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with a double-barrelled gun, and followed by menials, who take from him even the trouble of loading his piece, he and his party fire a thousand shots, and spread death and desolation around them. This is called glorious sport, a noble day, rare country amusement! and the great man returns as proud as ever Alexander was after his greatest victory. Brandy recruits the fatigues of this memorable morning, and the tongue of flattery tickles the nobleman's ear, and elevates him in his own esteem,

"At dressing time he gives audience to the steward, who is ordered to pay his gaming and intriguing debts, by the sale of timber, mortgage, anticipation, or annuities.

"Such is the Exquisite's country life! Such the delights in which he indulges, in the midst of family estates and picturesque scenery, to which he is as blind as he is to his own vices and failings.

"What a pity that a habitation and scenes like these should be bestowed on such a possessor! The very detail is offensive to reason and feeling; but its colouring is not too high, nor is it a solitary example. Let our self-exiled, our ruined, our ruining nobility and rich men, look to themselves and this picture. How many will behold their own likeness, thus slightly sketched as it is, by the hand of

"THE HERMIT IN THE COUNTRY."

"LEAVING HOME.

"I HAD just completed my eighteenth year, when I received orders to join my regiment for the first time. The sash and gorget, the maiden sword, scarlet cloth and gold lace, had all their weight and attractions for me. I contemplated the empire which I should have over hearts, and the preference, which I had so often felt mortified at wanting, at a ball, or in a country circle; I expected to live with the best fellows in the world, to see a great variety of scenes, to be ever amused, ever changing quarters, to dance as it were through life, to the tune of the merry fife and drum, and to leave care and gloomy reflection always a day's march behind me; but above all I longed to see the world, to be free, to be an uncontrolled agent,-in a word, to be my

own master.

"I had gone through the classics with some degree of attention, was a pretty good dancer, could play a little on the flute, rode boldly, had read history, was a good shot, and considered myself, upon the whole, a decent sort of fellow, particularly as the maid-servants called me handsome, and the village surgeon's daughter had eyed me with some degree of interest.

"I had now been looking for myself in the gazette for six weeks; and not a little proud was I to see myself in print for the first time. My next impatience was to be or

dered to head-quarters; and, when the order came, I was in the highest possible spirits. The night before I set out on my journey, I scarcely slept a wink. Young Phaeton, when importuning his father for the reins of that chariot which was fatal to his existence, was not more anxious than I was, on this occasion; nor, when he asked that sire to grant his boon, as a pledge of the love which he bore to his mother-" Pignora da Genitor, &c." could he seek it in a more eager tone than I enquired" if to-morrow was the day on which I was to set out?"

"And yet I tenderly loved my parents. I was an only child, their prop and stay; I could not love them more than they deserved. The whole village too shared my affections : I felt the relative ties of humanity and good will; of brotherhood and connexion with all my neighbours,-domestics and all. I had even a tenderish feeling for the fire-side animals of the paternal roof, the poor old pointer, the dowager-spaniel, Duchess, the invalid cat, and my mother's pet bullfinch Yes, I had rather not had to feel the "good by to ye." The shooting pony, I recommended to Robert's care; and my setter,— poor Trusty! accompanied me through many a varied and uneven path. Night came, and her mantle sat uneasily on me. I felt almost a woman's weakness as I sunk upon that mother's breast, where I drew my first love, mingled with the stream of life; but I tried to be the soldier; and, after one dewy kiss, I resolved not to see her in the morning. My father was to accompany me a part of the road: and the thought of this was a relief

to me.

"As I drew on my regimental boots, the only article of military uniform which I wore on my journey, I felt an elevation of mind, and seemed as if I were already fit to command a company. But my satisfaction was not without alloy I had the Dulce Domum to quit; I had the village to look on, perhaps, for the last time; I had to shake hands with the poor servants, some of whom had borne my helpless infant form in their arms. This was trying. I whistled a march; but it was more like a dirge; I tried a country-dance: it was out of tune.

