one of which was to be overwhelmed by the tide, and the other destroyed by fire, at the same moment that Bath was to be swallowed up by an earthquake. Under these impressions, the following poem was written; and the result of the former part of the prophecy happily precludes the necessity of apologising to this modern Cassandra, for having added fresh horrors to her dreadful prediction:

Woe, Albion, to thy cities proud!
Death hovers o'er the fated crowd;
Fly to some wood-embosom'd home,
Far from the city's splendid dome;

Fly, fly, whilst yet you may!
Woe to the day of fear and dread;
The day the blest Redeemer bled!
E'en in the consecrated hour
Again shall midnight darkness lour,
And cloud the noontide ray.

Then shall the volleying thunder roar
From Cambria's hills to Devon's shore;
Red flashes light the darken'd heaven,
Trees, mountains, rocks, in twain be riven,
Whilst earth ope her womb.

Then tremble, sinners! for in vain
Ye fly, ye death-devoted train!
Vainly the screams of horror rise!

While shrieks of madness rend the skies,
Closes your living tomb.

Bristol, no more to Afric's strand

Thy ships shall part from Freedom's land;
Thy deeds are past: th' o'erwhelming tide
Shall sweep away thy wealth, thy pride,
Destroy thy very name.

Bath, fair abode of vanity,

O where now is thy revelry?

O'erthrown thy domes, thy storied walls,

Gay nobles perish in thy halls,

With many a beauteous dame.

Still I see that horrid wild!
Where lovely cities gaily smiled;

Rocks, ruins, pillars, mountains frown,
And echo to the dismal groan

Of sorrow and of pain.

Vainly yon buried wretches strive,
Ne'er shall they leave those walls alive;
Yon frantic mother to her breast
Her lifeless child has fondly press'd,
Nor knows her cares are vain.

There, dead and dying men I see
In every form of misery;

Those sounds of woe, those sights of fear,
I still must see, I still must hear,
With brain to madness driven.
But what is yonder blazing light,
That glares upon my aching sight,
Now soars in dazzling columns high.
Now casts red radiance on the sky,

And lights the eastern heaven?
'Tis London !—God of mercy, såve
Her millions from their fiery grave!
O grant the sons of wealth and crime
Some short reprieve, some little time
For penitence and prayer!
It may not be the blaze is o'er;
The mouldering ruins glare no more;
And long shall England's sorrow rise,
Widows and orphans pour the cries
Of anguish and despair!

Miss Mitford.

THE FATAL UNCTION;

A CORONATION TRAGEDY: BY LÆLIUS *******, M. D. We have great pleasure in doing our utmost to bring this singularly beautiful production into notice. It has

redeemed, in our opinion, the literary character of the age from the imputation of the players, to whom we may now confidently assert, a true dramatic genius does exist in English literature. Not only is the subject of this tragedy chosen in an original spirit, and the fable constructed with the greatest skill, but the versification and dialogue are equally entitled to unqualified praise.

The plot is founded on the unhappy coronation of Carlo Aurenzebe, king of Sicily, a prince of the Austrian dynasty, who was put to death during the solemn ceremony of the anointment by the conspirators substituting a corrosive oil of the most direful nature, instead of the consecrated ointment; and the medical author, with a rare felicity, has accordingly called his tragedy "The Fatal Unction." As the story is well known, we think it unnecessary to say more respecting it than that the doctor, with a judicious fidelity to historical truth, has stuck close to all the leading incidents, as they are narrated in Ugo Foscolo's classic history, in three volumes quarto, a translation of which, with ingenious annotations, may speedily, we understand, be expected from the animated pen of sir Robert Wilson, the enterprising member for Southwark.

The play opens with a grand scene in a hilly country, in which Mount Etna is discovered in the back-ground. Butero, who had a chief hand in the plot, enters at midnight, followed by the archbishop of Palermo, whom he addresses in the following spirited lines, his right hand stretched towards the burning mountain.

