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From the poem of Joseph, or Yussuf and Zuleikha, by Hamdi, we are happy to take a far less common-place extract. At the well-known moment when the unfortunate fair had summoned her female neighbours and friends to behold the beauty of Yussuf as an excuse for her passion, they cut themselves with surprise at the sudden sight of his personal charms; and, after duly binding their own wounds we imagine, set themselves to assuage that of their hostess in the following strain:

Love rules the subject soul;-then, ah! how vain
To bar his entrance to his own domain.
Even hardest rocks are scorching with desire,
And, heated, crack in Yussuf's glance of fire.
Nor seek on Love himself to cast the blame;
Through thine own eyes the fond enchantment came.
Is there on earth one unsubjected soul
That ranges free of his supreme control?

Say, then, what tongue on thee can charge the ill?
Not thine the fault, but his who chains thy will.
With all its thousand eyes, the world may gaze,
Nor mark a sun of such transcendent rays:
With all its thousand eyes may Heaven behold,
Nor find the stars of such etherial mould:
Thy day, indeed, were hopeless, dark, and dim,
If thou could'st live and sundered thus from him!
Before the sweetness of his sugared lips
Khosru might seem Ferhad in sad eclipse.
Keen are thy pangs; for we behold him now,
And feel what tortures must thy spirit bow.

Yet come; take heart: our words thy soul shall stay,
And rein that stubborn steed to beauty's sway;

Our voice shall win, our prayers his coldness move,

And bend his heart of stone to thee and love.

We think there is still more of natural and picturesque beauty in the following passage; and have ventured to divest it of the stateliness of heroic verse.

'Twas night;-the hour when dreams arise
O'er the heart's tablet clear to shed

Their picture-forming phantasies;

And Zuleikha's Narcissus-eyes

Had drunk the draught of sleep: her head
Upon the silken cushion lay;

Her hyacinthine ringlets wreathing

Round her flushed cheek like musk-balm breathing
O'er roses at the close of day,
Spread, wildly scattering in repose;
And all her couch one bed of rose;
When Fancy, on her courser fleet,
Hovering around that pillow, raised
A scene of love midst stillness sweet.
Chasing a sportive kid, her feet

Seemed straying far through silent bowers;
An Irem where the heart would dwell;
When lo! from forth the lavish flowers
Sudden Canaan's bright Gazelle,
Soul-hunting, sprang before the fair, and gazed!
A form of youthful beauty keeping,

With eyes of unabated fire,

Her heart awake while she was sleeping;

Till all her bosom's pulses danced,

And all her raptured soul entranced,

Drunk with that gaze of love, that wine of soft desire.

Our next quotation is a song from Mesti, who is distinguished by the respectable cognomen of The Drunken, and whose verse, it must be owned, savours much of its proper inspiration: nor is this impression at all lessened by the candour of the close, the moral gradually elevating the reader to the conclusion.

Know ye treasure of all treasures

Like the wine-flask's brimming measures?
Know ye such enjoyment sweet
As to kiss its very feet?

Every host with friendships old
Shall closest bonds of union hold,
When he finds each worldly token,
Like the cup, but once is broken:
Since the day I first began,
Wine has tried my inward man;
Since I steeped my soul in wine,

Racking head-aches have been mine.

We have only room for a few extracts from Messihi's beautiful

verses on the Rose-Season: not very closely translated from the

Turkish into German by Wieland, whose version our author has quoted instead of giving his own.

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From their beds the roses gleam,
Purple with the Prophets' beam,
Blushing forth their sacred ray:
Hyacinths and tulips shine,
Bright as starry wreaths divine:
Pleasure, pleasure reigns to-day:
Then seize, oh! seize Love's dearest time,
Ere fades the rose's vernal prime.
Mark the lily's sword-points too,
Glistening moist with morning dew:
Every costly drop we see

Down through humid ether flowing:
Oh! but thus to snatch them going-
Hearken, hearken friends to me;

And seize, ah! seize Love's dearest time,
Ere fades the rose's vernal prime.

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That dark hour has passed away,
When the rose unfolded lay

Midst the grassy verdure faint:
Now, that mournful season gone,
See the heights with flowers o'ergrown,
Scenes that pencil cannot paint.
Then seize, ah, seize Love's dearest time,
Ere fades the rose's vernal prime.

Glittering in the morning sun,
Precious as the jewelled stone,

Rain-drops gem the verdant plain;
Whilst where softest zephyrs stray,
Musky fragrance scents their way,
Soon, too soon, to fade again!

Then seize, ah, seize, Love's dearest time,

Ere fades the rose's vernal prime.