"I sent the cook to knock at my father's door, an hour earlier than agreed upon; for time now seemed loaded with a weight of care; and I resolved, albeit I was proud of my appearance, not to be seen by my kind neighbours. I therefore gave keepsakes to all the servants, and wrote a letter for the surgeon's daughter.

"My dear father appeared: it was a great ease to my state of mind. I shook him heartily by the hand, tried to look gay, and brushed over the threshold of the door. The old nurse insisted upon kissing me: she was aged and ugly, but a good woman, and somehow she had a right to this embrace. I gave it her heartily, looking, however, jealously around: nobody saw me but the

The Hermit's Sketches.

family, else should I have blushed. "The
Captain to kiss an ugly old woman! fie for

shame."

"We were now at the end of the village. I dreaded the sight of my mother at the window; so I never looked back until out of sight of the house. I was now to take a last look at this rustic assemblage of houses. They danced tremulously in a tear, in my eye; but I cleared up with such a hoarse and monstrous hem that the echo of the church-yard, which returned it to me, terrified me with the sound.-All this time my father and I had not exchanged a word; he looked thoughtful, and as if he had had a sleepless night.

"The morning was beautiful, and I never saw my native scene in such glowing colours before. There seemed to be a peculiar grace in the antique belfry of the church; and the stiff sepulchral yews were gilded with the sun-beam. Obituary sculpture might have caused me some serious reflection. But my mind dwelt not on the past; nor were any doubts and fears as to the future, unfolded to my view. How many a departed bliss now leaves but its monumental memento in my heart! how many prospects have vanished like the days of my ancestors! how many a brave comrade in arms now lies in his narrow bed, and upon his earthly pillow!--but let us return to my father.

"We had better dismount and walk a little,' said he to me, in a kind affectionate tone. The weather is beautifully fine; we have a long day before us; and I can return in the cool of the evening. I should like to have as much of your company as I can; and you will not always have your old father for your companion.' We alighted accordingly, and gave our horses to the servant who had charge of my luggage. I was to proceed in the mail from the first stage.

"We now turned off the high road, and skirted a beautiful wood, crossed some adjacent fields, and pursued the course of the river, by the foot-path for some miles.-My father folded his arm in mine with a peculiar degree of friendship, familiarity, and tenderness; and I never hung on the discourse of any one with so much attention either before or since. He evidently tried to amuse my mind, and to cheat the way and beguile the time by his conversation; and he succeeded to a charm. We saw the vertical sun ere we thought morning midway gone; and his declining ray surprised us ere we thought it two hours after.

"Let us dine together, my dear boy,' said he, with so much of the good fellow in his air and accent, that I regretted that he was not more my own age, and going to join the army with me. I assented with delight. "There is scarcely any night,' said he, ; and I must ride home the harder

now

for it.'

67

before this proposal: I saw the motion pass
"Thrice had he essayed to part with me,
steps hung on mine, and his affections lin-
in his mind; but his heart failed him; his
gered with me, and were loth to part. He
looked at his watch on alighting from his
pony, as much as to say,
then." Next, when fatigued, he sat down
a short walk, and
hands and to bid adieu ;-but he could not.
on a bank, and seemed determined to shake
He then remounted, and proposed riding on
to dinner, in the cool of the evening. My
his account.
heart placed all these debts of gratitude to

"He had another object, however, in
journey together. He wished to give me a
this confidential walk; in this protracted
great deal of good advice, and that advice
brother and a comrade, a companion and a
was offered and delivered to me more like a
friend, than a parent, or one set in authority
and failing like myself, than one to whom
over me, more like the man prone to error
age and experience had given so decided a
superiority.

give me his cool and unpresuming counsel !
"On how many useful subjects did he
delicacy were his paternal admonitions! In
How fraught with honour, sentiment, and
how many instances of life have his pre-
cepts and warnings upheld and prevented
me from evil! How often has a retrospect
my passage through life!
of that happy hour been a benefit to me in

"We parted, precipitately at last; for
achings of the bosom which a first separa-
the mail-coach horn relieved us from those
produces.
tion from those who are dear to us naturally

"That parent, alas! is now no more! I
have been the support of his sad relict; but
I have no longer that brotherly father to
vivial cup, to interest himself in every cir-
hang upon my arm, to pledge me in the con-
cumstance concerning my welfare in this
advice, in difficulty or distress.
checkered scene of life, nor to recur to, for

novel scenes, in distant and in doubtful
"Often have I, in different climates, and
circumstance, pondered upon this opening
which has mingled sweets and bitterness so
scene of life, with a melancholy sensibility,
intimately together, that not to have been
sad, would be double wretchedness, since
sadly sweet was the very essence of reflec-
tion.