"There, spitting fires in heaven's enduring face,
Behold where Etna stands sublime, nor dreads
The vengeance of the foe he so insults-
For what to him avails the thunderbolt?
It cannot harm his adamantine head,

Nor lavish showers of rain his burning quench :-
The wonted arms with which the warring skies
Do wreak their wrath upon the stedfast hills."

After some further conversation of this kind, the archbishop says

"But why, my good lord count, are you thus shaken ? The spark of life in Carlo Aurenzebe

Is surely not eterne. He is a man:
The posset or the poniard may suffice
At any time, my lord, at any time,
To give him his quietus."

"Peace, fool, peace!" is the abrupt and impassioned reply of count Butero to the archbishop, and then the following animated colloquy ensues:

"Archb. I am no fool; you misapply the term;

I ne'er was such, nor such will ever be.

Oh, if your lordship would but give me hearing,
I would a scheme unfold to take him off,

That ne'er conspirator devised before.

Count Butero. Thy hand and pardon. 'Tis my nature's
weakness

To be thus petulant; ah, well you know,
My lord archbishop, for I oft have told you,
Told in confession, how my too quick ire
Betrays me into sin. But thou didst speak
Of taking off-hinting at Aurenzebe-
What was't thou would'st unfold?

Archb.

Look round.

To-morrow, count

Heard ye not that?

Count Butero. There's no one near.
Archb.

Count Butero. 'Twas but the mountain belching-out

upon't!

Pray thee proceed, and let the choleric hill

Rumble his bellyful, nor thus disturb
The wary utterance of thy deep intents.
What would you say?

Archb.

To-morrow, my dear count,

The Carlo Aurenzebe, your sworn foe,

And our fair Sicily's detested tyrant,
Holds in Palermo, with all antique rites,
His royal coronation.

Count Butero.

I know that.

Archb. And 'tis your part, an old time-honour'd right,

To place the diadem upon his brow.

Count Butero. Proceed-go on.

Archb.

And 'tis my duteous service

To touch and smear him with the sacred oil.

Count Butero. I am all ear-what then?

Archb. What then, my lord? what might not you and I

In that solemnity perform on him,

To free the world of one so tyrannous ?"

The traitor archbishop then proceeds to develope the

treason which he had hatched, and proposes, instead of the consecrated oil, to anoint the king with a deadly venom, of which he had provided himself with a phial. Occasional borrowed expressions may be here and there detected in the dialogue; but, in general, they only serve to show the variety of the doctor's reading; we fear, however, that the following account of the preparation, which the archbishop had procured, must be considered as a palpable imitation of the history of Othello's handkerchief; at the same time, it certainly possesses much of an original freshness, and of the energy that belongs to a new conception.

"The stuff in this [showing the bottle] a gipsy did prepare From a decoction made of adders' hearts,

And the fell hemlock, whose mysterious juice

Doth into mortal curd knead the brisk blood,

Wherein the circling life doth hold its course :-
A friar saw her sitting by a well,

Tasting the water with her tawny palm,

And bought the deadly stuff."

The count and archbishop having agreed " to infect with death" their lawful and legitimate monarch, while he is undergoing the fatigues of his inauguration, then go to the palace on purpose to confer with certain others of the rebellious nobles; and the scene changes to a narrow valley, and peasants are seen descending from the hills, singing " God save the King," being then on their way towards Palermo to see the coronation.

Having descended on the stage, and finished their loyal song, one of them, Gaffer Curioso, sees an old gipsy woman, the same who sold the poison to the friar, standing in a disconsolate posture, and going towards her, he gives her a hearty slap on the back, and a jocund humour

says, in

"What's making you hing your gruntle, lucky, on sic a day as

this?

Gip. Och hon! och hen!

Gaffer Curi. What are ye och-honing for?

Gip. Do ye see that bell in the dub there?

Gaffer Curi. Weel, what o't?

Gip. It's a' that's left me for an ass and twa creels.”