Because the thing which men deem beautiful
Is often loathsome in the sight of God.

Just. Thinkest thou, father, he can ne'er be saved?
Aët. Scarcely, my child, shall he obtain salvation;
And yet with God all things are possible.

Just. Too well I feel that I can never hate him.
Aët. Nor I, and so the greater is my grief.
For if it was a foe that at me scoffed
And on me trampled, I could understand it;
But he in whom I only saw a son,

Whom I have fostered, and of whom I hoped
He would become the Church's chief protector,—
That he should lift a traitor's hand against me,
That he should plunge the dagger in my bosom,
As yet I cannot rightly comprehend.

Just. (Sinks at his feet.)

Father, forgive thy daughter, for she bears

A great and grievous sin upon her heart.

Aët. And what, my child, has that transgression been?

Just. Him have I loved, who is thy persecutor,

Yea, I have loved him with a deeper love

Than we should ever feel for any mortal,

But then I knew not his apostasy,

And I was only by his greatness blinded;
He was a mighty hero like no other,
The land's protector and the Empire's hope;
Friend-like he spoke to me, and drew my soul
To his with gentle, yet imperial glances,-
And even still, although his fall I know,
It seems as if I never could forget him.

Aët. And hast thou met him often on thy way?
Just. Twice only have I spoken to him, father!
Aët. And knows he then the secret of thy heart?
Just. It is a sore which never can be healed;
But no one knoweth of it, save thyself.

Aët. So set thy love on Him, who ne'er deceives
The human soul with glory false and vain.

In Jesus' name, thy sin be thee forgiven!'

In the third and fourth acts we are taken first to Athens, then to Byzantium, and finally to Julian's camp in Persia. Julian, in despite of his own principles of tolerance, and yielding to the suggestions of his evil genius Kalkis, permits both Aëtius and Justina to be put to death in Syrmium,—although, after the deed is done, he bitterly regrets it, and banishes Kalkis from his court. Ever since his elevation to the Imperial throne, having flung aside the profession of the Christian faith, he makes the most strenuous efforts to restore the ancient worship, and at Athens sacrifices, as Pontifex Maximus, to the Pagan gods.

His endeavours, however, are but coldly seconded by the mass of the people; and it is only in the ranks of his faithful and admiring army that he finds undivided, or almost undivided, support. Yet even there some are Christians, and it is to this circumstance that he owes his doom at last. Hauch has applied to dramatic use the hint of the rhetorician Libanius that Julian was slain, amid the confusion of battle, by a Christian, and makes it the groundwork of a brief but striking scene in the last act of the tragedy. We pass on to the conclusion. Julian has received his death-wound, and is carried from the fatal field.

'JULIAN'S TENT.

Julian-Oribazes.

Julian. Leave me alone, for I require rest.-
But when I have regained a little strength
Then thou shalt read to me from Plato's Phædon,
And of the nature of the soul will we
Thereafter speak, of its eternal future,
And of its kinship with the lofty gods.

-First lead me to the entrance of the tent,
That I may see the splendour of the sun

(Oribazes conducts him to the door of the tent, where he reclines, after

which Oribazes leaves him.)

Jul. (Lifts his head and gazes round.)

Am I alone?

Immortal gods, I could not have believed it;
My living faith it was that ye would guard me
Until my giant task had been fulfilled.

Can it, indeed, be true that this despised
And visionary creed of Nazareth

Shall gain a triumph over all the greatness,
And hero-power and glory and renown
With which the ancient ages were adorned?
Shall life be now a blanched and hueless thing,
Grey as the spider's web, devoid of beauty?
-Nay, nay, thou mighty Nature, and of fate
Thou God unknown, such cannot be your will!
-Besides, the spirit said, which Kalkis called
From the abyss, that in eternal grandeur
Our gods the lapse of ages should outlive.

But he was evil, and most likely false,—
It stood upon his gloomy forehead written;
And can I trust the spirit he evoked?

How strange it is that at the present moment
I must recall in thought my boyhood's friend,
Recall the words he once to me addressed.
"All deepest aspirations of thy soul,

All gentlest thoughts that stir within thy heart,
Attuning thee to love and tenderness,
And rousing credence in a better land
Where earthly pressure shall be felt no more,
And whither hate and discord never travel,-
See, that is Jesus' voice which calls upon thee,"-
Was it not thus to me Aëtius spake?