"Even at the moment that I am writing
hovered near me-as if I were wrapt and
these lines, seems as if my father's shade
well, dear scenes! I shall never behold ye
covered all over in affection's mantle. Fare-
more! yet must memory itself perish, ere
ye fade from the heart of

"THE HERMIT IN THE COUNTRY."

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REMARKS ON VIRGINIUS, AND ON MODERN TRAGEDY.

SINGULARLY rich as the present age is in poetical genius, it has produced very few works cast in noble moulds, and finished with a view to perfection. We have fragments of diversified and of surpassing beauty, many of which, doubtless, will be long and well remembered, but scarcely any imaginative creations which have been framed with a manifest hope that they would never perish. In our tragic poems, where posterity will look for the stateliest memorials of the age, we have done but little. As the noble filling up of this vast chasm in our literature is a subject of our fondest and most earnest desire, we shall endeavour to sketch out our idea of the peculiar requisites of modern tragedy before we examine the beautiful piece immediately before us. We shall not now discuss exploded unities, or mere technical rules, but say a few words on the action-the poetry-and the sentiment to which a tragic poet in these times should aspire.

1. The action of a tragedy, which is its essence, should be altogether different in these times from that which it appears in the grandest of the antique dramas. Setting aside the ingenious analogy which Schlegel has discovered in the ancient drama to the art of statuary, and in the modern to that of picture, we must feel that the materials of the latter are very dissimilar to those of which the former was compacted. There is, indeed, in the best works of the Greek poets no intricacy of plot, no excitement for curiosity, and little of human passion. The whole is scarcely more than one high sacrifice to the power of the gods or of fate. Dignity of rank, and elevation of virtue, are but the ornaments which render the hero more fit to become the victim. All is pervaded by a sublime composure, a gentle spirit of resignation to the powers which are visibly fulfilling their irrevocable purposes. But in modern tragedy man regains his freedom-the struggle is not a contest with destiny, but with circumstance or with passion-and the fullest scope is given for the energetic contest of the finest elements of our being. We cannot agree with the great critic to whom we have alluded, that the idea of fate is essential to tragedy. When superior existences are no longer supposed visibly and immediately to direct the fortunes and inspire or para

lyse the hearts of men, the idea of fate as influencing tragedy ceases. Necessity in our age is a mere philosophical doctrine, which, whether true or false, can never fitly be represented in the creations of the bard, as hurrying human agents in a particular career, still less as opposed to their will. The infinite chain of causes may be regulated in its progression by immutable laws, but these will not act in opposition to motives or passions, but will inspire and guide them. Tragedy may indeed shew the grapple of mind with fortune; the limitless desire opposed to the narrow bounds of mortality; love and hope, of purest essence, contending vainly with the powers of fortune or of the grave. But the triumph of the poet will be greater—his hold on our sympathies firmer-if he can elicit his interest, not from the mere opposition of mind to circumstance, but from the collision of mind with mind-if he can animate the whole scene with breathing life-and endow with sensibility and passion every portion of the high picture which he exhibits. With action, at all events, the piece should be filled-because nothing else, except mere suffering, can be made palpable to the senses; and unless in suffering there be something awful, or redeeming, the soul will be only harrowed and tortured by the spectacle. The mind, indeed, in the high state of excitement, will necessary kindle-passion will grow bright as well as fervidand the sparks of fancy will fly quickly off from the soul in its rapid career. The plot should have enough of variety to keep alive an intense interest in the spectators, yet no mere surprises, no fantastic turns in which the general feeling is broken, none of the equivoke or intrigue which belong to comedy. The unity of time is nothing-the continuance of place is nothing but the oneness of the interest is of the highest importance to the success of a tragic poet. As far as possible, the causes should not only be sufficient naturally to produce the results, but should be similar to them in dignity and might. The sad events, at least, should spring not from trifles, or mistakes, but from real circumstances worthy to cause strange and wild distresses. When jealousy is groundless, or hatred arises from mistake, or fatal catastrophes occur from a few minutes' delay of expla

