There is something very touching in the simplicity of these pleasures, contrasted with what imagination immediately suggests of the career and the tastes of the prodigal.

One great spectacle in nature alone, seems strangely to have lost its fascination upon our poetess-she never kindled to the sea. She seemed to view it as the image only of desolation and of ruin; to have associated it only with tempests and wreck, and have seen in it only the harmless waste of troubled waters. More than once she adopts a scriptural phrase " And there shall be no more sea,' as an expression of singular joy and congratulation. We question whether a single reader of her poems has ever felt the force of the expression as she did. The sea, next to the sky, is the grandest and most beautiful thing given to the eyes of man. But, by some perverse association, she never saw it in its natural beauty and sublimity, but looked at it always as the emblem of ruthless and destroying power. In The Last Song of Sappho, it is singular how much more the dread sea into which Sappho is about to fling herself, possesses her imagination than the moral tempest within of that hapless poetess:--

Sound on, thou dark unslumbering sea!
Sound in thy scorn and pride!

I ask not, alien world, from thee

What my own kindred earth has still denied.

Yet glory's light hath touched my name,
The laurel-wreath is mine-

With a lone heart, a weary frame,

O restless deep! I come to make them thine!

Give to that crown, that burning crown,

Place in thy darkest hold!

Bury my anguish, my renown,

gold.

And with what an indignant voice, and with what a series of harshest epithet, does she call upon the sea to deliver up its human prey, in the fine spirited poem, called

THE TREASURES OF THE DEEP.

What hidest thou in thy treasure-caves and cells,
Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main?
Pale glistening pearls and rainbow-colored shells,
Bright things which gleam unrecked of and in
vain!

Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea!
We ask not such from thee.

which had overshadowed her own existence. Yet her sadness was without bitterness or

impatience-it was a resigned and Christian melancholy; and if the spirit of man is represented as tossed from disappointment to disappointment, there is always a brighter and serener world behind, to receive the wanderer at last. She writes Songs for Summer Hours, and the first is devoted to Death! and a beautiful chant it is. Death meet with in the land of summer is the maris also in Arcadia; and the first thing we ble tomb with the Et in Arcadia Ego." One might be excused for applying to herself her own charming song,—

TO A WANDERING FEMALE SIN ER.

Thou hast loved and thou hast suffered !
Unto feeling deep and strong,
Thou hast trembled like a harp's frail string-
I know it by thy song!

Thou hast loved-it may be vainly—
But well-oh! but too well-

Thou hast suffered all that woman's heart
May bear but must not tell.

Thou hast wept, and thou hast parted, Thou hast been forsaken long:

be happi'y alluded to without the necessity of detailing the plot-always a wearisome thing, to both the critic and the reader: everybody knows the real tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers. The drama is unpopular as a form of composition, because the written play is still considered as a production, the chief object of which is missed if it is not acted; and the acting of plays is going into desuetude. When the acting of tragedies shall be entirely laid aside (as it bids fair to be)—that is, as an ordinary amusement of the more refined

I know it by thy song!

By its fond and plaintive lingering
On each word of grief so long,

Oh! thou hast loved and suffered much-
I know it by thy song!

But with this mournful spirit we have no quarrel. It is, as we have said, without a grain of bitterness; it loves to associate itself with all things beautiful in nature; it makes the rose its emblem. It does so in the following lines to

THE SHADOW OF A FLOWER.

'Twas a dream of olden days, That Art, by some strange power, The visionary form could raise

From the ashes of a flower!

That a shadow of the rose,

By its own meek beauty bowed, Might slowly, leaf by leaf, unclose, Like pictures in a cloud.

A fair yet mournful thing!

For the glory of the bloom

That a flush around it shed, And the soul within, the rich perfume, Where were they?—fled, all fled!

Naught but the dim, faint line

To speak of vanished hours-
Memory! what are joys of thine?
Shadows of buried flowers!

We should be disposed to dwell entirely on the shorter pieces of Mrs. Hemans, but this would hardly be just. There is one of her more ambitious efforts which, at all events, seems to demand a word from us. The Vespers of Palermo is not perhaps the most popular, even of her longer productions -it is certainly written in what is just now the most unpopular form-yet it appears to us one of the most vigorous efforts of her genius. It has this advantage too-it can

ma shall become merely a class of literature like all others, for private perusal-then its popularity, as a form of composition, will probably revive. For there is one order of poetry-and that the more severe and manly -which seems almost to require this form. When an author, careless of description, or not called to it by his genius, is exclusively bent on portraying character and passion, and those deeper opinions and reflections which passion stirs from the recesses of the human mind, the drama seems the only form natural for him to employ.

