plified in a striking point of view; and we so far think it is but fair to say, that the moral to be derived from a perusal of this MYSTERY is a valuable one. After what we have said of the tenor of this piece, our readers will not expect many extracts. The first interview of Lucifer with Cain is full of sublimity. The gloomy first-born of woman thus describes the appearance of the immortal : Whom have we here?—A shape like to the angels, Of spiritual essence: why do I quake? Why should I fear him more than other spirits, The cherubim-defended battlements? If I shrink not from these, the fire-armed angels, Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful As he hath been, and might be: sorrow seems Half of his immortality. After some high and mystical salutations Cain thus expresses the longings of his proud and aspiring spirit: My father and my mother talk to me Of serpents, and of fruits and trees: I see Which shut them out, and me: I feel the weight * Of an eternal curse: my brother is He then inquires of his awful visitor what that Death is, in dread of which he is condemned to live, and says:* My father Says he is something dreadful, and my mother Luc. Cain. And thou? Thoughts unspeakable Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear In the vast desolate night in search of him; I watched for what I thought his coming; for Up to the lights above us, in the azure, Which are so beautiful: shall they, too, die? Luc. Perhaps but long outlive both thine and thee. • It may appear a very prosaic, but it is certainly a very obvious criticism on these passages, that the young family of mankind had, long ere this, been quite familiar with the death of animals-some of whom Abel was in the habit of offering up as sacrifices ;-so that it is not quite conceivable that they should be so much at a loss to conjecture what Death was. Cain. I'm glad of that; I would not have them die, Adah, the wife of Cain, then enters, and shrinks from the daring and blasphemous speech which is passing between him and the Spirit. Her account of the fascination which he exercises over her is, however, magnificent: I cannot answer this immortal thing Which stands before me, I cannot abhor him; I look upon him with a pleasing fear, Fixes my fluttering eyes on his; my heart Beats quick; he awes me, and yet draws me uear, Afterwards she says to him: Thou seem'st unhappy; do not make us so, And I will weep for thee. Thy myriad myriads-the all-peopled earth The unpeopled earth-and the o'er-peopled hell, Of which thy bosom is the germ. In the second act the demon carries his disciple through all the limits of space, and expounds to him, in very lofty and obscure terms, the destinies of past and future worlds. They have a great deal of very exceptionable talk: we cull, however, one short passage of a milder character. Lucifer says: Approach the things of earth most beautiful, Cain. I have done this The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest. Luc. Then there must be delusion-What is that, |