nation or of succour, there is a dissatisfaction in our grief, a feeling of listless vexation, which is never felt when effects, however awful, arise from adequate and insuperable causes. The chief characters should, in general, have the elevation of external majesty, in order that more of sensible dignity may be given to the scene, unless the passions are of such depth and grandeur as to vindicate to themselves a regality of their own. The piece, in short, should be vivid in action, majestic in character, clear and rapid in progress, adequate in its causes, and leave a solemn and undi{vided emotion on the soul of the spec

tator.

f. 2. The poetical cast of the language, in a tragedy, is of far less importance than its action. All, indeed, of cold conceit-all of mere metaphor, which, however beautiful and ingenious, draws us from the character to the author-is necessarily injurious to the general effect of the piece. Yet the difference of a composition of mere prose from one of easy and natural verse will be apparent even in the theatre. Passion is always to a certain degree poetical; and naturally takes the language of images, rather than of mere words, for the more vivid communication of its sensations. Two things should be attempted by the tragedian in the use of figurative language -that the images should never be so ostentatious as to divert the mind from its sympathy to a cold admiration, and that they should be deeply tinged and imbued with the passion, which, if it be genuine, must draw all things into its likeness, and impart to them one harmonious colouring. The tide of emotion, as it rushes impetuously onward, may, in the midst of its foaming eddies, have some little pieces of smooth water on which the sun-beams play, or some piece of delicate branch or of golden cloud is tenderly reflected.

3. The sentiment of a tragedy-hy which we mean, not the mere moralizing of its persons, but its general influence on the noble and sweet affections of our nature-is happily of high importance to its success. Some writers in our own day have fallen into the strange error of depicting the most horrible anomalies of vice, and attempting to redeem them by the mere power of intellect with which atrocious thoughts are embodied and awful crimes completed. But these works touching on no universal chord of the heart, though they may be admired for a while by

those who require a strong stimulant to break their lethargic indifference, can never endure. Even on the stage the tragic poet never attains so pure a triumph as when he moves his audience with strange delight by the revealing of some deep spring of sympathy in the heart-when he exhibits to them some affecting instance of the self-sacrifice of a generous spirit, and makes them sharers in some disinterested act which has a tearful beauty in its grandeur. It is not, indeed, necessary that he should exhibit goodness rewarded, but it is essential that he should make us feel its loveliness and its power. It is not his business to make us in love with fortune, but with nature; to inspire a pride in our species, and enable us, in imagination at least, to exert its best and sweetest prerogatives. To awaken latent tendernesses-to open, as by a cabalistic word, the long-sealed springs of charity-to send through the delicate fibres of the soul a keen and shivering rapture by the disclosure of a fresh excellence in man-is the finest of a tragic poet's successes.

The tragic poets of England have never, we think, made so noble a use of active passion, which they have been set free to depict, as the Greeks did of those stern and awful materials to which they were limited by the religion and the taste of Athens. The contemporaries of Shakespear-abounding as they do with the richest stores of fancy, sentiment, and pathos-can scarcely be regarded as having left us tragedies. There is rarely one general design to which all tends-one central point of interest round which all revolves or one reconciling atmosphere of feeling diffused over their pieces. We never think of them as harmonious structures but remember individual characters, detached scenes, or exquisite passages. Even Shakespear himself, except in his Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet, is rather a romantic dramatist than a tragedian. In most of his plays, notwithstanding their higher qualities as poems, there is a want of these definite boundaries, that striking and massive foreground, and that subservience of the whole to one majestic purpose, which are calculated to produce the stately and adamantine creation which will have the grandest effect in the theatre. There is too much perspective of the imagination in his works-too infinite a variety of event, situation, and character-to allow of that singleness of feeling,