The opinion we have ventured to express on the inevitable decease of the acting drama-of tragic representations-as a general amusement of an age increasing in refinement, will probably subject us, in certain quarters, to an indignant reproof. Shakspeare, and the legitimate drama! seems, with some, to have all the sacredness of a national cause. Shakspeare, by all means-Shakspeare for ever! eternally!--only we would rather read him--if we could creep up there with little Felicia Browne in the apple-tree. Shakspeare supports the stage -so far as it remains supported-not the stage Shakspeare. And can he support it long? Consider what sort of amusement it is which tragic representation affords for of comedy we say nothing-consider that it must either thrill us with emotions of a most violent order, (which the civilized man in general avoids,) or it becomes one of the saddest platitudes in the world. Your savage can support prolonged ennui, and delights in excitement approaching to madness; your civilized man can tolerate neither one nor the other. Now your tragedy deals largely in both. It knows no medium. Everybody has felt that, whether owing to the actor or the poet, the moment the interest of the piece is no longer at its height, it becomes intolerable. You are to be either moved beyond all self-control, which is not very desirable, or you are to sit in lamentable suf

ferance. In short, you are to be driven out of your senses, one way or the other. Depend upon it, it is a species of amusement which, however associated with great names -though Garrick acted, and Dr. Johnson looked on-is destined, like the bull-fights of Spain, or the gladiatorial combats of old Rome, to fall before the advancing spirit of civilization.

But to Mrs. Hemans' Vespers of Palermo. It was not the natural bent of genius which

led her to the selection of the dramatic form; and when we become thoroughly acquainted with her temperament, and the feelings she loved to indulge, we are rather surprised that she performed the task she undertook with so much spirit, and so large a measure of success, than that she falls short in some parts of her performance. Nothing can be better conceived, or more admirably sustained, than the character of Raimond de Procida. The elder Procida, and the dark revengeful Montalba, are not so successfully treated. We feel that she has designed these figures with sufficient propriety, but she has not animated them; she could not draw from within those fierce emotions which were to infuse life into them. The effort to sympathize, even in imagination, with such characters, was a violence to her nature. The noble and virtuous heroism of the younger Procida was, on the contrary, no other than the overflow of her own genuine feeling. Few modern dramas present more spiritstirring scenes than those in which Raimond takes the leading part. Two of those we would particularly mention-one, when, on joining the patriot-conspirators, and learning the mode in which they intended to free their country, he refuses, even for so great an object, to stain his soul with assassination and murder; and the other, where, towards the close of the piece, he is imprisoned by the more successful conspirators-is condemned to die for imputed treachery to their cause, and hears that the battle for his country, for which his spirit had so longed, is going forward. We cannot refrain from making a quotation from both these parts of the drama. We shall take the liberty of omitting some lines, in order to compress our

Raim. (rushing forward indignantly.) Our

faith to this?

No! I but dreamt I heard it: Can it be?
My countrymen, my father!-Is it thus
That freedom should be won ?-Awake!
awake

To loftier thoughts!-Lift up, exultingly,
On the crowned heights, and to the sweeping
winds,

Your glorious banner!-Let your trumpet's blast
Make the tombs thrill with echoes! Call aloud,
Proclaim from all your hills, the land shall bear
The stranger's yoke no longer!-What is he
Who carries on his practised lip a smile,
Beneath his vest a dagger, which but waits
Till the heart bounds with joy, to still its beatings?
That which our nature's instinct doth recoil from,
And our blood curdle at-ay, yours and mine—
A murderer! Heard ye?-Shall that name with
Go down to after days?

ours

Raim. Montalba! know,

I shrink from crime alone. Oh! if my voice
Might yet have power among you, I would say,
Associates, leaders, be avenged! but yet
As knights, as warriors!

Mon. Peace! Have we not borne Th' indelible taint of contumely and chains? We are not knights and warriors; our bright

crests

Have been defiled and trampled to the earth.

Our other extract is from a later scene in the drama, which we think very happily conceived. Raimond, accused of treachery, and condemned to die by his own father, is in chains and in prison. The day of his execution has arrived, but the Sicilians are called on to give battle before their gates; he is left alone, respited, or rather forgotten, for the present. His alternation of feeling, as he at first attempts to respond to the consolations of the priest Anselmo, and then, on hearing of the battle that is being fought for his country, breaks out into all that ardent love of glory, which was the main passion of his soul, is very admirably expressed.

Ans. But thou, my son!

Is thy young spirit mastered, and prepared
For nature's fearful and mysterious change?

Raim. Ay, father! of my brief remaining task
The least part is to die! And yet the cup
Of life still mantled brightly to my lips,
Crowned with that sparkling bubble, whose proud

name

Is-glory! Oh! my soul from boyhood's morn Hath nursed such mighty dreams! It was my

hope

To leave a name, whose echo from the abyss
Of time should rise, and float upon the winds
Into the far hereafter; there to be
A trumpet sound, a voice from the deep tomb,
Murmuring-Awake, arise! But this is past!
Erewhile, and it had seemed enough of shame
To sleep forgotten in the dust; but now,
O God! the undying record of my grave
Will be Here sleeps a traitor!