-

Julian. (Holds for a moment his hand before his eyes, and then lifts his countenance once more.)

No, no, it was not true, it was a phantom,
A fever-dream; but, even were it true,
Although such cannot be, for 'tis a thing
Impossible, but, even were it true,
So shall it not, at least, be true for me.
Far rather will I take my final flight
Unto that ancient and mysterious Power
Which beckons on me from the starry spaces,—
Far rather, at the limits of the world,
In air and water be dissolved, and driven
As is a cloud upon the tempest's breath,
Than bow myself before this Nazarene.
(Oribazes approaches softly.)

Jul. Now, art thou there?
Oribazes.

And so I entered.

Jul.

I heard thee speaking loudly,

Tell me, hast thou seen

A horseman, at the entrance, clad in white?

Orib. No, Cæsar

Jul.

Heardest thou the air resounding?

Orib. It must have been a dream, a fantasy.

Jul. Yes, thou art right, it surely was a dream.
(After a pause.)

But say, how goes it with the battle, friend?
Regains the foe his courage?

Orib.

Cæsar, no,

The field is covered with the hostile chiefs,—
Among the slain lie officers and satraps
Of highest rank, no prisoners are made—
For thy victorious troops no quarter grant;
It is a great and unexampled triumph.

(Julian does not answer.)
Orib. Death is approaching now.

Jul.

Methinks the triumph

Will be of small avail, because they know not.

How they may reap its fruits.

Orib.

Thy vision fades.

All is over.

(Dies.)

Jul. No longer Julian helps them.
Orib.

Jul. It is not true,—it was a fever-dream!' An able Danish critic,1 in a recent highly laudatory review. of Hauch's tragedy, takes exception to its conclusion, which he accuses of feebleness, when compared with the rest of the poem. We do not know that this charge can be justly brought against it. Let us give the critic's own words:-The scenes which chiefly claim the reader's interest are Julian's different interviews with Aëtius, and also with Kalkis; his appearance first at Byzantium, where, by his eloquence, he consolidates the victories which his sword has already won, and finally in Persia, where he encounters mingled defeat and triumph. This is, indeed, the very essence of the drama. Julian does not fall as subjugated by the Christian faith, but as the victim of insulted Christian fanaticism. A vision points to that higher Power which has nought to do with fanaticism, except in so far as the latter, like everything else, including Julian himself, must serve the purposes of Omnipotence. Julian has rendered to Christianity a service by unveiling the defects and untruths in the Roman Christendom of the period, yet he has at the same time, by stepping forth as its virulent antagonist, aided it to acquire, over himself, a victory. But the representation of all this lies beyond the proper boundaries of the drama; and therefore the conclusion, especially when compared with the same author's earlier work Tiberius, appears feeble and unsatisfactory.' Now, it may be quite true that the introduction of the vision 1 F. Helveg, in the Nordisk Tidskrift for November 1866.

in the closing scene is inconsistent with the highest requirements of true dramatic art; but it seems that, inasmuch as Julian purports to be an historical tragedy, an interpretation both of human character and human history, Hauch had to choose the least of two evils, and rather render disobedience in some measure to dramatic rules than omit to indicate, at the conclusion of his work, how Christianity, that new worldregenerating power, whose gigantic struggles he depicts, carried within itself the germ and promise of all future spiritual conquests. As regards the so-called 'feebleness' of the close, we confess that we fail exactly to perceive it. The ray of the supernatural which falls upon the final scene from that vision. born of a higher and diviner world, which, although perhaps violating strict dramatic propriety, possesses a profound mysterious meaning of its own,-that ray is, in our estimation, needed to throw light upon the dark and troubled chaos of conflicting action and opinion which is presented to us throughout the whole course of the tragedy, irradiating alike the past and future, and supplying an element without which the drama would lose much of its historical significance.

We may be allowed, in fine, to express the hope that the venerable poet who forms the subject of the preceding pages, may still for years be spared, and that he may yet enrich the noble literature of Denmark with works worthy of his former fame.