Such light, according to tradition, beams from the Prophets, that the hem of their garments (with which the head is frequently veiled) is tinged of a deep red, or purple.

ART. VIII. Zumalacarregui, oder der Tod des Helden. Trauer

(Zumalacarregui, or the Hero's
Von S. F. L. G.
Von S. F. L. G. Stuttgart

spiel in fünf Aufzügen. Death, a Tragedy in five Acts.) and Leipzig, 1836.

WHEN We observe the rapidity with which old established notions vanish and are forgotten, we sometimes feel a sort of apprehension creeping upon us that we, even we, whose especial business it is to watch and to report the progress and the vicissitudes of literary opinion, are wofully behind our age. The day is not very long past when it was deemed an audacious act of romanticism, such as only barbarians like Shakspeare could dream of, to found tragedies upon national history, although of bygone ages, to make tragic heroes of men bearing names" familiar as household words" to the ears of the audience. These compatriot subjects and heroes proving, however, more interesting than their predecessors, were allowed to take and keep possession of the stage, and the only remaining point for dispute was, how long heroes and heroines must have lain in their graves before their theatrical resuscitation was lawful. This being a vague question was never positively decided, but a considerable chronological interval between the real and the illusory existence was unanimously allowed to be indispensable. Accordingly, it was with no little astonishment that we, last year, brought before our readers a classical Italian tragedy upon the fall of the contemporary of a large majority amongst ourselves, to wit, the Emperor Napoleon, although the temerity of such synchronal dramatization was slightly veiled under old Assyrian names.

But, if NABUCCO startled us, what shall we say to the far more synchronous ZUMALA CARREGUI?-to a tragedy which, without an attempt at allegory or masquerade, takes for its subject the death of a hero who died yesterday? whose name and exploits are yet vividly present to the mind of every, the youngest, reader of newspapers; who was the chief actor in the war which, even now, whilst we write, is distracting Spain? What can we say, but that the author is an imaginative German poet; and, that if the classical Italian, Niccolini, dramatized the revolution of 1814, it was to be expected that a non-classical, indeed, autonomous German, should dramatize the glory and the fall of the most extraordinary man of the last two or three years.

This striking tragedy has been ascribed, by public conjecture and by critics, to several distinguished poets, and the admiration it has excited induces some surprise that the anonymous author has not stood forward to reap his harvest of laurels. But no

claimant appears, and the continuous incognito has been supposed to proceed from political motives, from fear to avow either the picture of Louis Philippe and his condition, or the statements of continental absolutist policy given to Zumalacarregui and the diplomatist. These several circumstances, joined to the potent living interest of the subject, have determined us to devote more pages to THE HERO'S DEATH than we habitually allot to a single play; and it will perhaps be no unacceptable introduction, if we begin by recalling a few details of the hero's real career.

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The family of Zumalacarregui,-whose name, a compound of Arabic and Basque, literally means Zumal of the Mountain,-is of the ancient nobility of the Basque province, Guipuzcoa. The father of the hero resided in his patrimonial mansion in the little town of Ormaiztegui, cultivated his small patrimonial estate, and enjoyed the respect of his countrymen, together with the highest provincial offices and honours. The eldest son was educated for the church, and is now a parish priest in his native town; the second is a lawyer, holding a high judicial situation at Burgos, under the queen, and now, we believe, a member and president of Cortes; the third was our Don Tomas Zumalacarregui, born Dec. 29, 1788.

During the war of independence, Don Tomas served as a guerrilla under Mina; and, though he gained no European celebrity, as none but the leaders could, he must have distinguished himself, since he rose to the rank of captain. At this time he was a zealous liberal; but, disgusted with what he saw of the Spanish self-entitled constitutionalists, became an absolutist, or rather a royalist; for it must be observed, that an absolutist a Basque could no more be than, except in boyish ignorance and enthusiasm, a republican. The Basque provinces alone, of the states united into the Spanish monarchy, still enjoy their original, extraordinarily free, representative constitution, pretty much as it was established in the ninth century. It was indeed modified by the Biscayan parliament in the sixteenth century, to suit the altered state of society; but it was so modified by their own free will, and, even in this enlightened nineteenth century, retains so much of its primitive character, that Don Carlos has, we believe, sworn fidelity to the Basque rights, liberties, and usages, and received in return the Basque oath of allegiance, under the same oak of Guernica at least, under its descendant and representativeunder which the first Lord of Biscay, Don Lope Zuria, was elected in 870,-under which the subsequent Lords of Biscay have been elected or have sworn to the constitution, as did Isabel of Castile, under which Basque parliaments have been held and Basque justice administered.

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