One whose

Which is but learned from suffering. Would the hour

To hush these passionate throbbings were at hand!

Ans. It will not be to-day. The foe hath reached

Our gates, and all Palermo's youth, and all
Her warrior men are marshalled and gone forth,
Thy father leads them on.

Raim. (starting up.) They are gone forth;
my father leads them on!
All-all Palermo's youth! No! one is left,
Shut out from glory's race! They are gone forth!
Ay, now the soul of battle is abroad-
It burns upon the air! The joyous winds
Are tossing warrior-plumes, the proud white foam
Of battle's roaring billows! On my sight
The vision bursts-it maddens ! 'tis the flash,
The lightning-shock of lances, and the cloud
of rushing arrows, and the broad full blaze
Of helmets in the sun! Such things are
Even now-and I am here!

Ans. Alas, be calm!

To the same grave ye press-thou that dost pine Beneath a weight of chains, and they that rule The fortunes of the fight.

Raim Ay, thou canst feel

The calm thou wouldst impart, for unto thee
All men alike, the warrior and the slave,
Seem, as thou say'st, but pilgrims, pressing on
To the same bourne.

Vittoria, who had taken a leading part in the conspiracy, now rushes in, bringing the intelligence that the Sicilians are worstedare in flight. Procida still strives

But, all in vain! The few that breast the storm, With Guido and Montalba, by his side, Fight but for the battle-field. graves upon Raim. And I am here! Shall there be power,

O God!

In the roused energies of fierce despair,

To burst my heart-and not to rend my chains?

crime

glorious death he sighed for.

The failure of the play at Covent Garden theatre was attributed, amongst the friends of the authoress, to the indifferent acting of the lady who performed the part of Constance. In justice to the actress, we must confess she had a most difficult part to deal with. There is not a single speech set down for Constance which, we think, the most skilful recitation could make effective. The failure of Mrs. Hemans, in this part of the drama, is not very easily accounted for. Constance is a gentle, affectionate spirit, in love with the younger Procida, and the unfortunate cause

of the suspicion that falls upon him of being a traitor. It is a character which, in her lyrical effusions, she would have beautifully portrayed. But we suppose that the exclusion from her favorite haunts of nature-the inability of investing the grief of her heroine in her accustomed associations of woods, and fields, and flowers-the confinement of her imagination to what would be suitable to the boards of a theatre-embarrassed and cramped her powers. Certain it is, she seems quite at a loss here to express a strain of feeling which, on other occasions, she has poured out with singular fluency and force. Constance has no other manner of exhibiting her distress but swooning or dreaming, or thinking she must have been dreaming, and recovering herself to the remembrance of what no mortal so situated could ever have forgottenthe most common, and, to our taste, one of the most unfortunate expedients that dramatists and novelists have recourse to. We are loath to quote anything half so uninteresting as instances of this practice; we shall content ourselves with giving, in a note below, two brief passages to exemplify what we mean.*

It ought to be borne in remembrance, however, that the Vespers of Palermo, although not the " first" with respect to publication, was the first written of Mrs. Hemans' dramatic works. It was produced in solitude, and away from the bustle of theatres, and, be it also confessed, probably with a very scanty knowledge of what stage representation required. Indeed, the result proved this to be

the case. The Siege of Valencia, written on a different principle, although probably even less adapted for stage representation, possesses loftier claims as a composition, and, as a poem, is decidedly superior. Its pervading fault consists in its being pitched on too high a key. All the characters talk in heroicsevery sentiment is strained to the utmost; and the prevailing tone of the author's mind characterizes the whole. We do not say that it is deficient in nature; it overflows alike with power and tenderness; but its nature is too high for the common purposes of humanity. The wild, stern enthusiasm of the priest-the inflexibility of the father-the wavering of the mother between duty and affection-the heroic devotion of the gentle Ximena, are all well brought out; but there is a want of individuality: the want of that, without which elaboration for the theatre is vain, and with which compositions of very inferior merit often attract attention, and secure it.

Passing over Sebastian of Portugal, and the two or three sketches in the Scenes and Hymns of Life, as of minor importance, De Chatillon is the only other regular drama that Mrs. Hemans subsequently attempted. Unfortunately for her, the Vespers, although long prior in point of composition, had not been brought out when the Siege of Valencia was written; and, consequently, she could not benefit by the fate and failure which was destined for that drama. This is much to be lamented, for De Chatillon, as a play, far exceeds either in power and interest. The redundancies in imagery and description, the