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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,
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect

Of spiritual essence: why do I quake?

Why should I fear him more than other spirits,
Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords
Before the gates round which I linger oft,
In twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those
Gardens which are my just inheritance,
Ere the night closes o'er the inhibited walls
And the immortal trees which overtop

The cherubim-defended battlements?

If I shrink not from these, the fire-armed angels,
Why should I quail from him who now approaches?
Yet he seems mightier far than them, nor less

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
The gates of what they call their Paradise
Guarded by fiery-sworded cherubim,

Which shut them out, and me: I feel the weight
Of daily toil and constant thought: I look
Around a world where I seem nothing, with
Thoughts which arise within me, as if they
Could master all things:-but I thought alone
This misery was mine.-My father is
Tamed down; my mother has forgot the mind
Which made her thirst for knowledge at the risk

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*

Of an eternal curse: my brother is
A watching shepherd-boy, who offers up
The firstlings of the flock to him who bids
The earth yield nothing to us without sweat;
My sister Zillah sings an earlier hymn
Than the birds' matins; and my Adah, my
Own and beloved, she too understands not
The mind which overwhelms me: never till
Now met I aught to sympathize with me.

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
Weeps when he's named; and Abel lifts his eyes
To heaven, and Zillah casts hers to the earth,
And sighs a prayer; and Adah looks on me,
And speaks not.

Luc.

Cain.

And thou?

Thoughts unspeakable

Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear
Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems,
Inevitable. I have looked out

In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in
The umbrage of the walls of Eden, chequered
By the far flashing of the cherubs' swords,

I watched for what I thought his coming; for
With fear rose longing in my heart to know
What 'twas which shook us all-but nothing came.
And then I turned my weary eyes from off
Our native and forbidden Paradise,

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,
They are so lovely.

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,
And yet I fly not from him: in his eye
There is a fastening attraction which

Fixes my fluttering eyes on his; my heart

Beats quick; he awes me, and yet draws me uear,
Nearer, and nearer: Cain-Cain-save me from him!

Afterwards she says to him:

Thou seem'st unhappy; do not make us so,

And I will weep for thee.

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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,
And judge their beauty near.

Cain.

I have done this

The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest.

Luc. Then there must be delusion-What is that,
Which being nearest to thine eyes is still

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