which the tragedian should leave on the soul. The scene of a tragedy should appear to the imagination like a narrow, but awful spot, bounded by dark and gigantic barriers, within which the characters are shut for their high struggle and majestic suffering. Since the best days of English genius, until our own, there has been no genuine and native production of this class worthy of particular criticism, except "Venice Preserved," a short examination of which will serve to illustrate some of the positions which we have taken. This piece appears to us to possess all the grandest externals of tragedy. Its plot, involving the fate of an ancient republic, has an importance which fills the imagination, and its action is continued almost without pause, in a succession of closely-woven incidents to its dreadful conclusion. The distress arises from no fantastical source;—but the situation of Jaffier, which becomes more desperate at every step he takes, is at once striking and probable. With these merits, in which perhaps it is unequalled, this tragedy would be one of the most sublime ever written if the filling up were at all comparable to the outline. But unhappily the sentiments and the characters are as low and worthless as the plan is grand, and the situations appalling. There is scarcely any touch of beauty or of nobleness to refresh the soul, and to relieve it of its weight of anguish. The conspirators are a band of the lowest ruffians, whose motives are as base as their designs are bloody and remorseless. Pierre himself, who meanly practises on his friend's necessity to hire him as an assassin, is hardly a step above his poor, weak, luxurious, and trembling victim. Belvidera, who might sweeten the whole by a native purity which no circumstances could injure, is unworthy of her sex, and suited only to the husband whom she cajoles and betrays. She is a pitiful contriver, with nothing but a selfish and cloying fondness towards Jaffier to redeem her from contemptuous pity. The language, with a few exceptions of luxurious softness, is poor, though high sounding, often quite beside the purpose, and sometimes polluted by low and disgusting allusions. Excepting in the passage where Jaffier asks his wife, "How long is't since the miserable day we wedded first," there is no genuine pathos in the play, notwithstanding the distressful nature of its events. Hence we perceive how

much the mere excellence of outline, and the rapidity of action, will effect; and how lamentable a deficiency may yet remain, when truth of sentiment and stability of principle are wanting.

The spirit of tragedy has not been proportionably awakened in the great revival of genius in our time, because the speculative and meditative cast of the prevailing imagination is altogether alien to its essence. The "Remorse," with its glory-tinted clouds of metaphysical thought, has not enough of intense human passion, or present interest, to fill the mind with any vast image of massive greatness. "Fazio" has a beautiful simplicity of plot, and singular richness of diction; but the characters, as in Venice Preserved, are low and selfish, and there is nothing in the piece very exquisitely to move our sympathies, or elevate our conceptions. Evadne," on the other hand, sets before us some of the loveliest traits of humanity, and gives sweet impulse to the purest and most disinterested affections; but it wants coherence, and is too much occupied by lover's quarrels arising only from paltry mistakes. "Bertram," though sprinkled with some of the fairest and the saddest flowers of poetry, is destitute of nearly all the requisites of genuine tragedy;-it has little action, no majesty, and no power of touching any sympathy but such as the exhibition of mere Satanic force may awaken. The piece before us has more of genuine tragic spirit than any of these; and if it does not, in all respects, realize our idea of tragedy, it is rather the deficiency of the subject, than of the author.

The story of Virginius, notwithstanding its pure and mournful beauty, presents one great difficulty to a modern tragedian, that, in its dramatic form, there can be no struggle. The main interest must necessarily be crowded in a single scene. The design of Appius on Virginia scarcely assumes the high and tragic form, until the dreadful moment when all hope is gone, and the father resolves and completes the sacrifice. If this scene be made the last, there must be four acts, almost without business, or filled with action which can neither tend to produce the catastrophe, nor harmonize with the emotions which it should enkindle. With these obstacles to his success, Mr. Knowles has produced a piece of the deepest and purest interest, and of the most delicate beauty. He has placed the great scene in the fourth act;—

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