described in those splendid lines which are put into the mouth of Byron's Lioni, and which, we must confess, would

have been better adapted to a poem on Venice, than to the drama in which they are found; but we have Lioni more dramatically introduced to us in the following scene, which, short and unlaboured as it is, conveys an able and characteristic picture of the Venetian senator of that period.

Lioni, Verezza, sur le devant de la scene; serviteurs occupés des apprêts d'un lal; Bertram, au fond, dans un coin.

Lioni, bas à Verezza.

On vous a de Steno renvoyé la sentence;
Vous l'exécuterez, mais avec indulgence.

L'état veut le punir comme un noble est puni:
Des égards, du respect.

Verezza.

Le seigneur Lioni

Me parle au nom des Dix?

Lioni.

Leur volonté suprême

Laissé-t-elle un d'entre eux parler d'après lui-même ?
Vous pouvez etre doux, en voici l'ordre écrit.
(Le prenant à part.)

Cet autre ne l'est pas : il regarde un proscrit
Par jugement secret traité comme il doit l'être;
Le prisonnier des plombs: un gondole, un prêtre,
Au canal Orfano. Sortez.

(A ses serviteurs.)

Partout des fleurs !

Que les feux suspendus et l'éclat des couleurs,
Que le parfum léger des roses de Byzance,
Les sons qui de la joie annoncent la présence,
Que cent plaisirs divers d'eux mêmes renaissans
Amollissent les cœurs et charment tous les sens.
(A Bertram.)
(Aux serviteurs.)
Approchez vous, Bertram.-Laissez nous.

A tolerably strict adherence to history has necessarily produced a good deal of similarity in the plots of the two plays. The points in which Delavigne's most materially differs, is in making the wife of the Doge guilty, but penitent, instead of the chaste and dignified matron which Byron exhibited in his Angiolina. That the latter is a finer character than Delavigne's Elena, cannot be denied; but we think it will be allowed that the heroine of the French play is more effective on the scene than the Angiolina of Byron, and accords better with the attendant circumstances of the story. Steno's calumny becomes absurdly improbable when levelled at an Angiolina; and this improbability tends to exaggerate the unreasonableness of the overweening resentment of the old Doge; and thus the circumstances which, even in history, are rather perplexing, become doubly inconsistent in

the play. But this inconsistency is greatly lessened by rendering the character of the wife, if not glaringly culpable, yet one on which, in the eye of the public, an imputation might be more plausibly fastened. It is difficult to cite passages from M. Delavigne's play to justify our commendations-but this is as it should be. The merit of a drama should consist less in description than in action,-less in such passages as may be easily detached, than in the gradual developement of character, and the arrangement and connexion of all its parts. We are therefore saying nothing in disparagement of M. Delavigne's play, when we state that it contains few isolated passages of very transcendent merit. We will, however, make one quotation. It shall not be any single speech, or specimen of description, but a scene which is very unlike any thing we had ever before met with in a French tragedy. Faliero is expecting the announcement of the sentence which the Council had pronounced on Steno.

Faliero.

Homme faible, où m'emporte une aveugle colère ?
A Zara, quand j'appris la perte de mon frère,
Je domptai ma douleur et je livrai combat.
Prince ferai-je moins que je n'ai fait soldat?
(A Fernando.)

L'Etat doit m'occuper: je vais dicter-prends place.
(Fernando s'assied près d'une table.)

'Moi, Doge aux Florentins.' Ecris.

Allons! calme ce trouble.-Ils recueillaient les voix.
Qu'ils sont lents!

Leur respect est profond: jugeons de leur sagesse.

La sentence ! donnez.

Le Sécretaire.

Le voici.

Moi!-non-je-non-pourquoi! Lis, mes yeux sont troublés

La Cour, de votre Altesse attend la signature.
Fernando à son oncle, que s'approche à la table.

(La plume tombe de ses mains.)

(Au Sécretaire, en lui remettant le papier.)

Non? J'ai cru—

Laissez nous.

Le Secretaire.

L'arrêt n'est pas signé.

Faliero.

(Il signe rapidement, et le rendant au Secretaire.)

Sortez donc.

Here little is said, but every word is the faithful, though involuntary, interpreter of the feeling which accompanies it. There may be more showy brilliancy in eloquent harangues and poetical descriptions; but it is in the brief and characteristic touches of a scene like this, that the essential requisites of dramatic composition are to be found. If M. Delavigne and his fellow-dramatists (of whom MM. Dumas, Victor Hugo, and De Vigny seem most worthy of commendation) will write always in this spirit, they may obtain for French dramatic literature a reputation more extensive and enduring has been gained even by Racine and Corneille.

ART. XII.-The Life of Major-General Sir Thomas Munro, Bart. and K.C.B., late Governor of Madras, with Extracts from his Correspondence and Private Papers. By the Rev. G. R. GLEIG, M.A. M.R.S.L. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1830.

MILTON's imagination has bodied forth' few more striking scenes than the splendid panorama of great and glorious Rome, with towers and temples proudly elevate.' Amidst the conflux issuing forth or entering in-Prætors, Proconsuls, to their ' provinces hasting, or in return,' and the embassies in various habits on the Appian Road, or on the Emilian'-the most prominent figures are those

From India and the golden Chersonese,

And utmost Indian Isle, Taprobane,

Dusk faces, with white silken turbans wreath'd.'

Julius Cæsar would be scarcely more surprised than the poet of the Commonwealth, at learning that we barbarian Britons, in our utmost western isle, could now show something of a pendant to this imperial picture. It is true that the brick and sky of London do not afford matter for the same gorgeous description. But our architectural deficiency might be well made up by the philosophical poet, who would so far moralize his song as rightly to contemplate and compare the Tiber and the Thames, and unveil the thousand wonders of human art and enterprise which are contained, first or last, in the vulgar spectacle of an East Indiaman setting sail with her freight of Writers and Cadets.

Take a map and a pair of compasses-our Indian empire is astonishing enough. But the more we reflect on the strangeness of the connexion in all its circumstances, there will be found nothing similar to it in history, and nothing more improbable in romance. The great anomaly is the empire itself. Among all its incidents, however, none is more anomalous than that its administration should have been exclusively carried on by successive supplies of civil and military Mamelukes, recruited from year to year into their master caste, out of our schools at home. Burke's statement is in great measure true at the present day. 'These 'servants have almost universally been sent out to begin their progress and career in active occupation, and in the exercise of 'high authority, at that period of life which, in all other places, has been employed in the course of a rigid education. To put 'the matter in a few words, they are transferred from slippery 'youth to perilous independence, from perilous independence to ⚫inordinate expectations, from inordinate expectations to bound'less power. Schoolboys without tutors, minors without guar